To some of you who’ve posted to this thread, I can only hope you’re being tongue-in-cheek when wishing the apocalypse upon the Jews in Israel: civil strife, imposed observance, expulsion, collusion with the Arabs to destroy the country, etc. My hope is for your sanity, not for the disproving of your visions/hopes, because they’re being disproved on the ground every moment. For example:
1. Army food is kosher, period. Not sorta/kinda. It may be deficient on hiddurim (although less and less so), but it’s kosher.
2. Every Shabbat rule in the army is fully grounded in halakha. A whole library has been produced on the topic in recent years.
3. There’s a demographic slope but no demographic cliff. All Jewish population groups in EY have healthy birth rates.
4. It’s a waste of time to count “BTs” versus “OTDs.” Nearly half of Israeli Jews make at least one major switch in religious orientation in their lifetimes; some make more.
5. Those who narrow the views of the gedolim down to “assur” and “no” are crediting the gedolim with the intelligence of doorstops. Is this what emunat hakhamim has come to?
I could go on but my workday isn’t over (I’m self-employed and the boss is abusing his prerogatives as usual). Let’s just say that Israel is, guess what, a state. States do things in state ways. Israel has been so successful as a state that one cannot explain it without crediting Hashem — unless one denies that success outright and relishes the country’s failure, which to my mind is monumental ingratitude to HKBH.