Speaking at a Maccabi HMO dedication in Bnei Brak, Deputy Minister of Health Yaakov Litzman sent a clear message to Tzipi Livni and her Kadima Party.
“Don’t worry, if the campaign continues, Kadima will end up with the same amount of mandates as Yahadut HaTorah. Wait and see” he stated. The deputy minister added that a day earlier, a Globe’s poll placed Kadima at seven mandates, the same as Yahadut HaTorah.
He concluded by saying ‘if they wish to accept what appears in Parshas HaShavua, “Ka’asher Ya’anu Osum”, then so be it.
Litzman was referring to recent and escalating remarks by Kadima officials against religion and chareidim, including mehadrin buses and many other issues synonymous with the chareidi tzibur.
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
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2 Responses
and if Litzman and the chareidim continue their activities against anyone they don’t like, kadima and the other chilonim may finally band together to put the chareidim out of business.
#1- the reason that hasn’t happened, either now, or in 1948 (when there were far fewer hareidim), is that if the government tried to “put the chareidim out of business” the effect would be to undermine the last century of the zionists co-opting the hareidim. We’ld be back where we were in the early 1920, when the Eidah (as we now call it) was represented by Dr. De Haan, and was negotiating with the Arabs on behalf of the hareidi community (had the negotiations worked out, and the Brits weren’t about to let that happen for obvious reasons) Eretz Yisrael today would be part of a large Arab state, within an autonomous, and quite large (no holocaust) frum population.
The support (or is it mere “toleration”) Israel enjoys internationally is based on the idea that it is a Jewish homeland, and after the holocaust one is needed and warranted. If a third of the Jews in Eretz Yisrael were on the other side (or even a small but visible handful, as would have been the case in 1948), that whole argument is undermined. Remember that Israel is the only case of an indigenous population reclaiming its homeland after being expelled long enough that no one alive remembered (in 1948) when Eretz Yisrael had had a Jewish majority.
The hilonim may regard us as a cancer on their system, but they need us in order to justify the idea that Israel is Jewish. Without us, they are just a bunch of secular Euro-American colonists fighting the natives (cf South Africa). We, and we alone, are the Jewish link to the time when Eretz Yisrael was truely and indisputably, our land.