Metro - Ultra-Orthodox Israeli Jews stage mass protests against religious school integration ruling
Can any of our Israeli posters explain this demo to us? There are a few things I don't understand:
- Why do they object to their daughters being educated with other Jewish girls not of European descent?
- Why are they exempt military service?
- What does it mean that the reject the Zionist state?
- Why are they exempt from paying taxes?
Is this a serious challenge to the authority of the secular Israeli state? A demo of 100,000 in a nation of 6 million is a BIG demo. What does this mean for the Bibi government?
Quite complicated.
Sephardi Judaism and Ashkenazi Judaism are two different flows in Judaism.
The parents of the female students of the orthodox Emanuel school's hassidic class do not want their daughters to learn together with Sephardi students, claiming the separation to be religiously motivated.
The parents of the Sephardi students have complained about the abuse of their daughters by the Ashkenazi students. Racial slurs, isolation, etc.
The Israeli supreme court has stated in a court ruling on the case that the separation is done on an ethnic basis, not a religious one, and is hence an ethnic discrimination, racism. It has stated in that ruling that the separation must be stopped.
That has created a huge outrage amongst the ultra-Orthodox(Haredim) population, that have seen this as a violation of the status quo agreement, which goes all the way back to September 47', when Ben-Gurion, leading the Mapai (Labor) party has signed on an agreement with the Orthodox population of the land on the religious status of the to-be-established Jewish state.
In that status-quo agreement, the state of Israel would be a non-theocratic secular state with the freedom of religion, its official day of rest being Saturday (Shabbat), Kosher food in state provided kitchens, an above all, an autonomy given to Jewish religious courts on the subjects of marriage and divorce(And family affairs in general), and also an autonomy given to each sector in Judaism to manage its own religious education system.
The part of the status quo that the ultra-Orthodox see as violated is the last, the autonomy given to them to manage their own religious education systems.
So the Orthodox parents, backed by their communities and rabbis, have decided to object to the Supreme Court's ruling, and have really angered the judges who have in return declared this as a threat to the authority of the democratic institutions.
They have hence decided to send the ultra-Orthodox parents who are refusing to comply with the court ruling to jail for 14 days (two weeks) as punishment.
This has only added fuel to the flames and has resulted in the massive protests that we've seen here two days ago, where it seems like pretty much every single Orthodox person in the land has taken part in that 'demonstration of power' by the Orthodox population.
They've called the Israeli supreme court a fascist institute, claiming that the separation is part of their religious freedom, but have mainly avoided from violence. (Which could be seen more than occasionally on previous Orthodox demonstrations)
So now the Orthodox school parents are in jail, and there are some religious tensions, but there is absolutely no threat at all to the authority of the secular state or that of the democratic institutions.
Now to your questions 2,3,4:
2) They go to their "Yeshivas" instead. Those are advanced Jewish schools. Sort of like a college for religion.
Some of them do decide to volunteer to the military (very few), but the rest object to it.
Either because they object to the existence of the state(from religious motives), or because they find the IDF's 'kosherness' to be lacking. The military doesn't allow you to pray whenever you want to and stuff like that.
3) Some of them object to the Zionist idea, either because the state that was formed (Israel) was a secular state, and not a religious-Jewish one, or because they believe that the Jews should have waited for the Messiah before returning to Zion (Jerusalem/Israel).
The extremist group known as Neturei Karta, is the representative of such opinions amongst the ultra-Orthodox population.
They believe that the creation of Israel was a sin to Judaism, and are hence opposing it on every front.
The backwards idiots also deny the holocaust and refuse to honor the victims of the holocaust in the Israeli holocaust remembrance day, and they also refuse to honor the fallen Israeli soldiers in the Israeli memorial day, not standing still during the siren like everyone else. (Some of them are even dancing in the streets during that time)
Neturei Karta also support Iran and have good relations with the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
4) It's another ridiculous agreement reached with them. They're exempt from paying taxes, and are having a lot of babies in return, but what good is that when those babies when grown up, just like them, refuse to do their service to the country and refuse to even work?
A huge percentage of the ultra-Orthodox population in Israel doesn't even work, and hence has zero support for the Israeli economy.
And by the way, there are over 7.5 million people in Israel, not 6 million.