Why are the Haredim allowed to connect with enemies of Israel?
Every leftist must verify 500 times with whom they breathe the same air, but the Admor of Gur can happily cozy up to the anti-Zionist Satmar Hasidim, who informed him they would complain about the state in The Hague. Fact: even the opposition leaders are silent.
The supreme effort of the coalition and its propaganda bodies to block the abandonment of votes is focused on the demonization of two centers of gravity: MK Mansour Abbas and the Democrats party. The former is rejected anyway by most members of the opposing bloc, but the campaign against Yair Golan and his associates is having no small success, see the statements of Avigdor Lieberman. Precisely because of this, the amazing meeting revealed last night on News 13, in which the Admor of Gur mingles with tycoon Yoely Landa, from the anti-Zionist Satmar Hasidism, should be a tectonic event.
The very fact that the leader of the rich and powerful Hasidic court, whose representative in the Knesset was the Minister of Housing until a year ago, maintains warm ties with a body that prides itself on denying the existence of the State of Israel, testifies to unimaginable hypocrisy: from any factor on the left, it is expected to verify 500 times that he is not breathing the same air as 'enemies of Israel' (i.e., opponents of the occupation, for example), but the supreme commander of MK Yitzhak Goldknopf is allowed to take off to the USA in Landa's private plane (as published by Shilo Fried on ynet), a person who calls the IDF an 'impure army' and recruits his capital to influence against any compromise in the Haredi draft crisis. About rabbis who did ask to check what could be done, he said they are 'making compromises to defile the youth of Israel, and sending their sons to the Zionist Moloch.'
And here, at the mentioned meeting with the Admor of Gur, in which political operatives like Moti Babchik also participated, who knows the corridors of power as if it were the synagogue he prays in, it turned out this is not enough: the Admor was asked what his opinion is on appealing to the International Court in The Hague (!) to complain about the state's treatment and presumably impose sanctions on it. Operative Israel Gafner even reveals that a team has already been set up in America that handles complaints about police violence. Before the cameras, the public is informed about the establishment of a snitch-line on foreign and anti-Zionist money, and it is setting out on its way under the auspices of the Hasidism that most of the right (Likud, Otzma Yehudit, Religious Zionism) sees as a 'natural partner.'
How did an uproar not arise? The Admor is indeed 87 years old, but words like 'unthinkable,' 'God forbid,' and 'get out of my sight' he is still capable of uttering — but he chose not to. The result is a complete absurdity: for every interview in which someone from the left only hints at the need for the world to intervene in what is happening in the West Bank, for example, a divine uproar arises and demands for condemnation and disqualification. Presumably, the silence in the coalition that warns all day against a government 'with the Arabs' is not surprising: standards are not the strong side of a government where the Minister of Defense allows himself to abandon a cabinet meeting on the day two soldiers are buried, just to participate in a family event of a convicted criminal like Rabbi Yoshiyahu Pinto.
What is puzzling is that the other side and its leaders also do not use every possible platform to tear the mask off the deep ties of the ruling bloc with clear anti-Zionist elements, in a way that would mock the de-legitimation campaign against parties such as the Democrats and Ra'am. The possibility that around the next government table will sit a Gur representative, who is no longer flirting with the Satmarers but is conducting a stormy affair with them, should launch a simple campaign: not only does Benjamin Netanyahu, Bezalel Smotrich and co. complain about a government with Ra'am while he intends to form a government with non-Zionist parties, he and his friends do not lift a finger against the growing influence of anti-Zionism in Haredi politics. How did Gadi Eisenkot, Naftali Bennett, and Avigdor Lieberman not rise up and say that the Admor of Gur is setting a table for enemies of Israel and therefore forming a government with him is madness? Is this the usual helplessness? Or is it better not to get involved with someone like Moti Babchik: in the end, the votes will be counted and who knows if the friends of the Satmarers won't be the difference between a penny and a pound.
