End the Madness Raise Your Voice

American Jews need to begin demanding of Israel the same that it demands of Israel’s enemies. I refer specifically to an environment of tolerance on the part of the Israeli government to radical settlers who attack IDF bases and destroy Arab mosques and homes and to the religious coercion being perpetrated by extremist Haredi (Ultra-Orthodox) thugs with the aid and tolerance of Israel’s right wing coalition. The Judean gang are given the benign name of “Hilltop Youth” and the Haredi group in Beit Shemesh, Ashdod and Meah Shearim are acting with implicit approval of the Grand Rabbis whose lack of condemnation of the violence is deplorable.
A good first step will be for the government of Israel to label the “Hilltop Youth” as terrorists, allowing for stricter security measures to be used to get to the bottom of and breaking up of the operation. If Israel wants to be treated as a truly egalitarian and free society these crimes must be given moral equivalence to similar acts done to us. A Palestinian arrested for the defacing a synagogue would face a military tribunal and all that that implies. A Jew defacing a mosque, is tried in an Israeli court with a higher barrier to conviction than its military counterpart. The youth already have a legal defense fund set up with volunteer lawyers to defend them. This is no rag tag group of mislead youth, this is a strategy being employed by the settler movement, if not directly then with a wink-wink acquiescence of settler leaders.
Equally disturbing is the ugly behavior of the extreme Haredim. While they may be a minority of the Haredi community, they have the full protection of a government coalition that includes their parties and a right wing prime minister whose legitimacy depends on their support. Bibi Netanyahu continues to make statements denouncing the actions of the lunatic fringe but he needs to lean on his allies to pressure their communities to stop.
We can no more condemn the silence of the Arab countries’ defense of Palestinian atrocities if we don’t denounce our own. We cannot preach about the radical madrasas in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia if we cannot control our own yeshiva bochurs. And we certainly can’t deride the religious police of Iran if Israel effectively has the same in some of their cities.
There are some heroes in Israel who for sure take a stand and speak out against this violence and anti-Jewish values behavior. Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, himself a settler frequently denounces the Hilltop Youth. Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein, founder and Rosh Yeshiva at Gush Etzion is another also Nachman Rosenberg of Tzohar, a Modern Orthodox organization that helps people prove their Judaism so they can marry as required by Israeli law, through the Chief Rabbinate.
If the Grand Rabbis of the major Hasidic sects remain silent, if the Roshei Yeshiva of the great institutions of higher Torah learning remain silent, they are guilty of complicity. If the political parties that represent these people do not loudly denounce them, they too are complicit. Most importantly, if we American Jews, supporters of Israel do not raise our voices then we too are guilty.