Because it's media is owned and operated primarily by Israel-firsters, or those who wouldn't dream of crossing them. And because it's politicians are also owned and operated by Israel-firsters, where they are not owned and operated by the MI complex (some answer both descriptions). Each potential entry point into the US thru which information about Israel could be promulgated widely is manned by the Lobby and anything potentially embarrassing is either cleansed of all dangerous import, or simply strangled at birth.

Plus the place seems stuffed to the gills with downstream or basement Lobby types like Ralph Seliger and Richard Witty who patrol the blogs and don't see a problem with Israeli behaviour(or pretend not to, or try to neuter it with pitiful attempts at moral equivalence) and call you an anti-semite if you do.

But this is a time of changes and the chaos to come will embolden people to clear their throats in ways they'd not have considered a very short while ago. It will be interesting to hear what they have to say.

That's an easy one. This is nothing especially new or important. Religious Jews, like other communities (Arabs, Druse, etc.) are enforcing their customs locally as they've always done. The only "new" thing here (new in the sense of the last decade or two) is that the haredim pretty much control Jerusalem.

The old "secular-religious civil war" chestnut is last decade's news as well. My guess is that this cliche first became popular in the 1970s with the rise of Gush Emunim. The cliche pretty much disappeared after September 2000, but this Lowenstein guy seems to be going for a revival. Since 2000 it's been clear to most Israelis that the strongest divisions in the state of Israel, as in most of the modern world, are national, not creedal.

If you're looking for the Israeli equivalent of a religiously murderous movement willing to murder innocent civilians in cold-blood in order to achieve stupid and silly political goals inspired by dogma handed down through books of patent nonsense centuries-old, then you should look no further than the Zionist movement itself. The settlers are merely the most overt part of this movement, but they are fundamentally no different from the Zionist pioneers and their supporters. Or Al-Qaeda.

On the one hand, I bristle at reactionary group politics of any kind.

On the other hand, the fact that ultra-Orthodox fertility spells the death-knell of the secular Ashkenaz Zionist elite…well, that's not so bad.

On top of that, I think it's still worth distinguishing between the real Haredim (still, if I understand correctly, anti-Zionist) and the so-called religious Zionists.

"During the last months, there has been a marked increase in the number of incidents in which settlers attack Palestinians, soldiers, policemen, and "leftists."

These acts are committed openly, in order to terrorize and deter. Settlers riot in the Palestinian villages whose lands they covet, or for revenge. These are "pogroms" in the classical sense of the term: riots by an armed mob intoxicated with hatred against helpless people, while the police and the army look on. The Pogromchiks destroy, injure, and kill. These days it is happening more and more frequently.

In the few cases when the army or the police intervene, they do not turn on the settlers, but on the Israeli peace activists who come to help the beleaguered Palestinian farmers. The spokesmen of the security establishment and the commentators try to sound balanced and speak about "rioters from the Left and the Right." That is a false evenhandedness, which itself belongs to the fascist arsenal of tricks."

He said that traditional Israeli defense strategists had learned nothing from past experiences and that they seemed stuck in the considerations of the 1948 war of independence.
ehud speaks article on the new yawk times.

“With them, it is all about tanks and land and controlling territories and controlled territories and this hilltop and that hilltop,” he said. “All these things are worthless.”

He added, “Who thinks seriously that if we sit on another hilltop, on another hundred meters, that this is what will make the difference for the State of Israel’s basic security?”

The psycho settlers are more like how small feral groups interact, with random violent acts of dominance over the other.

A group of men who police suspect were hired by an ultra-Orthodox gang recently broke into a Jerusalem woman's home and beat her because they deemed her immodest.

The so-called "Modesty Guard" is suspected of being behind the incident. The gang has been known to unleash extortion, mercenaries, violence and surveillance on less religious Jews they deem sacrilegious. They claim to do it all in the name of God.

The incident may be one of a string of signs of rising ultra-Orthodox violence. Last year, five Haredi Jews assaulted a woman and an Israel Defense Forces soldier because they sat next to one another on a Jerusalem bus.
VIDEO- http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2008/09/29/traditional-rules-on-modesty-especially-for-women-and-the-sanctity-of-the-sabbath-are-strictly-enforcedthe-lengths-to-whi.html#comment-50445 <p>John, I was never sure how serious the threat was, but obviously some of the orthodox are willing to carry it out.</p> <p>I was with a friend who was wearing what I would call modest shorts, and he took the posted warnings and angry looks as a sign to change clothes in an alley. I thought he was being a baby, but maybe not.</p> John, I was never sure how serious the threat was, but obviously some of the orthodox are willing to carry it out.