Here is video of the rally in New York against inducting Orthodox Jews into the Israeli military that Phil posted on a few days ago. The anti-Zionist message is very strong, and while it’s difficult to tell how it resonated in the audience, there doesn’t look like there were crowds streaming out in protest.
At the 8:20 mark in the video, a speaker throws down the gauntlet:
We have to proclaim a struggle against the [Zionist] Amalek. We say to the Zionists: We have no connection with you! We don’t need you. They threaten us with imprisonment, they will stop giving us money, they want to scare us. We hearby proclaim, in the name of tens of thousands of Jews: we don’t need your money!
Well, the Jewish community may just call his bluff. Josh Nathan-Kazis reports for the Forward that Saturday’s rally might jeopardize social services the Orthodox community receives from Jewish communal organizations. From “Did Satmars Bite Hand That Feeds Them With Anti-Israel Message at Draft Rally?“:
If you needed social services from New York’s fervently pro-Israel mainstream Jewish community, would you organize a tremendous anti-Israel rally in its backyard?
Despite assurances that it wasn’t their intention to do so, that appears to be exactly what the Satmar Hasidic community did on June 9, when they gathered a reported 30,000 men in lower Manhattan to protest Israeli efforts to draft thousands of ultra-Orthodox men into the army. . .
The rally came days after the release of a UJA-Federation of New York poverty study finding that 45% of Hasidic families in the New York area live in poverty. The mainstream Jewish community in New York has responded to this need in recent years, supplying substantial resources to Satmar through the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York and the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty, among other agencies.
In the days after the rally, however, responses from the mainstream Jewish community suggested that the protest had strained ties with the Satmar community.
“I would call on the Hasidic community to think carefully — I would not connect our help to them to their policies — but I just very clearly believe that they should think carefully about the ramifications of such a rally here on these shores,” said Rabbi Shmuel Goldin, president of the Rabbinical Council of America, the Modern Orthodox rabbinic association that condemned the rally.
I’m sure that will make them much more pro-Israel.
So according to mainstream Zionism, N.Y’s Hasidic community is made up of self-hating Jews? Look in the mirror, Zionists, and meet the real self-haters.
A better question is if these Zionist organizations can afford to ignore the Haredim.
In New York City alone, over 80% of children under the age 18 are Orthodox(not newborn, but the entire under-18 population).
If you count the suburbs too, this figure is lowered to 65%, but again the entire under-18 subset.
In short, these organizations don’t have the manpower for the future to backup their threats.
Who says main stream Jews actually believe in freedom of religion? Certainly not for Muslims as renegade Jews are about to discover.
Perhaps good for Satmars. If they want to preserve their XVIII century values they cannot rely on their religious and ideological opponents.
And the clarification from Rabbinical Council of America is valuable too. Apparently “Modern” in “Modern Orthodox” has nothing to do with mediaeval treatment of women etc., the only important thing is to be Zionist and support the military and security forces of Israel. If only Romans had built a temple of Mars rather then Jupiter on the Temple Mount there would be no problems.