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Jun 18, 2009

Quote of the Day (qotd)

I believe that haredi settlement in the Golan will minimize the chances of a disengagement. If we would have done that in Gush Katif, the picture would have been very different. The haredi public has very strong political power.

----- MK Haim Amaslem (Shas)


Amaslem is recommending haredim consider moving to the Golan as a solution to the lack of appropriate housing for young haredi couple.

7 comments:

  1. So when is Amsalem moving?

    /sarc

    Why don't we here that SHAS will never allow a retreat from the Golan, that it is sovereign Israeli territory and that anyone attempting to hand over such areas to no less than our enemies is violating Israeli law?

    Oh. Silly me. It's SHAS. Nevermind.

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  2. Implied in the quote is that the charedim had the power to stop the disengagement, but because it did not hurt them, they didn't care enough do so.

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  3. Amsalem brings up an intersting point, but I don't know if it would be true in realtime.
    Charedi power comes from a few sources
    1. The ability to sit with the right and the left (they used to be able to play them off each other but they haven't done that since 88)
    2. having demands that don't affect don't confront Israel's standing with the "international community" as well as the left or security issues
    3. The fact that there almost 10% of non-Chareidi Israel votes for a Chareidi Party
    4. Daas Torah, along with the fact that more and more Chareidi institutions and officialdom control the social educational and most importantly economic lives of their Tzibbur
    5. A genuine alienation and disconnect the Medina and from Israeli society as a whole, that still surpasses that of the vast majority right wing DL
    The question is if Charedi demands would go head to head with a Gush Katif (or other) scenario G-d forbid, and the issue wasn't money the draft, or the like but a something that the left and the world precieve as a threat, would their political power stand up?
    The second thing is that the Charedi individual is the most powerless person in this country. Kiryat Sefer had no election for Mayor or city council, and we saw what it took for Tov to get 1 seat in Bet Shemesh. If the Charedi leadership can be hooked into some sort of deal, then there would be no grass-roots opposition whatsoever. So if whatever the government wats to do can be resolved from the top, they would.
    Morever if the government wanted to play hardball, they can threaten to draft everyone.

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  5. Shaul We'll never know until it happens G-d forbid.
    I don't think the pressure in Yerushayim came from the grass routes, it came from the Eda, and once they made a ruckus, others felt they couldn't make it seem like they were apathetic to שבת.
    But an government can do things that a municipality can't, and the Chareidi way of life as it exists now tottally depends on that.
    If grass routes have any power, why is Kiryat Sefer less democratic than Egypt of Syria (as far as elections go)

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  6. Shaul if you're going to criticize an entire sect of people you may as well not discriminate. You could replace the word charedi in that statement of yours with almost anyone else and it would be just as true.

    The...chilonim/DL/Sefardim/Russians/whatever.

    Or maybe..just maybe..the shlemazels that represent this entire group in the knesset aren't representative of every single one in that group. Maybe.

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