LIEL LEIBOVITZ
On the day of his arrest, February 12, 1974, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn released a short statement that has since become a manifesto for individuals—and societies—in times of upheaval. It’s long, though worth reading in its entirety, but it comes down to four crystalline words: Live not by lies.
It’s time Israelis took Solzhenitsyn’s advice to heart. Because tragically, now that it could least afford mendacity, Israel is being spun off course by two enormous lies, one destabilizing the nation domestically and the other corrupting its ability to effectively defend itself.
Let’s first look inward, to the most explosive political issue threatening to derail the Israeli government mid-war: namely, the conscription of roughly 63,000 young Haredi men to the Israel Defense Forces. The question of whether or not Israel should recognize—and fund—the right of yeshiva students to pursue their Torah studies rather than join the army has been a political hot potato since at least the 1970s, with various administrations attempting to reach some legislative compromise that would keep both sides content. You would hardly know, listening to the hyperventilation in the Israeli media, that there are already 6,000 Haredi men serving in the army, that hundreds of them are combat soldiers, and that they volunteer in such solid and consistent numbers that the IDF saw fit, in 1999, to establish an independent battalion just for Haredi soldiers, called Netzah Yehuda.
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