Israel Flights Delayed by Ultra-Orthodox

[browncoatslytherin]

There was another thread awhile ago that went into this, and I thought it was really interesting:

viewtopic.php?f=158&t=20611&hilit

thanks!

[Arete]

ISR may be a long way from a theocracy right now, but it is on a dangerous trajectory. The Haredim out produce liberal Israelis in the population sweepstakes. What happens in 3-4 generations if the majority of children (meaning > 50%) entering school at that time are Haredi? How can that possibly NOT affect the secular nature of the state. All those boys will be learning, who is going to be generating tax revenue for the state to maintain itself? Who will serve in the army, who will be the engineers and scientists?

Something has to give and soon. The state will have to withdraw monetary support to try and force people to work and the army. But the Haredim are a political force as well, so that is easier said then done.

[2xx1xy1JD]

ISR may be a long way from a theocracy right now, but it is on a dangerous trajectory. The Haredim out produce liberal Israelis in the population sweepstakes. What happens in 3-4 generations if the majority of children (meaning > 50%) entering school at that time are Haredi? How can that possibly NOT affect the secular nature of the state. All those boys will be learning, who is going to be generating tax revenue for the state to maintain itself? Who will serve in the army, who will be the engineers and scientists?

Something has to give and soon. The state will have to withdraw monetary support to try and force people to work and the army. But the Haredim are a political force as well, so that is easier said then done.[

Those moves have already been underway.

www.ameinu.net/blog/israel/cuts-in-isra ... d-poverty/

Netanyahu is a fiscal conservative, quite different from the quasi-socialist parties of the past.

Part of the problem, of course, is that you really can't selectively eliminate or reduce child benefits for Haredim without affect other vulnerable sectors - minorities, single moms, etc. Another problem was that the reductions were swift and drastic, and most larger families counted on the child benefits and had trouble suddenly coping with such a big drop. It's not easy to turn a ship around mid-course.

The old law on draft exemptions is no longer in force, and there's been a lot of discussion of what the next step will be.

Haredi leaders went into a panic after the last election, when Netanyahu make a coalition without any Haredi parties. In the past, when Israel was often split somewhat evenly between parties on the left and parties on the right, the Haredi parties had the power to determine which group would rule. Many of those parties didn't have strong views on defense and foreign policy. They just wanted control of a ministry or two, funding for their institutions, and occasionally a pardon for a politician.

[August]

That's where society totally breaks down. You can support a certain percentage of freeloaders based on the good of the children involved and common humanity of not letting even lazy people starve, but you can't do that for even 10% of the population, let alone 50%. Would you stay in Israel or emigrate if your tax rates were 80% because you were personally supporting two fundie families in addition to your own? And, of course, the schools were not real schools because the fundies had decided the curriculum, there were no buses you could take because you have a dirty vagina and who knows what other ridiculousness.

[2xx1xy1JD]

That's where society totally breaks down. You can support a certain percentage of freeloaders based on the good of the children involved and common humanity of not letting even lazy people starve, but you can't do that for even 10% of the population, let alone 50%. Would you stay in Israel or emigrate if your tax rates were 80% because you were personally supporting two fundie families in addition to your own? And, of course, the schools were not real schools because the fundies had decided the curriculum, there were no buses you could take because you have a dirty vagina and who knows what other ridiculousness.

Did you read the link I posted? Most Israelis agree, and they DID make drastic changes several years ago.

From that link:

In 2003, an Israeli family with 10 children received NIS 6,500 (about $1,450) a month in child allowances. Three years later, in 2006, an Israeli family with 10 children received NIS 2,850 (about $640) a month in child allowances. These cuts came about as part of the larger budget cuts Likud Finance Minister Bibi Netanayhu instituted when Prime Minister Ariel Sharon came to power. -

See more at: http://www.ameinu.net/blog/israel/cuts- ... b4lQY.dpuf [Quoting the article automatically sticks in the link and I don't want to break copyright. I don't think this is a fundie blog.]

I also want to clarify a couple of other points:

Schools: the Haredim don't control the regular public school curriculum. Secular and national religious (Modern Orthodox) kids go to schools that teach the full curriculum. Haredi students go to their own schools, and the problems are with these schools (substandard general curriculum, esp. for the boys, plus weird rules over who they admit to the schools).

Buses: At one point, the public bus company run some segregated buses on lines used by Haredim. The Israeli Supreme Court ruled in 2011 that this was illegal, that the company had to put up signs saying that passengers could sit anywhere, and that drivers were legally obligated to prevent women from being harassed into moving. On some of the former segregated lines, there is still some voluntary segregation by the passengers. After the ruling, some women became "Freedom Riders", sitting at the front of these former segregated buses and making sure that the law was followed.

http://www.jpost.com/National-News/Cour ... drin-buses

http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-an ... dom-riders

You are right that there is a lot of resentment toward Haredim. I've found that the National Religious Israelis tend to be even more resentful than secular Israelis, and more likely to be front-line activists. Part of this is because the National Religious are more likely to use some of the same spaces (Haredim don't hang around the beach in Tel Aviv), part of it is that they see Haredim as hijacking their religion.

[Arete]

The Haredi schools is where the money really needs to be cut off. Right now Haredi students get a substandard education at the government's expense. There may be no math or science for the boys, limited amounts for the girls, no foreign languages, in some of the schools even limited instruction in Modern Hebrew. This does not turn out people who can then be easily intergrated into the economy. This is the same argument I make about fundie homeschooling here. The public schools my nieces and nephew go to? I would put them against any good European public school. They don't live in areas where Christian fundies have any voice, much less in public school ciriculum. But what is going to happen when they have to make a modern society work with their fundie homeschool peers?

These are the issues for any country with an active fundamentalist movement, the particular religion isn't important. I know ISR has passed laws that state the Haredi schools must teach certain subjects, but they have yet to demonstrate if they will have the political will to enforce the laws. Even with the secular ciriculum being unaffected, those schools are going to turn out citizens without the basic tools to participate in society.

[16strong]

Haven't really read the comments here, so I apologize if this has been said. If a man wants women moved to a different part of a plane for the sake of his own religion, then he needs to not fly at all. Nothing is FORCING him to get on that plane. If he is so convicted by his beliefs, then he should understand that a plane is not the best place for him to practice his beliefs. If he needs to fly overseas on business, OH DAMN WELL. Suck it up, or don't choose a career that requires you to fly. And if it's family you're seeing? Hate it for you, but that's still not the way the rest of the world works.

I apply the same reasoning to pharmacists. If you don't believe in birth control, TOO BAD. It's is your job to hand over the medicine a customer's DOCTOR (i.e., not you) has prescribed. If you can't handle that, don't be a pharmacist.

[2xx1xy1JD]

The Haredi schools is where the money really needs to be cut off. Right now Haredi students get a substandard education at the government's expense. There may be no math or science for the boys, limited amounts for the girls, no foreign languages, in some of the schools even limited instruction in Modern Hebrew. This does not turn out people who can then be easily intergrated into the economy. This is the same argument I make about fundie homeschooling here. The public schools my nieces and nephew go to? I would put them against any good European public school. They don't live in areas where Christian fundies have any voice, much less in public school ciriculum. But what is going to happen when they have to make a modern society work with their fundie homeschool peers?

These are the issues for any country with an active fundamentalist movement, the particular religion isn't important. I know ISR has passed laws that state the Haredi schools must teach certain subjects, but they have yet to demonstrate if they will have the political will to enforce the laws. Even with the secular ciriculum being unaffected, those schools are going to turn out citizens without the basic tools to participate in society.

Agreed. It's insane to provide any funds to a school system that fails to teach basic general studies needed so that students can function in society and support themselves.

Of course, public officials in New York state have been deliberately ignoring educational neglect for ages.

http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/2013012 ... t-yeshivas

There is absolutely no way that they can claim ignorance here. This isn't isolated - we are talking about a huge number of students in New York City. It's discussed pretty openly. For example, the book "The Rebbe's Army", which was written for a secular audience about the Chabad Lubavitch movement, has a whole chapter on education. Ultra-Orthodox boys who don't come from newly religious families and who live in these enclaves get little to no general studies. [Girls are given at least some general studies, although some science sections are skipped, are they are more likely to be taught in English. Schools aimed at those from less religious or newly religious families will have pretty high standards for general studies, and schools outside of the big enclaves do general studies as well.]

[Arete]

Oh, that is a huge problem and disgrace in NYS, and it all comes down to political cowardice. Hasidic communities in NY State vote in blocs. You cross their leadership, you lose tens of thousands of votes, not a few dozen. Not surprisingly, the same problems with schools for boys were also recently identified in a London Haredi neighborhood.

In New York, the changes would have to come from within the Haredi community, because no one else is going to risk their political position. But eventually the costs of these policies will be impossible to ignore, and a lot harder to fix.

Plus there is an elephant in the room in NY that doesn't exist in ISR. Any politician who openly took on Haredi schools would immediately be accused of anti Semitism by the Haredi community. No NY politico wants that label sticking to them.