… Peter Berkowitz messes everything up by writing this:
[G]reater participation of the ultra-Orthodox in the economic life and defense of the country can contribute to the emancipation of enlightened Israelis from their reflexive contempt for a community whose passionate religious observance provides a counterweight to those dangerous tendencies — aimless drift, restless materialism, and indiscriminate leveling — to which free and democratic societies are prone.
Fraid not. Fanaticism is not a counterweight; it is a deadweight. Hatred of the state, hatred of free thought, hatred of empiricism, hatred of anyone on your neighborhood streets who doesn’t dress like a member of your sect, ridicule of the Holocaust, and of course thoroughgoing disgusting denigration of women – these are not sacred commitments saving Israel from becoming profane. They are direct threats to equality, communal life, enlightenment, tolerance and – ask the schoolgirl spat on and called a whore by a group of haredim because she wore modern orthodox dress – to simple humanity. There is nothing reflexive about contempt for people who are truly cruel, and whose commitment to the most toxic anti-democratic values is damaging Israel terribly.