The situation with Israel’s corona-plagued haredim has sped so far beyond plain ironic that it’s gone supersonic ironic… After decades of hostile self-ghettoization against the modern Israeli state, that country’s scientifically ignorant and belligerently anti-social sects have infected themselves with a disease that threatens them and their non-haredi neighbors existentially. Understandably, the neighbors are constructing physical barriers against these foolish scofflaw communities whose noncompliance with safety measures has brought catastrophe.
[T]he municipality of Ramat Gan put up barricades along its border with the ultra-Orthodox Bnei Brak, which has recorded a sharp rise in COVID-19 infections in the last few days and was placed under a government lockdown.
So, respond the haredim: How dare you ghettoize us!
Just because the “silence [of haredi authorities] betrayed and imperiled their community,” that’s no reason enlightened and responsible Israelis have to climb on board a doomed ship of fools and sink with them. They don’t think their raison d’être is to submit to criminally stupid rabbis; they believe in the germ theory of disease and act accordingly. Their misfortune is to have set up shop alongside a wretched medieval outpost that their state, which should above all be about protecting its citizens, has chosen, over decades, to ignore or, worse, to encourage. Now there’s really no way out.
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Lest New Yorkers miss out on the fun.