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…

Given that tens of thousands of Haredi men do no Torah study of any actual meaning or value – they lack the motivation/intelligence/training to do little other than show up in a building occasionally and hang around open books – the writer misstates the problem. It’s sweet that he assumes that we assume that all male babies born into this population transform into Torah scholars. But since we have eyes in our heads, we do not assume this. Because we know it is not true.

[T]here are already 6,000 Haredi men serving in the army … hundreds of them are combat soldiers, and … they volunteer in such solid and consistent numbers … the IDF saw fit, in 1999, to establish an independent battalion just for Haredi soldiers, called Netzah Yehuda.

Netzah Yehuda is nothing to be proud of. The US gov has singled this unit out for sanctions, so atrocious has its conduct been in the West Bank. And who can be surprised? A subculture taught to consider pretty much everyone not an ultraorthodox Jew pretty close to subhuman can’t be trusted with serious weaponry. Unless you don’t care about the law of warfare.

And the IDF didn’t create a unit just for Haredim cuz it was wowed by their solidity and consistency: Haredim are so unassimilably weird and demanding in their general and specific orientation (no mixing with women ever!) that nothing short of total segregation will work with them.

Indeed, “fully integrating Haredim into its ranks would require a wide array of logistical challenges—providing strictly kosher food, for example, or addressing concerns rising from coed military service—it currently cannot and does not want to address.” And why is it only the IDF that has to address ways of being that allow this group of Israelis to contribute to the Israeli state’s existential crisis? How about the Haredim meeting the army halfway, and, say, suspending strict observances for the duration of their service? Suspending their inhumane attitudes toward everyone not a member of their religious group?

OOOH, say their rabbis, that would be the first step to secularization.

So?

The author goes on to argue that the war is going desperately badly — a position rather at odds with his initial argument that the Israeli court should leave an enormous population of unemployed young men alone.

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UPDATE:

At least 22 percent of ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students under the age of 26 are illegally employed, in violation of the terms of their exemption from military service, a new study has found, appearing to undercut the community’s argument that its members do not enlist due to their total immersion in Torah study.

Well.

Gotta admire their honesty.

Not my photograph; Melissa Bouter’s.

Took me awhile to figure out why it kept flying off and then perching on the same flower again. It was hunting insects.

I don’t like hosta flowers, but if they bring hours of dragonflies to my window, okay.

They’re putting them in jail.

Yes. That’s why no one talks about nuclear disarmament; the problem is violence, not the means of violence.

Time is full of changes, and now you’ve got to go.

Goodbye, Joe.

So let’s see what the good reason is.

Haredim believe—deeply, strongly and sincerely—that religious devotion in the form of Torah-study, no less than the actions of foot soldiers or intelligence officers, is important for Israel’s security. Indeed, a vital, essential part of it... [A]t least in Haredi eyes, [fit young men who only pray] are not evading public service but contributing to it—and in a way that, they sincerely believe, is essential to the safety and security of all their fellow Jews.

Indeed, in Haredi eyes, they sincerely believe they don’t need to work instead of pray; sincerely, they believe Israeli taxpayers should subsidize their prayerful unemployment. Sincerely, in Haredi eyes, vaccination against disease is evil, so sincerely they allowed thousands of their old and very young to die of covid. Many Haredi sincerely believe that stealing funds from the Israeli state (in which they sincerely disbelieve) is okay. In Haredi eyes, during Israel’s national minute of silence on holocaust remembrance day, you should make a lot of noise to show your contempt. In Haredi eyes, violence against the “state” – which extends from constant destructive rioting/traffic disruption to attacking children dressed insufficiently modestly – is essential to the safety and security of all their fellow Jews. (Oh except that in Haredi eyes no person who is not Haredi is really a Jew. Sincerely.)

These are all good reasons. Because Haredi people think they are good reasons. Sincerely.

Nicely buttoned up and a med school prof at CUNY but for almost ten years he’s reportedly gotten multiple millions in NIH grants by the simple expediency of making shit up. I’m curing Alzheimer’s! Look at these results!

Happens a lot. The rewards are for results, so you produce results.

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Here’s another result. Stock in the company pushing this guy’s drug just plummeted.

Here’s another. The guy could go to prison for 55 years.

But he won’t. Too buttoned down. CUNY will dump him and he’ll have to pay some of the money back. He’ll leave the States for a job in Saudi Arabia. End of story.

‘Kamala Harris … would lose by an even bigger margin than the ambling cadaver.‘

Andrew Sullivan

Mr UD insisted on watching, so I asked him to watch it way over in the livingroom, with the sound off.

“I stopped watching after fifteen minutes,” he said later. “It was very sad.”

What now? For the sake of the country and the world, Biden should drop out.

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I had been ready to give Biden the benefit of the doubt up to now, because during the times I engaged with him one on one, I found him up to the job. He clearly is not any longer. His family and his staff had to have known that. They have been holed up at Camp David preparing for this momentous debate for days now. If that is the best performance they could summon from him, it’s time for Joe to keep the dignity he deserves and leave the stage at the end of this term.

One of UD‘s wealthier friends sups with the opioid-famous Sacklers when he’s in Gstaad; the friend reports that these are really terrific dinners, without any undue pressure from the hosts to try OxyContin.

The good news is that in the foreseeable future my friend can continue to sup in the Alps with the Sacklers; but today’s Supreme Court rejection of the nice deal the family worked out with the trillion or so people whose family members fatally overdosed in order to finance Sackler dinners in Gstaad means that eventually the dinners might be imperiled.

“[O]ur decision not to share the news [that a member of our community stabbed and drowned her babies] is deliberate and guided by the wisdom of our rabbis.”

Ultraorthodox Lakewood NJ – known until now for its astounding rates of welfare fraud and its refusal to vaccinate its people against measles, covid, etc. – arrogantly responds to media inquiries with pride in its longstanding refusal to face up to what the many pathologies of its community have wrought. Of course this is a very big news story, but by definition America’s most anti-social demographic doesn’t give a shit.

Oh, turns out filicide mom has “severe mental illness,” which, guided by the wisdom of our rabbis, we decided left us free to put her alone in her house with her defenseless offspring. (Not totally defenseless: Apparently she only stabbed the older of the two, presumably because the pitiable child offered a little resistance.)

And of course the madwoman would – will? – continue to produce more babies. More babies is what ultraorthodox women – psychotic murderers or not – do.

… with big ol’ settlements to the parents of a Univ New Mexico player (UNM is among the ickiest of the icky, athletically and in all other ways) who killed himself after a scuzzy coach made him keep playing even though he’d concussed himself into a serious depression.

The lawsuit noted that a year prior to [Nahje] Flowers’ death, UNM suspended [Coach Bob] Davie for 30 days over allegations that he physically assaulted players, obstructed a rape investigation and frequently engaged in racist comments.

UNM, a month after Flowers’ death, agreed to pay Davie a $825,000 buyout. He left at the end of the 2019 season with two years on his contract. During his tenure, Davie had a 35-63 record over eight seasons. He couldn’t be reached for comment Wednesday.

So pretty, on so many levels.

Political advisers and news outlets have scrambled to pinpoint Trump’s battle tactics for presidential debates since he first appeared as a legitimate candidate in 2016. The Atlantic argued that Trump relies heavily on a rhetorical approach called the Gish gallop, which they describe as a “torrent of incorrect, irrelevant, or idiotic arguments” in which one can bury their opponent. One political insider told Politico Magazine that Trump has “no strategy, just kill and eat.” And Vox created a seven-part taxonomy of Trump’s approach, observing that he “turns tough policy questions into simple stories,” filibusters until the clock runs out to avoid giving details, and leans on his poll numbers and meaningless, three-word slogans.

The brave women of Iran keep at it, subverting the vile clerics and the even viler morality police through sheer force of numbers. Even some presidential candidates there are condemning the vicious, degrading treatment of women who hate the hijab and don’t want it anywhere near them or their daughters.

I mean, they really hate it. They are willing to be beaten and go to jail in order not to wear modesty caps and blankets. (‘On a recent afternoon in northern Tehran, women sat in cafes and other public places, as a police officer in his 50s told those passing by: “Please cover yourselves, ladies,” and then muttered audibly: “My God, I am fed up repeating this without getting any attention.”‘) A whole nasty regime with police and an army calls them whores and hunts them down and in response they say fuck you. All glory to these badasses.

******************

And why do they hate them, UD? It’s just a tight bit of head cloth – plus a loose evil/sexy body blanket cover. What’s the big deal? You’re willing to go to jail for refusing it? To get humiliated and beaten in public? To be fined huge sums? To lose your car? Your job? REALLY?

Well, ok. Let’s start at the very beginning. A very good place to start. Historically, the women of Iran have had serious exposure to you’ll forgive the term freedom. They actually know – they have muscle memory of – what a non-theocratic, non-authoritarian world looks like, and that world is so attractive that nothing a bunch of withered old dicks wrapped in turbans throws at them is going to stick. In respectable countries, you can be a Muslim, an atheist, a Christian, or a warlock; your government doesn’t threaten you with incarceration if you don’t take mandated Intro Islamic Chastity and Virtue courses.

In respectable countries, you might prefer energetic erotic activity to C+V; in Iran, your frisky clit might find itself subject to FGM. Frisky Islamic Republic dicks have no trouble releasing themselves from thin jeans and going at it, and here you’ve been introduced to the concept of equality and all and you know it just seems pretty graphically unfair.

To go a bit deeper: Your self-image has nothing at all to do with hiding your beauty, your character, your individuality. You want to greet the world with as much self-assertion as men are able to, because that is who you are, not the hidden nothing the withered dicks dream about. They, to be sure, are dead. You are not.

The number of times I have heard Saudi women here, who are conditioned to believe that covering is an unquestionable issue, sigh as they watch uncovered women on TV and say لهم الدنبا ولنا الأخرة (they get the world and we get the afterlife).