Is Israel Asking for Yet More Divine Retribution?

 BS"D 

Is Israel Asking for Yet More Divine Retribution?

ISRAELI PERSECUTION OF ANOTHER RELIGIOUS GIRL IN MILITARY PRISON

4 Shvat, 5781, Parshas Bo °°  January 17, '21

By Binyomin Feinberg

We received confirmation of yet another religious girl, Odel bas Oshras Sorah, incarcerated in Military Prison Number Six. She hails from a Chassidishe family of longtime ba’alei teshuva in Southern Israel. She's been imprisoned for two weeks, in wake of her refusal to enlist in the Israeli Army.

According to Rabbis from across the spectrum, it's absolutely prohibited for any girl to enlist in the Army. In Judaism, some prohibitions rise to the level of "Yai'horaig Ve'al Ya'avor," requiring us to do everything possible to avoid transgression, including sacrificing one's life, if need be (Shulchan Aruch, Yoreh Daiyoh 157:1). As stated by numerous Torah leaders over approximately the past 70 years, women serving in the Israeli Army is included under the rubric of "Yai'horaig Ve'al Ya'avor."

°  In recent months, the Army has been summoning religious girls to submit to a Rayon Dat (religiosity interview, or interrogation) - on the pretext that they studied at a non-religious school, and therefore ostensibly need to confirm their religiosity (to a panel of military officers intent on leveraging the Torah to undermine it). However, in the wake of widespread neglect by the Media, some askonim and Rabbonim, and most of the public, the Army is continuing their escalation of Giyus Banos.

This case of Odel is just one of an increasing number of religious girls recently being targeted by the Draft Offices - even without the pretext of a non-religious school.  Other religious girls being currently targeted include Anna bas Miriam and Shulamis bas Shoshana Bas Sheva (19 y/o). The Draft Offices are persecuting both, and in an apparently lawless manner.

° In addition, we've also received credible information that Odel is being severely mistreated in prison. Having covered these female refusenik cases for about two years, we know for a fact that this is a frequent occurrence - clearly part of an Israeli Army policy, a policy hard to construe as anything less than antireligious, specifically: anti-Jewish.   Sometimes they'll deny the principled refusenik kosher food. Sometimes they'll deny or severely limit communication with family or legal counsel. Sometimes they'll even deny critical healthcare. Additionally, intensive verbal abuse appears to be a staple of the military prison regimen for female religious objectors.

°  Another frequent example of how many girls are persecuted in Israeli military prison is the widespread refusal to allow girls to wear skirts.  The hypocrisy is glaring: When the IDF wishes to market the Army to women around the world, they feign compatibility with Judaism and basic modesty by ensuring religious recruits have easy access to skirts. However, when a religious girl in military prison insists on wearing a skirt, in compliance with the Mesorah (religious tradition) of observant Jewish communities throughout the world, the IDF suddenly encounters acute clothing shortages. They employ a ridiculous rationing of skirts,  extending to the point that the prisons will often only provide makeshift skirts. They take pants,  cut open the legs, and ostensibly resew them, forcing the religious girl to walk around in a bizarre imitation skirt, as if to punish her for her resolve to maintain her modesty and the Jewish Minhag.  Thus, those women who cooperate with the Army's "Mizron Tzahali" paradigm merit designer quality uniforms (for reasons best left unsaid here), while girls who insist on following the Torah are condemned to walk around in abnormal, if not disgraceful garb.

°  Worse, many girls are denied skirts altogether. Some have even been punished by solitary confinement for merely insisting on their religious and civil rights to wear a skirt. Solitary confinement in Israeli military prison is emotional tormenting. The room is intentionally undersized, often with poor ventilation. It's a form of psychological warfare designed to break and severely punish those who insist on their human and religious rights.

°  Another reason for the Military Prison's "Thou Shalt Wear No Skirt Before Me" policy is that the religious girls must be made to feel that they're really not religious. There's a concept of "gaslighting," convincing you to question your own convictions.  This is a technique often employed against religious girls seeking to secure their legal entitlement to a military service exemption, in the Religiosity Interview ("Rayon Dat") process. This trend is more than alluded to in the recently published Chotam Guidebook (for girls to avoid conscription: 
https://www.chotam.org.il/media/61762/pinkaskis-orange-english.pdf?fbclid=IwAR1hBP9tHJxSIfF07n8ywx27I_kWn0jfd9EOBy7fYfRe1xNChBPBU4qLLo0 ).

°  The Army also seeks to compel the girls to violate the Halacha, and their own moral principles and sensibilities (see also
http://firstamendmentactivist.blogspot.com/2020/02/creep-state.html ). Thus, even if the girl ultimately prevails in obtaining her exemption, the antireligious establishment feels it still has had an impact - in eroding the inherent Jewish modesty nurtured by generations of Jewish mothers for four thousand years.

[As an aside, we in America ought never forget the benefit we in America have had, inasmuch as the Founders who drafted the Constitution held that rights aren't given by Man, thus can't be removed on the whim of Man. The socialist system in Israel isn't encumbered by any such constitutional inhibitions.  (And all of the idealistic olim who have moved to Israel have not been successful in changing the modus operandi of the statist government.)]

What is somewhat ironic is what was just re recently reported in the JNS: "Netanyahu calls mob attack on US Capitol ‘disgraceful,’ says American democracy will prevail"

Netanyahu was quoted:

“Lawlessness and violence are the opposite of the values we know Americans and Israelis cherish,” 

... except when perpetrated by the Army against Israeli girls...

~~~

There is much more to report on this topic of Giyus Banos, but suffice this sample for the moment. 

Some Modest Observations:

°  We know that HaShem detests immorality, and especially within the Land of Israel (see VaYikra 18, end; Ramban 18:25).  We know how much more severe immorality is when it's violated by POLICY - as opposed to remaining a mere aberration (Akeidas Yitzchak, parshas VaYaira, 20). It's fair to say that we're seeing a great deal of Divine Justice lately. Apparently, for those running the Israeli Army, that's really not enough.

°  Those who refuse to learn from their intelligence are compelled to learn from experience. Let us not share their horrific fate. Let us separate ourselves from them by taking an intelligent, public, vocal stand.  Spread the word. Demand results, not excuses. The alternative is simply not an alternative.

»»»  Please daven for Odel bas Oshras Sorah, Anna bas Miriam and Shulamis bas Shoshana Bas Sheva, and for the thousands of Israeli girls and women who are in some sense even less fortunate than her - who have enlisted, or who are silently enduring untold suffering within the dark recesses of the military prison system. HaShem hears their cries even if we don't, nay, much more so when we don't.

°  The lesson of Sodom, "HaKetza'akosoh" (Ber. 18:21, Sanhedrin 109b) - illustrating the horrific consequences of abusing even one girl - reverberates to this day. If HaShem wouldn't exact retribution from those responsible for what is perhaps the largest ongoing abuse of Jewish girls and women in the past 76 years - He wouldn't have annihilated Sodom. 

 

°  See Brachos 5a, Rashi "Pishpaish," and Ru'ach Chayim on Avos 4:14, regarding how HaShem's Han'hogah of "Middah Keneged Middah" provides us vital guidance in identifying what messages HaShem is conveying to us via the tribulations he sends our way.  The Middah Keneged Middah of the "Biddud," the isolation of the Coronavirus era, is strikingly reminiscent of the experience of these girls who endure excruciating pain in Israeli military prisons. Perhaps that's one of the lessons we're supposed to glean from this seemingly unending Corona plague. (That's certainly far more plausible than some of the politically-correct, pedestrian "hashkofoh" being circulated since last March.)  In any case, this national travesty of the mass- abuse of Jewish women and girls is something we must rectify regardless.

°  Time is apparently not on our side. By now, we've had a lot of that. This week, Parshas Bo, is exactly two years from when a critique of the Israeli female draft appeared in The Jewish Press  (Jan. 11, '19, p.9). Since that Op Ed appeared, we've had the merit to report on a range of Israeli female draft abuses - which were generally just the tip of the iceberg - many times, and in venues not suspect of anti-Zionist biases, including the Jewish Press. B"H, we've seen positive results. However, where is the massive outrage?  The Orthodox community can do far, far better.  What precisely will we have to say for ourselves when Eliyahu HaNovi actually arrives, to alert us to prepare for the Final Redemption?  It will be too late to start then.

~~~~~

"... And if someone, like Pinchos, is one among a multitude, and every man is against him when he dares to speak out for truth and to fight for the Law -- the more lonely his stand, the greater the number of his adversaries, the more powerful is his word, the mightier his deed."