[Salon] Hesder Yeshivas Aid Far-right Israeli Party Flouting Military Election Rules - Israel Election 2021 - Haaretz.com

[Todd Pierce <todd.e.pierce@icloud.com>]

Title: Hesder Yeshivas Aid Far-right Israeli Party Flouting Military Election Rules - Israel Election 2021 - Haaretz.com

Okay, this headline uses the euphemism of “Far-right,” and of course they’re not Nazis, as they’re not “Anti-semitic” in the traditional sense, but neither was Italy until 1938 when Hitler decreed they must be, and therefore having to remove the Jewish members of their Party. Nor was this party, nor were they anti-Catholic, but many were “Conservative Catholic," instead, they were rightfully called “Austrofascists,” on a “spectrum of fascism,” even though they opposed Nazism, just as Carl Schmitt’s “Conservative Revolutionaries” constituted a “rival fascism” to Hitler Nazism, as did this fascist group: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatherland_Front_(Austria)

BLUF: "The Fatherland Front maintained a cultural and recreational organisation, called "New Life" (Neues Leben), similar to Germany's Strength Through Joy.^[29] The "League of Jewish Front Soldiers" (Bund Juedischer Frontsoldaten), the largest of several Jewish defense paramilitaries active in Austria at the time, was incorporated into the Fatherland Front.^[30]

"The role of the Fatherland Front has been a contentious point in post-War Austrian historiography. While many historians consider it to be the exponent of an Austrian and Catholic-clerical variant of fascism—dubbed "Austrofascism"—and make it responsible for the failure of liberal democracy in Austria, conservative authors stress its credits in defending the country's independence and opposition to Nazism.^[31]”

Neither of the latter two points disqualifies the “Fatherland Front” as “fascist,” nor does this: "It was mainly backed by the Catholic church, the Austrian bureaucracy and military, most of the rural population—including both landowners and peasants^[32]—(with its centre of gravity in western Austria),^[33] some loyalists to the Habsburg dynasty, and a significant part of the large Jewish community of Vienna.^[3”

^{“Religious belief” does not disqualify one from fascism, whether Judaism, Catholicism, Protestantism, nor other non-western religions,}

 ^{as could be seen in the founding generation of the U.S. "Conservative Movement’s” Catholic CIA officers who founded National Review magazine} 

^{and who insisted that religion} must be the basis of US politics. Preferably Christianity, and even more so, a Carlist form of Catholicism as they would 

traipse off to Franco’s Spain to study (Bozell, Buckley, and Kendall in particular), but not excluding Protestantism, or Judaism.  

And particularly with the latter, what we see in Israel today, as below, and in Yoram Hazony’s “National Conservatism,” which also has so much attraction

to today’s American and European "Conservative Christians.” Think “Fatherland Front” when reading Hazony’s and his fellow "National Conservative’s”

preachings, and screeds, Christian and Jewish. 

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/elections/2021-03-09/ty-article/.premium/hesder-yeshivas-aid-israeli-far-right-party-flouting-idf-rules/0000017f-e517-d568-ad7f-f77fbefc0000

Hesder Yeshivas Aid Far-right Israeli Party Flouting Military Election Rules - Israel Election 2021 - Haaretz.com

Josh BreinerMar 9, 2021

Two weeks before the Israeli election, the far-right Religious Zionism party is still holding meetings at hesder yeshivas around the country, violating army rules banning soldiers from political activity.

Hesder yeshivas combine religious study with military service and receive Defense Ministry funding, and their students are considered service members.

Army laws bar soldiers from participating in political activity and hesder yeshiva students are subject to these rules.

Who are Israel's Mizrahi voters and why can't the left win their votes? LISTEN to Election Overdose

“Hesder yeshiva soldiers are soldiers in every respect and army orders apply to them, including the orders forbidding any activity of a political nature,” The Israel Defense Forces Spokesperson’s Unit said.

On their visits to hesder yeshivas, the Religious Zionism party Knesset candidates were accompanied by Rabbi Haim Drukman, who heads the Or Etzion hesder yeshiva and also chairs the Association of Hesder Yeshivot. Nevertheless, he has publicly supported Religious Zionism in his lectures and urged students to help the party, which is led by lawmaker Bezalel Smotrich.

On Sunday, party candidates visited hesder yeshivas in the West Bank settlements of Itamar, Elon Moreh, Kfar Tapuah and Otniel, as well as the Sha’alvim and Kerem B’Yavneh hesder yeshivas. The meetings with students and rabbis took place in the yeshivas’ study halls.

Visits to additional hesder yeshivas were scheduled for Monday and Tuesday.

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On Monday morning, the party posted a video of Sunday’s visits as part of its campaign messaging, headed “Campaign of Religious Zionism’s rabbis.”

At some yeshivas, students have been recruited for open political activity on Religious Zionism’s behalf. They have been calling potential voters and plan to volunteer on Election Day (March 23).

One hesder yeshiva student who requested anonymity criticized the visits. “We’ve become a tool of Smotrich’s political propaganda,” he said. “With all due respect for Rabbi Drukman, the yeshiva shouldn’t be turned into a tool to promote Smotrich’s agenda.”

Referring to the left-wing Labor Party’s chairwoman he added, “Would they let Merav Michaeli come speak here?”

Sunday’s visits took place even though the military had ordered the Association of Hesder Yeshivot to stop all political activity after Smotrich visited the hesder yeshiva in the town of Sderot a few weeks ago. The army said at the time that it expects the yeshivas to uphold the rules that apply to all soldiers during election campaigns.

The IDF Spokesperson’s Unit said that after the first incident, it asked the association to make it clear to all the hesder yeshivas that they are forbidden to engage in political activity. In light of this new incident, “The IDF has held another conversation with the yeshiva association and explained the prohibition on soldiers’ participation in such activity in a clear, unambiguous manner.”

No response had been received from the association.

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