[LINK] "A hostile takeover of Zionism"

[rfmcdonald]

Can anyone tell me if Patrick Martin's Globe and Mail essay is anywhere close to being right?

No longer are they the inward-looking anti-Zionists who only cared that the government provide them with money for their separate schools, welfare and exemptions from military service. These days, many of the Haredim – the word means “those who tremble” in awe of God” – have joined with right-wing religious Zionists to become a powerful political force.

They now are equipped to redefine the country's politics and to set a new agenda.

Two decades ago, they were confined mostly to a few neighbourhoods in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Today, they have spread throughout the country, in substantial numbers in several major communities, as well as building completely new towns only for their followers.

One Haredi leader who almost won Jerusalem's mayoralty race last fall, boasts that, within 20 years, the ultra-Orthodox will control the municipal government of every city in the country. And why not? Of the Jewish Israeli children entering primary school for the first time this month, more than 25 per cent are Haredi, and that proportion will keep growing. There are between 600,000 and 700,000 Haredim in Israel, and they average 8.8 children a family.

A decade ago, there were almost no Haredim in the West Bank settlements. Today, the two largest settlements are entirely ultra-Orthodox, and the Haredim are about a third of the almost 300,000 settlers.

Now that they have tightened the rules on who can be a Jew and have forced the public bus company to provide gender-segregated buses in many communities, a discouraged secular community is starting to emigrate.

Nehemia Shtrasler, a business and political columnist for the Haaretz newspaper, wrote this summer that the country is risking destruction. “We will survive the conflict with the Palestinians and even the nuclear threats from Iran,” he wrote. “But the increasing rupture between the secular and ultra-Orthodox communities in Israel will be the end of us.” Mr. Shtrasler said: “It's a struggle between two contradictory worldviews that cannot exist side by side.

[. . .]

Violence has become so widespread that there are Haredi communities where the police won't go. This summer, a police car was torched and several officers injured when attacked by a rock-throwing mob, when the police responded to a call for help.

It's upsetting to many Israelis, such as the columnist Nehemia Shtrasler, but when Haredi neighbourhoods become no-go zones for authorities, and when people must think twice before opening a private business on the Sabbath, the violence is having its desired effect.

And, as the Haredi community expands and finds government funding harder to come by, growing numbers of Haredi women and men will be compelled to enter the work force. The impact of that, says Prof. Ben Yehuda, is that businesses and workplaces will be forced to comply with the religious demands of their new workers.

Already, he said, in high-tech workplaces, where many Haredim work, the offices are segregated and cafeteria food is kosher.

Even in the Israel Defence Forces, the Haredim are having an effect. An exclusive Haredi battalion has been created, to accommodate a growing number of ultra-Orthodox who want to serve.

In other battalions, religious Zionists have refused to ride in military vehicles driven by women. Their demands have reportedly been met.

With the demographic shift in favour of the Haredim only going up, those in the private sector, government and the military who decline to accommodate Haredi demands will become fewer and fewer.

And with growing numbers of Haredim in West Bank settlements, Israel's conflict with the Palestinians takes on an increasingly religious fervour.

The reason that I ask is that this sounds all too much like the rhetoric behind Eurabia, but the demographics described do sound very much like the actual facts so I'm perplexed. Thoughts?