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David Landau

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David Landau,

David Landau

Analysis

Why Israel’s Charedim are part of the solution

Not ‘extremists’ but key to peace and security

September 20, 2012 10:18
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2 min read

An American — Gentile — diplomat visiting the Jerusalem Great Synagogue on Rosh Hashanah looked entirely comfortable among the shtreimels and kittels of the many Charedim who come to hear our marvellous chazan and choir. I could not resist observing that not many of his colleagues in the region would be visiting mosques these days of violent — in Libya, lethal — rioting against America over an idiotic film insulting the Prophet.

Yet it’s not all always peace and quiet for US diplomats here. Just last week, in my suburban Jerusalem street, a percussion grenade (noisy but harmless) was tossed at a building where a US consular official lives. Police cars darted around for days. The talk on the street was of “Price Taggers”, the extremist Jewish settlers who use arson and violence to make their political point.

That got me thinking, too.

All too often, in the international media but also in our own Israeli press, and indeed in our Israeli — and diaspora Jewish — minds, Jewish “extremism” or “fundamentalism” are words bandied about undefined, without discernment, without responsibility.