Where is the Republican Outrage?

A sign posted outside a row of temples tells women they cannot walk on the sidewalk outside their doors. An eight-year-old girl who dared walk there is spat on by adult men who call her a whore. Members of this ultra-conservative sect throw rocks and eggs at police. More than 60% of the male members of this sect live on welfare, spending all their time studying holy books, whose restrictive laws they wish to impose on the whole country.

Are these temples madrasahs? Is this country Pakistan or Saudi Arabia? Are these men Muslims? Do they want to impose Sharia law? No, no, no and no.

The temples are synagogues in Beit Shemesh, Israel. The eight-year-old girl is Naama Margolese, who wears glasses, long sleeves and a skirt as she walks by the synagogues on her way to her religious school. The men are haredim, ultra-conservative Orthodox Jews, who spend all their time studying the Torah.

The haredim make up about 10% of the Israeli population, but they have much bigger families on average, made possible by welfare benefits and child allowances. Many in Israel are concerned:

“We have a few years to get our act together,” warned Dan Ben-David, an economist and director of the Taub Center for Social Policy Studies in Israel, an independent research institute. 

“If not, there will be a point of no return.” 

Several months ago the center issued a report that caused widespread alarm: If current trends continue, it said, 78 percent of primary school children in Israel by 2040 will be either ultra-Orthodox or Arab.

In short, Israel is in danger of becoming like Saudi Arabia, only with the Torah replacing the Koran.

One would think such stories would raise concerns among Republican candidates for president. The United States sends billions of dollars in foreign aid to Israel. I'd expect Rick Perry and Ron Paul to be asking, "Why should my tax dollars help finance all these Torah-reading, high-birth-rate, silly-hat-wearing welfare bums?" But the current field of Republicans have been falling over each other trying to curry favor with Israel and bash President Obama's Middle East policies. Newt Gingrich went so far as to call the Palestinians an "invented people" in his attempts to undermine their push for statehood.

Israel is an important ally in the Middle East, a reliable democratic partner. But after winning an the unprovoked war launched against them, they are still occupying territories they seized more than 40 years ago and are in the process of permanently taking land away from people who have lived on it for centuries. Whether those original inhabitants call themselves Palestinians or Arabs or Philistines is irrelevant. Israel has legitimate security needs, but their sometimes indiscriminate use of force and collective punishments of the people in Gaza and the West Bank have at times been as oppressive as any totalitarian regime in the region. The small, ultra-conservative religious parties in Israel have made it impossible for Israel to resolve the issue, keeping Palestinians prisoners in their own homes. All these things are corroding the soul of Israel.

It would be wrong to condemn all of Israel for the actions of the haredim and the settlers stealing Palestinian land. Just as it's wrong to condemn all Muslims for the actions of Al Qaeda and Iran. Or to blame all of American Christianity for the actions of militias who plot to kill judges, police officers and IRS employees.

I was at a party a couple of months ago where a man recalled fellow Jews welcoming the support of American fundamentalist Christians. He cautioned them against believing Christian Zionists are true allies of Israel. The impetus for their support of Israel does not arise from their love of the Jews, he said, but from their wish to fulfill their interpretations of prophecies in the Bible.

They say they believe these prophecies foretell that when Jerusalem is restored as the capital of Israel Jesus will return and the battle of Armageddon will be joined. That is, these fundamentalist Christians wish to see Jerusalem restored only to be destroyed in the fiery end of the world.

But once Jerusalem becomes the capital of Israel, and the world does not end, will these false friends of Israel become impatient for the Rapture? Will they point to the above stories and turn on the Jews, casting them in exactly the same light that they cast Muslims today: fanatical, intolerant, wishing to impose their laws on others? And will they once again heap upon Jews the scurrilous epithets they freely used not so long ago? And, one wonders, have they ever stopped thinking them?