KOWTOWN:

Veteran journalists Elizur and Malkin offer a basic, and bleak, thesis: Absent a separation of religion and state in Israel, the very future of Israel itself, to say nothing of America-Israel relations, will be jeopardized by sectarian/Haredi excesses in crucial areas of domestic public policy in Israel and, by extension, hegemony over the secular state. [...]

Elizur and Malkin ask a basic question: How did it happen that the sectarians in Israel were able to hijack central religious and political processes and thereby secure the ability to sway the destiny of much of the Israeli body politic? Who, in fact, are the "Ultras," who absolutely possess the authors and whose outsized presence in Israeli society is, as the authors assert, morbific, even toxic? [...]

Especially compelling are the two chapters on the question of exemption for yeshiva students from requisite military service in the Israel Defense Forces. What was originally a temporary 

exemption granted in 1948 to 400 yeshiva students has become a national problem as some half a million sectarian youth do not serve in the army. Exacerbating the problem is the fact that the students do not work, because taking a job would mean forfeiture of their exemptions.

Elizur and Malkin trace the story from 1948 and earlier, through the political deals made over the decades with Orthodox parties and power centers, as the sectarian Orthodox community exploded demographically, to the expiration in 2012 of the Tal Law, which extended on a temporary basis the exemptions.

The obverse side of the sectarian/IDF story is that of those Orthodox who do serve in the army. "The War Within" rehearses this narrative in the context of how the Religious Zionism of an erstwhile centrist and responsible Mizrachi/National Religious Party was hijacked by Religious Zionist extremists who make common cause in some areas with Haredi sectarians.

A substantial chunk of the sectarian/Haredi problem is the fact that the rabbanut -- the Chief Rabbinate of the State of Israel -- has in recent years been under the thumb of a few 

sectarian rabbis, and has become morally, politically and religiously bankrupt. This issue, not addressed by Elizur and Malkin, is especially rueful for those who recall the Religious Zionism, represented by the centrist, responsible, Mizrachi/National Religious Party of decades past, before the "Religious" got pinched by the sectarians and the "Zionism" got pinched by the settler movement.

At bottom, Elizur and Malkin assert, it's all about politics and purse: Israel's parliamentary system has often insisted that Haredi support is key when building a governing coalition; the sectarian influence has all too often forced the majority to kowtow to the Haredim.

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