THE EXISTENTIAL THREAT IS INTERNAL:

Nothing prepared Yakir Lance -- an ultra-Orthodox fellow who lives in the heart of Tel Aviv -- for his encounter with a secular cab driver at the end of January.

Lance ordered a cab through a taxi app, as he usually does, and waited outside his home. When a taxi drove past him without stopping, Lance assumed that it was some kind of mistake. Then he called the driver, who told him directly, "You are an ultra-Orthodox disease spreader; I can't take you," and sped away.

This event took place shortly after the Jan. 24 disturbances that erupted in Bnei Brak, Israel's largest ultra-Orthodox city; in the course of the riots a bus was set on fire and the driver was rescued at the last minute. The violent events erupted against the background of confrontations between policemen and ultra-Orthodox young people, as authorities tried to enforce the third lockdown in ultra-Orthodox cities. It was the low point of a violent week in the centers of ultra-Orthodox cities and localities, and the media was filled with reports on the sparring between police and the ultra-Orthodox.

The political responses were not long in coming. The chairman of the Yisrael Beitenu party, Avigdor Liberman, responded with sarcasm. "Who said the ultra-Orthodox don't know how to fight?" asked Liberman, who has long sought end exemptions that allow the ultra-Orthodox to avoid performing the country's mandatory military service.

 "The things we have been seeing over recent days remind us mainly of 'Wild West' movies or the Civil War in the States. Stop telling stories that we're looking at fringe groups; we're facing the most central currents of the ultra-Orthodox sector. The time has come to stop giving in to violence, and adopt real enforcement steps. So long as we don't stop funding law-breaking educational institutions, or shutting them down, we'll never end this chaos."

For Liberman and for hundreds of thousands of secular Jews, COVID-19 exemplifies the grim reality of their lives: the ultra-Orthodox don't serve in the army, they enjoy the fruits of inflated budgets, don't take a significant role in the labor market and, last but not least, don't even allow Israeli society to fight the COVID-19 plague.

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