THE ONLY EXISTENTIAL THREAT IS INTERNAL:

[U]TJ opened a Whatsapp group for political reporters this week - a first for the internet-shy party - to put out a campaign video that claimed that Reform Jewish communities think dogs are Jews.

Not to be outdone, Shas then issued campaign posters and offered interviews by party leaders in which they claimed that the Reform movement planned to convert tens of thousands of migrant workers and asylum seekers, granting them citizenship under Israel's Law of Return.

UTJ upped the ante on Thursday, with chairman MK Moshe Gafni doubling down on the dog video and connecting it to the asylum seekers.

"If I had made the dogs video, I would have made it even worse," he told an Army Radio interviewer who asked about the comparison of Reform Jews to dogs. "I would have filmed the Sudanese [asylum seekers] in south Tel Aviv explaining how the Reform are trying to convert them. You can't hide the truth. The Reform who conduct bar mitzvahs for their dogs are the ones comparing people to dogs."

The parties have taken every opportunity this week to raise the specter of mass-immigration from the third world that will allegedly result from Monday's ruling, of Israel losing its Jewish character amid runaway "assimilation" -- i.e., intermarriage -- and of a High Court committed, in the words of one prominent activist, to turning Israel from a "Jewish state" into a "state of many nations."

These Haredi reactions to Monday's ruling are fascinating not only for the lies they contain (more on that in a moment), but for the truths they carefully avoid.

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