Veteran Commentator Claims: The Ultra-Orthodox Are Not Jews

Veteran economic commentator Nehemia Strassler has issued quite a few statements against the ultra-Orthodox public over the years. This morning, in another article of his on the Haaretz website, he claims that the ultra-Orthodox are not Jews, but rather a cult. The background to Strassler's comments comes, as mentioned, following the ultra-Orthodox refusal to bear the burden of military service while fighters are falling in Gaza after hundreds of days of reserve duty.

Among other things, Strassler wrote that he was shocked to see that after the fall of three Givati fighters, the ultra-Orthodox continued to deal with the conscription law. According to him, this also happened after the fall of Staff Sergeant Alon Perkas who served 300 days of reserve duty: "They didn't care that he was a neuroscience student whose friends called him 'genius' and 'professor.' Imagine what tremendous benefit this prodigy would have brought to science and society, versus some yeshiva boy draft-dodger, who mumbles a few Talmudic verses, who is completely ignorant of worldly matters, who doesn't work, who doesn't produce, who doesn't serve, who contributes nothing."

Strassler continued and wrote: "It is nothing but that the ultra-Orthodox are not Jews. This is a cult with one purpose: arranging good lives for its members, so they can enjoy all the rights without bearing the obligations. After all, Judaism is mutual responsibility that was built over thousands of years, and they don't take part in it. If they were Jews, they would have left the yeshivas as one man on the morning of October 7th and enlisted in the IDF to help stop the enemy that wanted to destroy us."

At the end of his remarks, Strassler wrote: "If they were Jews, they would have listened to the ultra-Orthodox rabbi David Leibel, who said that dodging the IDF is contrary to Torah opinion. The problem is that after he said these things he was attacked at his home several times and beaten severely, until he was forced to leave Bnei Brak."