The Religious Question

In Israel, there is a subject that used to be spoken about only in whispers.
And that was a mistake. Because this is not a question of feelings, faith, or identity.
It is a question of justice and of the state’s ability to survive. And today it is more relevant than ever.

Right now, there is a large group of citizens in this country who, by law and through political arrangements:
do not serve in the military on a large scale,
do not participate in the labor market on a large scale,
receive steady funding from the state budget,
and at the same time exert direct influence over the decisions made here.

This is not a conspiracy theory. It is official reality.

While some citizens
serve, fight, wear themselves down, pay taxes, and keep the economy afloat,
others
are exempt from those obligations, but absolutely not exempt from receiving money and political power.

And I am talking about a long-standing Israeli reality in which ultra-Orthodox Jews enjoy a clear imbalance of privileges and rights compared with us, the secular citizens.
This is a distortion embedded at the level of the state itself.

One thing must be made absolutely clear.
This is not an argument about faith. Faith is every person’s private business.

The issue is that religious affiliation, which in practice also functions as a class affiliation,
is being used as a shield that grants exemption from basic civic duties,
while at the same time serving as a tool of pressure against the rest of society.

Israel’s middle class is the one paying for everything.
For the army. For welfare. For infrastructure. For the budget.
And at the same time it defends with its own life a system in which, for part of the public, participation in those very same obligations is not considered obligatory at all.

But even that is not the whole story.

When the state desperately needs help and unity, in one of the hardest periods in Israel’s history,
we call on them for solidarity, participation, and equality of burden,
and in return we get:
blocked roads,
violent protests,
attacks on passersby who simply happened to be in the wrong place,
harsher religious legislation,
the division of citizens into “proper Jews” and “improper Jews,”
and the appropriation of state resources for their own sector.

And all of this happens not in spite of the state, but under its protection.
Because coalition politics rewards extortion and grants excess privileges.

The problem is that such a model is not merely unjust.
It is unsustainable.

An army cannot survive if service is a duty only for some.
An economy cannot bear, indefinitely, a growing number of people who do not participate in it.
And demography only deepens that imbalance year after year.

A state in which obligations are not shared equally cannot endure properly.
This is not an opinion. It is a historical fact.

An equal society is not a war on religion.
If you want to believe, believe.
But the army, taxes, and the law must be shared by everyone.

Because otherwise this is not really a state.
It is a system of privileges and estates disguised as tradition.

And as long as we are afraid to call this problem by its name, it will only grow worse.
And we will keep paying the price, we, the “not real Israelis” and gentiles, as some of them see us.

And finally, a few of their own slogans. No interpretation. Just quotes:
“We will go to prison and not enlist,”
“We do not believe in the rule of the heretics,”
“Better to die Haredi than live secular,”
“The draft law is consent to genocide,”
“We will die and not enlist.”