Gen. Stern: Americans Don’t Understand Socialization in Israel

Knowing What We are Fighting for

{Read: “… Americans [Jews, presumably he meant Anglo citizens of Israel] … Do Not Truly Understand Israeli Society”}

There are too many quotes to bring from General Stern in this article.
Here are just a few of the more blatant;

“Asked who tried to attack him at the Western Wall, Stern replied: “I heard a lot of English that night. ”

“I am sure Americans do not understand a lot of things. They do not truly understand Israeli society. What reaches them is primarily headlines without much depth.”

“There are too many hesder students. In the past few years there has been a 20% rise the number of hesder students. This is inexplicable. It is not as though the Jewish people suddenly want to learn more Torah. These are people who come to the yeshiva even though they have no intention of becoming serious lifetime students of the Torah.”

“Making young men into better soldiers is not the role of hesder yeshivot… I think it is more important to teach them a vocation than to simply turn them into better soldiers.”

[Read: Gotta prevent Torah from taking over the IDF at all costs.]
How does Gerneral Stern know what these young’s lifetime intentions are or may become after that young man spends time in Yeshiva? MB

“I insist on breaking up the segregated companies and forcing hesder soldiers to serve with secular soldiers. Listen, there is a lot of talk among progressive rabbis about creating a dialogue between secular and religious. I am giving them an opportunity to do an entire year of secular-religious dialogue while serving together.

The Torah needs to be connected to real life. Do you think there is any interest in Jewish content if everyone is closed within his or her own little ghetto?”

[Read: Gotta break these Religious guys of Torah. Progressive Rabbis = Leftists, Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist]

Making young Religious men serve with Secular is fine for dialogue and might even bring the secular closer, but the downside is the possible reality of IDF Command policies regarding Hechsher, etc., i.e. making them eat the same food (presumably either not Kosher or unsuitable Hechsher and more), etc. is to effectively negate the benefit of the dialogue and bring it to swaying the Religious soldier away from Yiddishkiet. MB

In short General Stern, Americans [Jews, Anglo citizens of Israel] understand the socialization process in Israel very well. MB