A sign carried at the Haredi anti-draft demonstration that blocked Highway 4 yesterday was a gut-punch. It hurt both emotionally and physically.
"It was better to die as a Jew in the Holocaust than to spiritually die in IDF camps" read the sign carried aloft by the Haredi protesters who also drove the point home by wearing yellow stars meant to evoke the echoes of the Holocaust.
The protesters wore yellow stars that read Haredi instead of Jude, meant to evoke echoes of the Holocaust
(Photo: Mickey Schmidt)
My father was a Holocaust survivor. After the war and time spent in a DP camp in Italy he went to the United States. He really wanted to come to Israel, but he did not want to be separated from his brother and sister who also managed to survive the Nazis.
My father died 18 years ago. He did not live to see his oldest grandson don an IDF uniform and pledge to "maintain allegiance to the State of Israel, its laws, and its authorities, to unconditionally accept upon myself the discipline of the Israel Defense Forces, to obey all the orders and instructions given by authorized commanders, and to devote all my energy, and even sacrifice my life, for the protection of the homeland and the liberty of Israel.”
He would have been so proud to see my son, and three years later my younger son, taking on the mantle of protecting their fellow Jews and the Jewish homeland, something he could have only dreamed of as a young man being persecuted by the Nazis.
He also did not live to see his oldest grandson fall in the war in Gaza. Though I am certain that he knows and that they have hooked up in the afterlife.
My father, Mordechai Spiegel (right), would have been so proud to see his grandson don an IDF uniform to protect his people and his country
(Photo: Family album)
My son Amichai loved his people and this land, and rushed back from his post-army trip after October 7 to join the reserves for the first time. He was killed two months later by a bomb that exploded in the hidden opening of a tunnel shaft in northern Gaza.
I can only imagine what they are thinking now when they see what is happening here to the country that they both loved so much.
I wonder myself, and it has caused me a great deal of pain and anxiety over the last few years.
But yesterday was a breaking point for me: that sign first took my breath away (and not in a good way) and caused me to see not yellow, but red.
Because in just under 20 words it managed to trample on the memory of both my Holocaust survivor father and my fallen soldier son.
I wish that I could say that the young men wearing almost identical black suits and white shirts did not understand what the sign said, but the phrase also appeared there in Hebrew, accompanied by photos of haredi Jews being killed by the Nazis. The meaning was perfectly clear.
Amichai did not lose his 'spirituality' in the IDF
(Photo: Amit Shapira)
My father could only have dreamed of being able to defend himself against the Nazis, and my son did not lose his "spirituality" during his time in the IDF – he in fact was an inspiration to his fellow soldiers, both religious and secular, who saw his commitment to daily prayer and kashrut, and his desire to learn about people who were different from him (we learned about much of this after his death from those fellow soldiers who came to the shiva and continue to accompany us).
I want to tell these misguided protesters they are wrong, I want to tell them about my father and my son, and I want to tell them how much emotional and physical pain that they have caused me. But they won't hear me.
Amichai with his family on the day he returned home from his post-army trip to join the reserves after Oct. 7, 2023
And the truth is that it is not even the young men and their white bearded teachers who blocked the road that need to hear and understand the pain that they have caused me both with their attitude and their fight to not serve. It is their religious and political leaders. Because change in the haredi community has to come from the top down. And they don't want to change. They don't have to change, since our political leaders continue to throw money at them and pass legislation that will allow them to continue to evade any kind of service to our country.
Meanwhile, the young men holding that sign, and the persons or organizations that paid to have them printed up should be arrested for minimizing the Holocaust under the Denial of Holocaust (Prohibition) Law, 5746-1986, which was passed by the Knesset on July 8, 1986 and calls for the imprisonment of any person who "publishes any statement denying or diminishing the proportions of the acts committed" by the Nazis.
These men have the opportunity to fulfil the Biblical commandment of a Milchemet Mitzvah, a necessary and obligatory war, but they are too busy protesting to notice.
Marcy Oster is a ynet Global editor
First published: 15:08, 08.13.26