Dear Aryeh,
I once wrote a column addressed personally to you, thinking that perhaps you would listen, that perhaps because it was written directly to you, you would read it with an open heart.
That was after October 7. The army needed soldiers, and I believed that if my words were not phrased with mockery or rage, you would find truth in them.
I wrote it as someone who lives in a community that has lost 11 of its sons in battle. I wrote it as the parent of two career soldiers, as the uncle of about 10 nephews who have served in Gaza and Lebanon. I wrote it as someone who has met so many wounded soldiers, young men who told me that even after losing a leg or an arm, they do not regret it and would go out to fight again, to defend our nation.
I wrote it after meeting mothers in the head injury ward, walking beside their children, who sat expressionless in wheelchairs.
I thought it could not be that your heart would be closed to the desperate plea of a huge public carrying the burden and no longer able to carry it alone. I could not believe that while Israelis went into battle with an emergency call-up order in hand, knowing they might not return, you would turn your gaze away.
There was a part of me that could not believe our outstretched hand for help would be met with disregard. You know, after all, that the reservists are collapsing. You know they are doing many months on the line. And you are a man with a heart, or so I wanted to believe. I did not think you would send us away empty-handed.
I did not think you would call for a general enlistment of the Haredi public, but I thought you would do something. Begin a process. Quietly encourage those who are not studying to enlist. Visit the Hashmonaim Brigade, the new Haredi combat framework in the IDF.
But you did not do that.
And not only did you not do that, as time passed, the shame disappeared too.
It is no longer just ignoring our call for help. Now you also go to visit deserters. You go to them in detention centers and turn them into heroes of the Haredi public.
Have you ever gone to visit wounded soldiers?
I have a request for you, Aryeh. Come with me to Sheba Medical Center. I promise no one will curse you and no one will taunt you. I guarantee that the visit will be quiet. I would be glad if you, too, would be quiet during the visit. And listen. Just listen.
Dor Ben Simhon
(Photo: IDF)
I want you to listen to the dozens and hundreds of young men there in rehabilitation, doing everything they can to walk again, to move their hand again like they once did, to speak again.
Aryeh, you sent them into battle, for God’s sake. You sat in the security cabinet that decided to send these children beyond the border. And you did it without having any idea what it means not to sleep an entire night because one of your sons is at war.
I read last week that you have three deserter grandsons. For some reason, it stunned me. I do not know why, but I had hoped there had been some progress over the years. That perhaps your sons did not serve in the army, but your young grandchildren would still understand that at this time, we truly need them.
And what drives us mad, Aryeh, what truly eats us up inside, is that you have lost the shame. You have no shame left. In the past, you lowered your heads. You were quiet, hoping we would not notice. Today, it is brazen. Today, it is shameless.
You tell us how difficult it is to be a yeshiva student who evades the draft, while we are licking our wounds, physically, and bandaging our bleeding children.
Last week, when a Telegram alert reported another fatality in Lebanon, I was with a father whose son was there. Aryeh, will you ever be able to truly identify with what a person goes through between the moment he hears about an incident in Lebanon and the moment he understands it did not involve his son’s unit?
Do you understand the emotional price of that tension?
How, for God’s sake, do you dare tell us how hard it is to be a yeshiva student, when the fighters at Beaufort ate combat rations for a month and slept in caves? What are you even talking about, Aryeh, when you try to convince us that the Torah world is being persecuted?
Who is persecuting them?
Because the soldiers are being hunted by explosive drones. Do you understand? While yeshiva students drink tea in peace, there are Israelis who look at the sky in fear and jump at every sound. They carry equipment weighing dozens of kilograms on their backs and walk tens of kilometers at night from the border, so that your grandchildren can sleep peacefully.
Very soon, the government will probably extend the mandatory service law. It will pass a law saying that every Israeli will serve for longer. You, Aryeh, will most likely vote in favor of that law.
You, whose grandchildren avoid military service, will vote and cause young men who did not have the privilege of being “Deri’s grandchildren” to remain in the army for four more months.
Think about what that means: There are soldiers who have fought in Gaza and Lebanon for most of their service. All the time in combat. All the time in danger. And now they are being told they will stay a few more months because there is no one to replace them.
But there is someone to replace them, Aryeh. Your grandchildren and their friends can replace them. They can join them.
(Photo: Jack Guez/AFP)
You know there is nothing fairer than that. You know there is nothing more necessary than that.
But instead of being what you were supposed to be, the bridge between Haredim and Israeli society, you are doing the opposite. You are investing all your experience and knowledge in passing laws that will pad the bank accounts of yeshiva scholars, at the expense of those who serve.
But here is what you apparently do not understand, Aryeh. There is too much anger and too much frustration in the face of this terrible injustice. The unfairness is simply overflowing.
We are burying our dead, and among you there are celebrations for some deserter who is described as an important yeshiva scholar, only for pictures of him in Thailand to appear afterward.
Understand this, Aryeh: In a world where everything has become normalized, this is the one thing that has stopped feeling normal to us. It simply has. This will not work for you anymore.
A week ago, while your deserter grandchildren were sleeping in their beds, four soldiers were in a tank deep inside Lebanon.
There was a soldier there from Kibbutz Beit Hashita. There was a soldier from the settlement of Adam in Benjamin. There was a soldier from Hod Hasharon and one from Herzliya. Almost every corner of the country together in one tank.
Almost, because there was no Haredi there.
Dor, Yoav, Naveh and Liav, may their memories be a blessing. Four Israelis who fought on every front. In countless incidents. And at one o’clock in the morning, deep inside Lebanon, they ascended in a storm to the heavens. They sacrificed their lives for this country.
For them too, Aryeh, we will fight so that this country becomes better.
And it will become better only when there is equality in bearing the burden.
And you should understand this: We do not intend to give up.
Shabbat shalom.