The slap heard 'round the country

As old news goes, this certainly qualifies as first rate fish wrapping.  My only excuse for beating this particular dead horse is that when the topic was still somewhat fresh, I was so bat-sh*t angry about the event that I couldn't put together a coherent sentence on the subject. 

I'm referring, of course, to Justice Ministry attorney, Amnon De Hartog, having slapped a Member of Knesset (Yakov Cohen) after Cohen had said that the attorney was "more evil and terrible than the Nazis".

First of all, public discourse in Israel (and specifically in the Knesset) has always been shamefully full of obscenity, personal invective and ad hominem attacks.  In the UK and U.S., elected officials may despise one another, but they still refer to the subjects of their insults as "my esteemed colleague" or "the gentleman from Ohio"... although identifying someone in the latter manner might qualify as an insult all its own.  ;-)

Next, While many people made a big deal over the fact that MK Cohen is Haredi (ultra-orthodox), very little was mentioned in the media about the fact that Amnon De Hartog is also religious, albeit from the National Religious (Dati Leumi) camp.

Another thing not widely discussed in the media is the fact that Hartog has a truly unenviable job; divvying up government funding for educational institutions (not just haredi schools).  Much as the Haredim would like to say otherwise, Hartog's decisions to withhold funds from Haredi institutions seem to have been based on the fact that they (the institutions) don't adhere to government mandated curriculum/standards.  They simply don't teach what the government says they should teach... and they don't have exams and documentation required by the government body they expect to pay the bills. 

Hartog may not love Haredim, but if he is hanging his decisions on vetted policy... the Haredim should take their grievances to the Ministry of Education and not shoot (or curse) the messenger.  And likewise, if the Haredi institutions object to government criteria for receiving funds, they are under no obligation to meet them.  Just don't expect to receive a check at the end of the month.  Free will is a wonderful thing.

While MK Cohen may have been the 'injured party' in terms of being on the receiving end of the much-reported slap... I have zero tolerance for Jews who toss the 'N' (nazi) bomb at anyone with whom they disagree.  Yes, I feel that there should be zero tolerance for physical violence in the halls of government (as well as on the streets of this country), but there should also be some recognition that some speech is so incendiary as to be considered incitement to violence. 

My friend Ben Chorin put it best when he said "I think there should be a rule that any Jew who is called a Nazi by another Jew should have the right to slug the guy".

Taking a government employee to task over a real or imagined offense is one thing.  Calling someone whose father spent four years in Auschwitz, a nazi is quite another.  In a country where so many people are survivors, children of survivors or grandchildren of survivors, one can't reasonably trot out the 'how was I to know' defense.

Lastly, anyone who tries to turn this insult and resulting slap into a springboard for a discussion about government-funded Haredi education is being disingenuous.  Plain and simple, this was about the more immediate problem of the complete lack of civility in Israeli public discourse.

'At the back of the hill' has a nice dissection of the topic here.

[~gets down off of soapbox~]