Daily Archives: 27 June 2024

Drafting Haredim

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Israel’s Supreme Court has ruled, unanimously, that the nation must begin drafting its ultra-Orthodox Jewish men—haredim—into its military.

A panel of nine judges unanimously ruled that there is no legal basis for exempting ultra-Orthodox religious scholars after a series of laws and government decisions carving out service exemptions were either struck down by the court or expired.

And

The ruling also blocks government funding for religious students without a valid military exemption, a decision that experts say could affect tens of thousands of current religious students and tens of millions of dollars in funding, raising the political stakes for the two ultra-Orthodox political parties upon which Netanyahu’s thin parliamentary coalition rests.

My question here isn’t concerned with the stability of the current Israeli government. I wonder, instead, whether this Court ruling will tip the balance in the Knesset toward passing legislation reforming the Israeli Supreme Court and elevating an Israeli concept of Parliamentary superiority, making the Knesset the final authority on what constitutes legitimate Israeli law.

Opposing that, with this ruling purporting to push for more equal treatment of all Israeli Jews (Israel’s Druze minority apparently remain exempt from the draft in this ruling), I wonder if popular opposition to reforming the Court and elevating the Knesset will grow even stronger.

How Many?

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The FBI says it has identified a characteristic common to sites of active shooter shootings.

…open spaces—which include roads, neighborhoods, parks, and outdoor venues—are the places where victims are most likely to be targeted.

There’s one other characteristic, not fully addressed in the FBI’s report, that’s well worth consideration. How many of those locations were defenseless, whether because laws barred firearms from the areas or because the relevant business owner—mall owner or theater owner, for instance—lawfully posted his locale as barring firearms? The report did address this, but only tangentially, with this single remark, captioning a single chart:

Of the 48 incidents in 2023, four involved civilian intervention where a civilian intervened or attempted to intervene, resulting in two civilian casualties.

Across all 48 of the 2023 active shooter events, there were 105 killed, and 139 injured. Subtract off the two casualties where civilians responded in the time frame before the cops could arrive—naively allocating the two to one death and one injury—and that works out to an average of 2-3 deaths per defenseless event and 3-4 injuries per defenseless event.

Clearly armed patrons already on scene reduced the casualty rate by filling the gap between the onset of the event and the arrival of the second first responders. But the wannabe gun controllers would rather sacrifice the Left’s “if it saves one life” mantra in favor of their obsession with disarming all of us.

 

The FBI’s report can be read here.