What are those forces beneath the surface that threaten to undermine the country from the inside out?

Let’s not delude ourselves by the constant complaints. The State of Israel today is in good shape by all the parameters that generally define a flourishing nation. It has a strong army, baruch Hashem, and its economy is burgeoning. Its high-tech industry is renowned, and it is currently enjoying solid diplomatic relations with many nations around the globe. Prime Minister Netanyahu can rightfully boast a decade of success.

But threats are lurking beneath the sun-kissed surface. Not the threats we all know about, from Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas. Even kites and balloons are dangerous these days. Of course, these are all serious concerns, and the government is doing its best to ward off these dangers. But none of these dangers threaten the essence of the Jewish state as do the more insidious threats that lurk within — the destructive fault lines that threaten the heart and soul of the country.

Where are these fault lines? Well, we can start with the celebrity wedding we discussed last week. Hailed as the wedding of the century, it joined a popular Israeli-Arab TV news anchorwoman, Lucy Aharish, who is a Muslim, in wedlock with a Jewish Israeli TV and film actor, Tzachi Halevi. Their private business, of course — just two adults making their own decision to break the taboo against marriage between a Jew and a non-Jew. “Love conquers all” was the slogan of the day for all those who cheered the couple on. Yet those who expressed dismay over the high-profile intermarriage were met with a barrage of put-downs. How racist, how hopelessly behind the times, how bigoted! (Those were among the milder epithets. And not only were those who expressed their objection to the celebrity marriage subjected to this barrage, but in some elite Israeli schools, the students were encouraged to write cards and letters of congratulation to the famous newlyweds.)

It’s a little baffling, but this is the same society that bemoans the plague of intermarriage in America. Why, then, is a wedding between an Israeli-Jew and an Israeli-Arab seen as nothing to get bent out of shape about? Perhaps, because they are both Israelis. Tzachi Halevi doesn’t become any less Israeli by marrying Lucy Aharish, and in the hearts and minds of a large sector of Israeli society, retaining one’s Israeli identity, as opposed to remaining part of the Jewish People, is the greater value.

Another fault line (although I would differentiate between those who want to undermine Israel’s existence as a political entity and those who’ve legitimized trends that would wreak havoc on the soul of the Jewish People) was revealed when Israel’s Supreme Court overruled an Interior Ministry ban against Palestinian-American student Lara Alqasem, who served for two years as president of her local chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, a militant, pro-BDS group. The court accepted the argument of Alqasem’s defense attorney that since she hadn’t been involved in anti-Israel activity for the past year, she had the right to study for her master’s degree at Hebrew University and be treated like any other student. The court’s decision also took into consideration the University’s argument that if the defendant were to be deported, other foreign students would be discouraged from applying to the school, and Israel’s image would suffer. In the eyes of the court, these flimsy assertions trump Israel’s right to protect itself. This ruling opens the gates to Israel’s enemies, allowing hostile elements to take advantage of Israel’s undiscriminating hospitality in order to undermine the state from within. Government funding will finance the education of a swelling stream of anti-Israel students, as they fill their arsenals with ammunition to be used against the very country that nurtured them.

From there, the fault line of anti-Jewish liberalism in Israel branches out, showing up in numerous places — including the so-called human rights organization B’Tselem, whose director Hagai El-Ad recently unfurled a scroll of lies and twisted accusations against the IDF before the UN Security Council, depicting them as marauders and executioners without trial of innocent men, women, and children. Of course, all that libel quickly found its way to media outlets around the world, despite the indignant denials of Israel’s ambassador to the UN. Although B’Tselem purports to fight against injustice and abuse by the IDF in Judea and Samaria, many of its accusations are the products of lurid imagination — all in the service of the organization’s true goal, which is to overturn the foundations of their country as a Jewish state. While B’Tselem is still regarded as a fringe group, it has its position of influence, helped along by an Israeli media whose most powerful pundits lean toward the idea that Israel ought to be defined not as the Jewish homeland, but as a political entity like any other state, comprising all the people dwelling within its borders regardless of national origin.

Just Like Chaimke In honor of the yahrtzeit this week of the Chazon Ish ztz”l, I will add a story gleaned from the interviews I did as a young writer selected to gather material for Pe’er HaDor, a biography of the Chazon Ish, by a committee of his talmidim.

I heard this story directly from the Chazon Ish’s sister, who was the wife of the Steipler Gaon, Rav Yaakov Yisrael Kanievsky, as well as from Rav Moshe Turk, who was one of the Chazon Ish’s close confidants.

A young woman from a chareidi family in Jerusalem was planning to marry a non-Jewish Greek. Desperate to dissuade her, her parents took her to the Chazon Ish, who spoke to the young woman and cautioned her that her suitor would likely discard her before long. But she was too infatuated to listen, and she left Eretz Yisrael together with her fianc?.

A few years later, she was back, with two young children in tow, a boy and a girl. The gadol’s prediction had proven correct — her Greek husband had grown tired of her and sent her away, but her parents wanted nothing to do with her. Bitter and broken, she went to the Chazon Ish to beg for help. The Chazon Ish took her in and summoned Rav Moshe Turk. “We have here two children abandoned by their father, a Greek non-Jew,” he explained. “They are in need of foster homes.”

Seeing the look on Rav Turk’s face, the Chazon Ish added, “We are talking about two completely kosher, Jewish children.”

He asked Rav Turk to find a suitable foster home for the little girl. As for the little boy, he asked his sister, the Steipler’s rebbetzin, to take him in. A problem soon came up, though, as the Rebbetzin related to me years later. The little boy was wetting his bed, and since their home was very small, her husband’s learning space also served as the boy’s bedroom. Obviously, the bed-wetting was a disruption to the Steipler’s learning, and of course, his learning was the Rebbetzin’s top priority. In other words, she felt that her brother ought to find another place for the child to live.

The Chazon Ish’s reply was short and to the point. “And if your Chaimke were a bed-wetter, what would you do?”

“The hint was clear,” the Rebbetzin told me. “The boy was to be treated as one of my own.” And he stayed.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 732)