Violence, hate but also buses on Shabbat
ISRAEL BY ANSHEL PFEFFER
V THE PAST year in Israel will always be remembered as the year of political deadlock, two inconclusive elections, two elected parliaments which legislated only for their own dissolution and a prime minister who hung on in office despite a string of criminal charges. But while the unending Netanyahu saga overshadowed everything else, there were other things that happening as well in 2019.
Regional conflicts were not suspended by political deadlock. The shadow war between Israel and Iran in Syria and Lebanon intensified, with new attempts by Iran’s revolutionary guards and Hezbollah to launch attacks on Israel using missiles and drones. Israeli intelligence detected these and the IDF responded with air-strikes, not only in Syria and Lebanon but as far afield as Iraq. As the year drew to a close, Iran was still entrenched in Syria and concern was growing in Israel of more ambitious attacks being planned.
Gaza remained volatile too, though one significant change to previous years was that most of the projectiles — both in the sporadic fire and in the short, sharp escalations that occured every few months — were launched by Islamic Jihad. Hamas increasingly assumed the role of a responsible grown-up, negotiating a long-term truce with Israel through the Egyptians. But that truce remains elusive at the year’s end, with both sides incapable of overcoming domestic political obstacles.
Within Israel there was turmoil when an off-duty police officer shot and killed a teenager from the Ethiopian-Israeli community and violent protest against racism and “over-policing” broke out across the country.
It was a reminder to Israelis that the emigration of the Beita Yisrael, once a source of so much pride for Israelis and for Jews around the world, had resulted in numerous long-term social problems which will continue simmering for decades.
Another long-term source of contention was the role of religion in the state arose, and not just in the political sphere where it was particularly prevalent. One development in this regard was the inauguration of public bus routes on Shabbat in Tel Aviv and its suburbs — for the first time since Israel’s establishment.
The local authorities operating and subsidising the buses probably would not have been able to do so if a regular government with full powers and objecting Strictly Orthodox minis
Eurovision Song Contest gave Israelis a brief illusion of normality
ters had been in place. So the political paralysis has its uses as well.
Another key development in public transport was the electrification of the high-speed railway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, a 20-year project finally completed in December. It finally allowed travel in half an hour between Israel’s two main cities for the first time.
And if that was not enough to give Israelis a brief illusion of normality, there was the Eurovision Song Contest in Tel Aviv this year. Normal, that is, if you call it normal when Icelandic rockers prance onstage in sadomasochistic get-ups and then wave Palestinian flags as the points are awarded.
EUROPE & THE US BY MICHAEL DAVENTRY
THERE WAS shock this year in Germany at one of the worst antisemitic incidents seen in the country since the Second World War.
Yom Kippur was the date picked by lone gunman Stephan Balliet to take his homemade rifle to a synagogue in the town Halle. The 27-year-old killed two members of the public but failed to break down the shul’s bulky wooden door. Had he made it in, he would have found dozens of congregants praying.
In the United States, a congregant saved her rabbi’s life when she instinctively threw herself in front of a gunman who burst into her synagogue in San Diego during a service on the final day of Pesach. Lori Gilbert Kaye died in the attack while the rabbi, Yisroel Goldstein, lost fingers from his right hand. The suspect, 19-year-old John Timothy Earnest, goes on trial next year.
The year ended on another dark note in the United States after a couple suspected of being supporters of the extremist Black Hebrew Israelites burst into a New Jersey kosher store, killing three people, two of them Jewish.
Donald Trump’s White House announced measures to make Jewish students a protected class after a spate of antisemitic incidents on university campuses, while a measles outbreak meant Charedi families in Brooklyn were told they could not attend synagogue or take their children to school until they were all vaccinated.
Elsewhere in Europe, desecrating cemeteries was a grim theme. Dozens of Jewish headstones were spray-painted with swastikas in Denmark, Poland and Slovakia. France, home to Europe’s largest Jewish population, was a hotspot, particularly the northeastern Alsace region. It came as the French Interior Ministry confirmed a 74 per cent rise in antisemitic incidents.
But in future we may look back at France as the place where the fightback began: in February, thousands of people attended a solidarity rally in Paris under the slogan Ça Suffit (“That’s Enough”) and the French authorities responded first by adopting the IHRA definition of antisemitism, then by creating a dedicated government department to combat hate crimes.
2019 saw the death of Jacques Chirac died, remembered by Jews for being the first French president to acknowledge his country collaborated in Nazi crimes.
In Belgium, gunman Mehdi Nemmouche was finally jailed for life for his role in the 2014 Brussels Jewish Museum shooting and there was anger at the Flemish town of Aalst, where the famous street carnival HAD a float depicting big-nosed Jews sitting with rats and bags of money; the town chose to renounce its UN heritage status rather than change the carnival.
But Belgium now also has a Jewish prime minister — Sophie Wilmès, the first woman in the role — while Ukraine’s Jewish premier was joined by a Jewish president: the comedian Volodymyr Zelensky, who resoundingly won April’s presidential election.
And there were mixed fortunes for political extremists: Spain’s two elections produced a surge for the Vox party to make it Europe’s largest far-right movement but a political scandal saw Austria’s far-right fall out of government and haemorrhage voter support in the contest that followed.
The gunman failed to break the shul’s bulky wooden door