Sheikh Mohammad Hussein was appointed Mufti of Jerusalem by Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas in 2006. (Photo: Matthew Bell)

Israelis are used to hearing hateful speech from some of their neighbors. On Friday, Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei referred to the Jewish State as a “cancerous tumor.” But a recent speech from another Muslim leader – much closer to the Israeli heartland – has drawn criticism from the highest levels of the Israeli government.

The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem is the top Muslim official for the Islamic holy sites in Jerusalem and the Palestinian areas. That includes the Al-Aqsa mosque, Islam’s third-holiest place. The current mufti was appointed by the president of the Palestinian National Authority, which is dominated by the Fatah party. Last month, Sheikh Mohammad Hussein spoke at a Fatah anniversary ceremony. And he quoted from a well-known hadith, or saying attributed to the Prophet Mohammad.

“The hour will not come until you fight the Jews,” Hussein said into the microphone. “The Jews will hide behind rocks and trees. And the rocks and trees will call out, ‘oh Muslim, servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me. Come and kill him!’”

“The hour” is a reference to the end of days.

So, what was the mufti trying to say exactly, by citing this particular hadith at a political meeting right now? I met with Sheikh Hussein at his home in Jerusalem and asked him to explain.

“The hadith, the statements by prophet Mohammad that I quoted, was a statement that talked about the after-life,” Hussein said. “It was not talking about the practical relationship between Muslims and Jews.”
Hussein said there was nothing wrong with using the quote and he doesn’t apologize for it.

But the Israeli government is taking offense. The mufti is said to be the subject of an investigation and he could be charged with incitement. Government spokesman Mark Regev said the Palestinian Authority should have condemned the speech.

“I would argue that the Palestinian leadership has both a legal and moral obligation to condemn this sort of hate talk,” Regev said in an interview. “If they say they want peace, they shouldn’t tolerate this sort of language.”
“In the signed agreements between Israelis and Palestinians,” Regev said the Palestinian Authority under President Mahmoud Abbas has “a legal obligation to prevent this.”

Palestinian Media Watch, a watchdog group based in Jerusalem, first called attention to the Sheikh Hussein’s speech. Director, Itamar Marcus pointed out that the hadith quoted by the mufti of Jerusalem is the same one found in the charter of Hamas, the Islamic militant group devoted to Israel’s destruction. Marcus says the mufti’s speech is just part of a growing problem of Palestinian incitement against Jews and Israel.

“The mufti’s call for violence is an isolated call from the mufti, but it’s not an isolated call from the Palestinian Authority,” Marcus said during an interview in his office.

Marcus showed me a series of videos on his group’s website. He said they were recorded from the Palestinian Authority’s official TV channel. And they add up, Marcus believes, to a media environment that aims to stoke hatred of Israelis and Jews, and to glorify violence.

Another Israeli who has spent a lot of time studying statements from Palestinians is Matti Steinberg. He worked for more than 30 years with the Shin Bet, Israel’s intelligence agency. He’s also an expert on Islamic fundamentalism.
Steinberg said he probably knows the hadith quoted by the mufti of Jerusalem by heart. It has been used by Islamists going back to the early of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1920s. The fact that the mufti has quoted the hadith again, Steinberg said, is worrisome and dangerous. But it is not surprising.

Steinberg said, the West Bank leadership is opposed to violence. But in the current climate, the Palestinian Authority is utterly stuck. Fatah leaders have been trying to seel the Palestinian public on the idea of a negotiated two-state solution with Israel since the early 1990s. But the peace process is going nowhere.

“It is a sign [of] the total disappointment and frustration of a real political process,” Steinberg said in an interview at his home. “There is a world of difference between, let us say, innate extremism and radicalization, which is caused by the failure of a pragmatic political settlement.”

Steinberg said there is another reason to worry. When pragmatism fails, he said, it becomes much easier for extremists to frame the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in religious terms. And that goes for either side, he added. The problem is, in a religious conflict, there’s no room for political compromise.

Caution: Video contains strong anti-Semitic language.

But there is one settlement very much in the political spotlight right now. It’s called Migron.

About 50 Jewish Israeli families – 300 or so people in all – live at Migron. It’s mostly a cluster of mobile homes on a treeless hilltop outside the Palestinian city of Ramallah.

Migron is the largest of the so-called illegal outposts scattered throughout the West Bank. But in the case of Israeli settlements, illegal doesn’t necessarily mean unsanctioned. Migron spokesman Itai Chemo said there is bitter irony to the situation.

“There’s an electricity poll,” Chemo pointed out to me during a recent visit to Migron. “I cannot bring it on my own, it’s the country that put it over here, the state.”

People have lived at Migron for 10 years, Chemo added. “The houses that you see here were brought in by the ministry of housing. The ministry of defense built the roads and all the infrastructure.” As what about water, I asked? “Same thing,” Chemo said.

But thanks to a Supreme Court decision that came down in August last year, the future of Migron is uncertain. The judges ruled that Migron was built illegally on private Palestinian land. And they ordered the government to evict the residents and demolish their homes by the end of March.

Itai Chemo called the demolition order, “the most horrific thing that a country can do to its people.”

But there is another group of people just down the hill from Migron who not happy with the situation either. They are the residents of the Palestinian village of Burka.

Standing next to an old cemetery filled with stones bearing inscriptions in Arabic, a village native who did not want to give his name said, “Do they have a cemetery over there? We belong. This is our proof that this land is ours.”

The Palestinian man said Migron should never have been built. He said the settlers living there now should be evicted according to Israel’s own rule of law.

“What gives them the right to take the land? ‘God gave us this, God said in the Bible that this is our land.’ What about us?”

“It’s apartheid,” he said. That’s all it is. We’re looked upon as nothing, we don’t belong here, we’re a nuisance.”

Palestinians seriously doubt Migron will ever be evacuated. That is despite the fact that Israel’s Defense Minister, Ehud Barak has said “it’s out of the question” for settlers to remain on private Palestinian land.

There is also a precedent for demolishing illegal buildings at Migron. It happened last September. Settlers tussled with Israeli police as bulldozers knocked down two houses. It was the kind of scene that pro-settler politicians say cannot be repeated, regardless of the Supreme Court decision.

Vice premier Silvan Shalom recently paid a visit to Migron and weighed in on the issue.

“We need to find a noble compromise,” Shalom said.

What does that mean? It appears the Israeli government is going to build the residents of Migron new homes. The new houses will be put up on another West Bank hilltop, about a mile from where they live right now. It is not clear how long this would take, or what would happen to the existing buildings at Migron itself.

But Peace Now, an Israeli organization that opposes the settlements, says the deal would essentially reward settlers for breaking the law.

“The deals that they are trying to make are absurd,” said Etai Mizrav of Peace Now. “We already passed the debating part and we’re now in the part when, after so many years that this injustice is taking place, the Supreme Court said that Migron should not be where it is right now.”

The prime minister’s spokesman, Mark Regev said he agrees with that. The law is clear and the Supreme Court has spoken, he said. Migron has to be evacuated by the end of March.

But Regev also said that finding a compromise with the settlers there is about avoiding violence.

“We are seeking a negotiated solution involving a voluntary relocation,” Regev said. “But if that’s not possible. I have to be clear: the Supreme Court’s decisions will be implemented.”

That would still leave about 100 illegal West Bank outposts in legal limbo. But the Israeli government is moving to resolve the legal question of the outposts. It has just put together a committee of legal experts to look at ways of legalizing the illegal outposts once and for all.

“I love him, from the first sight,” Lana said with a shy giggle. “We fall in love, that’s what happened.”

Two days later, they were engaged.

Today, life is good for Lana and Taiseer in so many ways. They are married with two kids, a 4-year-old boy named Adnan and 3-year-old girl, Yosra. Taiseer is working on his doctoral thesis in anthropology and he is teaching classes. They live in a nice apartment in a nice neighborhood in Akko.

But that could all change, because of a recent Israeli Supreme Court decision. It ruled that most Palestinians – and this would include Lana Khatib – who are married to Israelis would not be eligible for Israeli citizenship.

Taiseer said the ruling puts Lana in danger of being deported, and that is no way for a democracy to treat its citizens.

“It’s not political, it’s human,” Khatib said, clearly frustrated with the new reality his family is facing. “The first victims of this will be my children, not me and not Lana. We are adults. We can survive it. Where’s the security of these two children?”

Every year for the last six years, Lana said she has applied for – and received – temporary permission to live in her husband’s hometown of Akko. But she would like to become a full-fledged Israeli citizen.

The Khatib family has lived together in Akko, Israel since 2005. The mother, Lana is facing the possibility of losing her residency. (Photo: Fouad Abu Ghosh)

As a Palestinian from the West Bank living in Israel on a temporary residency permit, Lana is ineligible for national health insurance. She cannot get a driver’s license. She cannot work legally.

The Supreme Court decision appears to have closed the door on that possibility for Lana Khatib and for thousands of other Palestinians like her, who are married to Arab Israeli citizens. The rule applies to Palestinian women under the age of 26 and men under 36. The reason most often cited for the decision is national security. But Taiseer Khatib said he doesn’t buy it anymore.

“You want security? I want security too. So, please go and check every case for its own,” Khatib said.

“At the beginning, they said security. But it’s mainly, the reason is just simple, it’s about the Jewish state and having a pure Jewish state. This is what they want.”

Israeli writer Yossi Klein Halevi of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem told me, “this was one of those moments when I was really grateful not to have to be among those making the decision, because it’s simply unbearable.”

But Halevi added that the citizenship law puts two legitimate goals on a collision course. On the one hand, there is the desire for Israel to protect equal treatment for all its citizens, including Arabs – who make up 20 percent of the population. On the other hand, there is the fundamental Zionist mission to provide a safe haven for any Jew in the world.

“There is a moral responsibility [for Israeli] political and legal decision makers to make sure that there is a viable Jewish majority in this country,” Halevi said.

“Israel is the only place in the world where Jews actually get preferential treatment and I think that based on history and based on possible future need, there is a moral imperative to preserving Israel as a place that can grant preferential treatment to Jewish refugees.”

A panel of Supreme Court judges was split on this decision six-to-five. Typically, the human rights community in Israel has viewed the high court as a bastion of democratic values. But Hagai El-Ad – who directs the Association for Civil Rights in Israel – says the ruling amounts to a disaster for Israeli democracy.

“This is probably the most extreme piece of racist legislation that the Knesset has passed and now, it has the seal of approval from the highest court in the land,” El-Ad said in an interview with The World.

It is not clear how the new ruling will play out. Nor is it clear how many thousands of people would be affected. One expert on immigration issues in Israel, who asked not to be named, told me that government agencies have wildly different estimates of how many Palestinians are married to Arab Israelis. A statistic that is often cited, however, puts the number of Palestinians who have gained citizenship in Israel since the 1990s at more than 100,000.

As for the Khatib family in Akko, Lana said she has applied for another one-year residency permit. And she expects to get an answer from the government in the next couple of weeks.

Taiseer said they have been getting a lot of support from friends and colleagues. One Jewish Israeli family, he said, has even offered to help hide Khatib’s family from the authorities by letting them move into their home.

Here is a photo I took of several wall posters in an Ultra-Orthodox neighborhood accusing the Israeli government of trying to wipe out Judaism.

The Haredim – as Israelis refer to the Ultra-Orthodox – only make up about 10 percent of the population. But it is one of the fastest-growing segments of society, due in large part to high birth rates.

There are a whole host of issues at stake, from military service to work force participation to gender segregation in public places.

The Jerusalem neighborhood of Mea Shearim is an Ultra-Orthodox stronghold. It’s a place where the Israeli police tend to keep a low profile. An example of why came on Sunday.

As uniformed police officers moved into the neighborhood to arrest several suspects on tax evasion charges, dozens of men dressed in the traditional Ultra-Orthodox style – long black coats, big beards and black hats – confronted the officers in the street. Scuffles broke out when Haredi tried to block traffic to protest the arrests.

Down the street, Shmuel Yisrael runs a sewing machine repair shop. Yisrael is an observant Jew himself. But he resents the way the Haredim live in isolation from the mainstream.

“It’s not good,” Yisrael said. “They don’t pay taxes, they don’t serve in the army and they don’t contribute.”

It all goes back to a deal made by Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion. The Ultra-Orthodox were given exemptions from military service and generous government subsidies so they could spend long hours in prayer and religious study.

This arrangement has endured. And it’s a win-win, said a 28-year-old Haredi man waiting at a bus stop. He gave his name as Yehuda and said he studied in a yeshiva nearby.

“The way we feel is that, when we learn and we study Torah all day, that’s a big merit for the survival of the Jews,” he said. “We feel that as long as there are people fighting in the army and there are people learning, they complement each other.”

As Yehuda sees it, the Haredim are being pressured by the media, by the government and by secular Israelis to make an unacceptable compromise.

“We will not give up on our standards of living a life of Torah,” he said.

“We’re religious and we’re completely committed to that. We’re not going to give up on those standards just because other people think we shouldn’t be religious.”

Around the corner from the bus stop, there was a much more extreme view from one segment of the Haredi community on display. It was a wall poster with names of several rabbis on it that accused the “evil government” of anti-Semitism. It said the authorities are trying to “destroy Haredi Judaism” by conducting a “brutal campaign of arrests” that harken back to the “darkest days of the Soviet Union.”

The poster is an example of what is wrong in the Ultra-Orthodox community, according to 52-year-old Yehuda Meshi-Zahav. He is a former Haredi extremist himself.

In the 1970s and 80s, Meshi-Zahav organized demonstrations against the Israeli authorities. He was an ardent anti-Zionist who rejected the idea of compromising with the Israeli government or making connections to the non-Haredi world.

But since the early 1990s, Meshi-Zahav has been very much engaged with the mainstream. He runs a highly-regarded volunteer organization of emergency medical responders called ZAKA. Many of the volunteers come from the Haredi community.

“Most of the Ultra-Orthodox community is completely sane,” Meshi-Zahav said in an interview at his Jerusalem office. “These people recognize that Israel is made up of different sectors that all belong here. But there are still extremists. They have too much influence on the community.”

Meshi-Zahav said the leaders of the Haredi community need to speak out against Ultra-Orthodox extremism. There have been incidents such as throwing rocks at police, spitting on school girls for not dressing modestly, or attacking businesses for not being religiously observant enough. Meshi-Zahav said these are the kinds of actions that more Haredi leaders need to denounce publicly.

In general, Meshi-Zahav and others like him want to lower the walls that divide the Haredim from the outside world. They want more people from the Ultra-Orthodox community to enter the work force, to serve in the army, and, more broadly, serve the nation of Israel.

But for some Ultra-Orthodox Jews, these views amount to heresy.

Yoelish Krauss is a 39-year-old Haredi activist. He lives in a two-room apartment in the Mea Shearim neighborhood with his wife and their 13 children. Krauss used to run a chicken slaughterhouse in the area until the Israeli police shut it down, accusing him of tax evasion and refusing inspections.

Krauss said he was not surprised to hear Meshi-Zahav’s call for the Haredim to build more connections with mainstream Israeli society. “He runs an international organization,” Krause said. “Of course he would say such things.”

“If you ask me,” Krauss said, “the Haredim need to be more isolated from the rest of society. That’s how we can preserve our way of life.”

Krauss said engaging with the non-Haredi world is a slippery slope. And it would lead to one thing: the Ultra-Orthodox would inevitably become secular. “There’s no way around it,” he said.

A hacker claiming to be from Saudi Arabia brought down several high-profile websites.

They included the sites of the Tel Aviv stock exchange, Israel’s national airline El Al and three Israeli banks.

The immediate damage was limited. Stock trading was not affected. And neither was air travel.

In essence, the incident adds up to politically-inspired acts of digital vandalism. “These are not particularly sophisticated attacks,” said Benji Portnoy, an information security specialist with the company Symantec.

“They’re actually the kind of attacks that can be done pretty easily. No actual damage to the websites that were hacked.”

Even so, Israeli IT experts said on Monday there is reason to worry.

In the past couple of weeks, Israel has been the target in a series of highly publicized cyber attacks carried out by people claiming to be pro-Palestinian activists. At least one – an apparent Saudi hacker going by the name of OxOmar – published credit card information for thousands of Israelis online.

Monday morning, OxOmar reportedly tipped off Israeli news organizations that he was part of an anti-Israel hacker network that was planning to bring down the websites of Israel’s stock exchange and national airline.

Yaakov Lappin, who writes about cyber crime for the Jerusalem Post, said it’s impossible to verify the identity of OxOmar. But the hacker – and others like him – does seem to be having some success.

“We’ve seen examples of these kinds of networks rising up before in this loosely defined “Anonymous” hacking network,” Lappin said. “So nothing that’s taking place now is new. The only development here that’s new is that it’s being directed in a semi-organized way against Israel.”

Lappin said Israel’s government agencies are rather advanced in the ways of cyber security. But the private sector, he said, has some catching up to do. In the meantime, Lappin believes it’s likely this hacker war will continue to escalate. He said he’s been in touch with a number of Israeli hackers, who are planning retaliation.

“They say that they plan on publishing credit cards that were hacked from Saudi websites, Saudi shopping websites and release information about how to break into bank accounts,” Lappin said. “And they’re going to do a tit-for-tat campaign. Every time that Israel’s attacked, they say they’re going tor respond in kind.”

For its part, the Islamist group Hamas which controls the Gaza strip and refuses to recognize Israel has welcomed the recent spate of cyber attacks against the Jewish state. Hamas is calling on Arab youth to join the online campaign against Israel.

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By age 17 though, no one was telling Charka how to draw. He started getting his stuff published in a youth magazine. And he hasn’t stopped.

Charka lives in a Jewish settlement called Zufim. It’s a neighborhood of suburban-style single family homes that sits on a hilltop above the Palestinian city of Qalqilya. Charka reckoned he’s Israel’s only syndicated political cartoonist who is also a settler.

“I really felt in love with that area,” he said. “The olive trees, the rocks, the hills, the everything. The feeling like living in the Bible somehow.”

Charka’s cartoons are full of Biblical references and scenes from Jewish and ancient history. His sense of humor is playful and slightly brutal all at once. The political issues he covers range from Palestinian suicide bombers to Europe poking its nose into Israeli affairs to radical settlers.

And Charka gets a lot of inspiration from his own life experience. One of his books, called “Beyond the Line,” is very much autobiographical. The protagonist is a short, yarmulke-wearing Israeli cartoonist living in a settlement. Other characters include a friendly Arab neighbor, an extremist Jewish settler, a bearded Rabbi and a handsome – but not very bright – TV reporter.

“There’s a stereotype about settlers,” Charka said. “People think they all hate Arabs and they’re against peace. But that’s not the whole story.”

Charka said he has Palestinian friends and that he would like to live in peace with all his neighbors. But like many Israelis, he’s skeptical about the idea of giving the Palestinians a state of their own on the West Bank.

“Peace will only come when each side comes to terms with the reality that the other side is here to stay. Israelis have understood that about the Arabs. But I don’t think the Arabs have never completely agreed,” he said.

And that’s why Charka is against giving up land for the hope of peace with the Palestinians. He thinks the whole two-state solution idea won’t work, and that the US president is wrong to keep pushing for it to happen.

Charka’s politics put him in profound disagreement with many Israelis, including fellow cartoonist, Uri Fink. But the two men remain good friends, and fans of each other’s work.

“Shay’s work should be seen by everybody because it’s really, really good. Even if you disagree with the politics, like I do, I still enjoy reading it. And I think the voice of Shay has nothing to do with the crazy settlers that you see in the news all over the world,” Fink said.

On a recent day, the news was full of reports about an attack by Jewish settlers on an Israeli army base in the West Bank. Vandals slashed tires and smashed windshields. And not far away, an Israeli officer was injured by a rock in another clash with settlers. The incidents followed a string of suspected settler attacks against Palestinian property, including mosques.

Charka said he was shocked by the events.

“I’m shocked by these people and I think they should be put in jail,” he said. “But I understand where some of their frustration comes from.”

A few days later, Charka published a cartoon showing a masked Jewish extremist standing next to West Bank settlements. The settlement are sitting on top of a giant bomb. The extremist is challenging the Israeli government to try to dismantle illegally-built settler homes… as he’s about to light the bomb’s fuse.

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Israel hasn’t commented on the incident but just yesterday, Israel’s military chief made a comment that’s interpreted by some now as a hint of involvement.

The Israeli official said Iran will be facing “un-natural setbacks” in the year ahead.

Gad Shimron is a former member of Israel’s intelligence agency, the Mossad.

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Marco Werman: The U.S. has denied any involvement in today’s assassination in Tehran. Israel hasn’t commented on the incident but just yesterday, Israel’s military chief made a comment that’s interpreted by some now as a hint of involvement. The Israeli official said Iran will be facing “un-natural setbacks” in the year ahead. Gad Shimron is a former member of Israel’s intelligence agency, the Mossad. He says Iran is highly invulnerable to infiltration.

Gad Shimron: It is relatively an open society. Relatively, I mean, if you compare it to North Korea for sure, but even to other countries in the world. You have tourists coming in. You have a very large Diaspora of Iranians who live outside Iran and have very good relations with families, with their relatives in Iran. What is most important, don’t forget, Iran is riddled with inner conflicts. You have the Baluchis in the east who want some more autonomy; you have the Kurds in the north-west; you have the Arabs in Kazakhstan, in the western provinces of Iran who really don’t think Iranians; and there are some very strong dissident organizations like the Mujahideen-e Khalq are fiercely anti-Ayatollahs, and therefore it is not that difficult to operate in Iran. There’s a lot of opposition, inner opposition in Iran. I believe there are locals…I believe there are Iranians who are guided, financed probably as well, by foreign intelligence organizations, and I think to their list of the usual suspects one should add not only Israel and the United States but also actually a wide coalition of international forces such as the British MI6, the Saudi Intelligence, even the Egyptian Intelligence before last year’s revolution was very much involved in the struggle to hold and delay the Iranian nuclear program.

Werman: And a magnetic bomb? I mean, we’ve seen these things in the movies but how widely are they used and is it an indicator of any particular strategy of any particular spy agency?

Shimron: No, you know. Nobody invents new things, they only just reuse them. The system is that two guys come on a motorcycle – there are a lot of motorcycles in Tehran, and in the traffic they just attach the magnetic bomb on the door…on one of the doors of the car and speed away. A few seconds later there is an explosion and the victim is gone.

Werman: What purpose do these sorts of assassinations really serve? I mean, could killing one person really affect Iran’s nuclear ambitions?

Shimron: Things like this cannot be quantified. It’s a matter of sending a message with the hope that, together with the economical sanctions which seem to work very well, will delay and eventually stop the Iranian nuclear program.

Werman: Why not just wait for sanctions to work?

Shimron: Because all the studies…If you go back in history and just study, let’s say, 200 sanctions imposed since 1920, sanctions alone don’t do the job. You always need something else and it seems that the recipe here is working. The combination of sanctions, the fact that the Iranian Rial is dropping very rapidly in the market – it’s losing a lot of value, unemployment is going up, the regime is facing very, very steep economical problems; this together with this problem of intimidating top scientists may even work. I mean, one cannot know. The results will speak for themselves later.

Werman: Journalist and former member of Mossad – the Israeli Intelligence Service, Gad Shimron thank you very much for your thoughts sir.

Shimron: Thank you.

Werman: I also spoke today with David Ignatius of the Washington Post about the moral issues involved in covert operations. Ignatius writes thrillers based on his in-depth knowledge of the intelligence community. He says he has no idea who is responsible for today’s assassination in Iran but…

David Ignatius: What I do know is the question of whether are…If covert activities in Iran should include activities that could have the effect of killing Iranians deliberately or by accident has been a very contentious one. This is the dirty side of state craft or undeclared warfare. It’s gone on since the times of the ancients. The Venetians had a masterful assassination service that was part of how they ran their commercial empire. It is a fact of life over many, many centuries but it’s an unattractive one. It’s for a good reason that governments refuse to acknowledge these activities because, if they did, I think the publics at home and abroad would be irate. These are things that look to people like murder.

Werman: David Ignatius of the Washington Post commenting on, as he put it, “the dirty side of state craft.”

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A nuclear scientist is killed after a suspected bomb exploded in a car in northern Tehran, the latest in a string of such nuclear-linked attacks.

They are being charged with tracking Israeli military movements in order to thwart actions against Jewish settlements. There are further allegations that sensitive information on Israeli troop movements came from active duty soldiers. For some Israelis, this aspect of the case highlights a trend the Israeli military.

It used to be that the bulk of Israel’s army officers – especially those from elite combat units – came from Israel’s largely secular kibbutz movement. After all, a soldier’s life can be incompatible with Orthodox Judaism’s strict rules on diet, prayer and study. But times have changed.

In the main study hall at the Har Etzion Hesder Yeshiva, located in a Jewish settlement southeast of Jerusalem, pairs of young men are hunched over religious books, debating in the traditional style of Jewish learning. The word hesder means “arrangement” in Hebrew.

And essentially, this is a way for observant young Israelis – mostly men, but some women as well – to combine religious study with mandatory army service.

“Even though it’s a Jewish army, it’s not necessarily a religious army,” said 24-year-old Greg Bank, a South African-born Israeli. He did two years at the yeshiva, then two years in the army, and he is completing his final year of religious study. “It can be difficult sometimes, because of the nature of the army, the environment’s a very physical environment, sometimes you can forget about your more spiritual side.”

But it raises questions about who’s got the ultimate authority in the military, the rabbis or the army commanders? I asked Bank about facing the dilemma as a religious soldier.

“Thank goodness I haven’t been put in that situation,” he said.

“But you’ve got to look at the picture holistically, because it’s very nice saying that we want every bit of land and that every bit of land is important to us, but if we don’t have an army that can defend this land, then everything will fall apart.”

In other words, soldiers must obey orders for the good of the country. But there are some hard-line, pro-settler rabbis who see things quite differently. For them, giving up any amount of Biblical Israel is considered heresy. These rabbis have publicly encouraged young Israelis to serve, but also to refuse orders that contradict Jewish law, as they see it. Take, for example, orders to evacuate any Jewish settlements.

One of the leading rabbis of the Har Etzion yeshiva, Mosheh Lichtenstein said such extreme views are not widespread. But he talked about the inherent tension for his students between religious and military obligations.

“The military says, ‘let’s solve problems by force,’ and religion says, ‘let’s solve them by creating a harmonious and perfect society,’” Lichtenstein said. “So on one level, we want our students to feel the tension and be aware of that. We tell them, they go to the army, not because it’s a good idea, but because it’s a necessity.”

These tensions have flared up in recent weeks and months. Some Israeli men in uniform have objected on religious grounds to female singers at official military ceremonies. Last week, the military ruled that women cannot be prohibited from singing.

It also put in place new requirements for rabbis when addressing groups of student soldiers. The rabbis will have to clear such meetings ahead of time with the military rabbinate, and they will also be accompanied by a military minder. The new rules suggest that the army brass is truly concerned about the impact of increasing religiosity within its ranks.

“Nobody at the top of the army has discussed this publicly,” said Gershom Gorenberg, author of “The Unmaking of Israel”. “So, we’re guessing here.”

If an order came down for a large scale evacuation of West Bank settlements, Gorenberg said he doubts that massive numbers of Israeli soldiers would refuse those orders. But he said that is precisely the scenario that opponents of the two-state solution are trying to put in the public spotlight.

There are “rabbis and other ideologues who are publicizing this issue,” Gorenberg said. And these individuals are, “trying to create a deterrent against an evacuation by raising the question of the internal cohesion of the army in that case.”

Children enjoyed some playtime during a recent evening at the West Bank settlement of Migron, outside of the Palestinian city of Ramallah. Approximately 300 residents here are facing possible eviction, because an Israeli court determined the settlement is illegal and should be dismantled in the coming months.

Community spokesman Itai Chamo, holding his toddler in his arms, told me he is not sure if Israeli soldiers would refuse evacuation orders. But he said, “the army is with us.”

“I do my reserves. I do 40 days a year. The military is me, not anyone else,” Chamo said.

Are you worried about getting an order to evict settlers yourself, I asked?

“No,” Chamo said. He has never received such an order and he said he is not worried about getting one anytime soon.

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Marco Werman: I’m Marco Werman, this is The World. Tensions between Tehran and the west continue to rise. Iran concluded 10 days of war games in the Persian Gulf today, but not before firing off two long ranges missiles. Iran’s pushing back against US sanctions on its central bank. Those sanctions were prompted by Iran’s refusal to halt its uranium enrichment program. Iran is widely being seen as flexing its military muscle right now as a potential precursor to shutting down the Strait of Hormuz. Twenty percent of the world’s oil passes through the strait. The BBC’s Mohsen Asgari joins us from Tehran. Mohsen, why is Iran holding these missile tests now?

Mohsen Asgari: The timing is quite interesting because these military exercises are taking place exactly at the time that the west and particularly America is increasing the pressures over Iran and particularly Iran’s economy. Iran is trying to send various messages to the outside world to say that on the one hand it is ready to defend itself in one way or another, and on the other side of the story we can hear that Iranian top nuclear negotiators have sent letters or are going to send letters to the 5-plus-1 countries to set the stage for the fresh round of nuclear talks in order to decrease tensions.

Werman: I also want to ask you Mohsen about another troubling bit of news out of Iran, at least as far as the west is concerned.

Iranian TV Announcer: [speaking Arabic]

Werman: Now, this announcement on Iranian state-controlled TV is saying that researchers have produced Iran’s first nuclear fuel rods. The announcer is saying here that the rods have been inserted into the core of Tehran’s research nuclear reactor. Mohsen, is this a big step in Iranian nuclear technology?

Asgari: Potentially it’s a bigger step for Iran and also it can raise a lot of concerns on the western side, but it is exactly an incarnation of the same policy to increase Iran’s bargaining power in the run up to the new round of nuclear negotiations. And on the other side of this story Iran wants to say that it has progressed enough in nuclear activities so it cannot hold uranium enrichment or it cannot change its policy.

Werman: I mean for the west this news about the nuclear fuel rods will be provocative. How are Iranians reacting to all of this? I mean it can all be kind of contained under the heading Save a Rattling, I mean they know how these national actions and the back and forth can escalate.

Asgari: That’s right, Iran has adopted a strategy of carrot on a stick; on the one side they sent letter to the west announcing that they are read to sit on the negotiating table, to talk about nuclear tensions, and on the other side Iran is trying to show its power on testing missiles and also on nuclear activities and the progress that it has achieved through nuclear activities.

Werman: Is all this making common Iranians nervous?

Asgari: Common Iranians they are upset with their economic problems at the moment. They know that the sanctions have caused a lot of problems for them. They have heard about nuclear activities and they understood this story from this angle of vision that the west is against Iran’s progress. This is what is advertised on and off on Iran’s state TV. So they are obsessed with their economic problems because inflation rate is going up, unemployment is torturing. They are obsessed with these problems and they don’t pay attention to military exercise or these uranium enrichment at first in the same way that the western people may look at it.

Werman: So the economy is what’s dominating the lives of most Iranians right now is what you’re saying. How bad is it?

Asgari: It is bad because Mr. Ahmadinejad, Iran’s president, has cut all the subsidies that used to be allocated for electricity, petrol and bread, so when they cut these subsidies they put huge pressure on the people and especially on the working class of the society because the salary of these people has not increased, but the price of goods and cost of life has drastically increased. So the people if you come to Tehran’s streets, you’ll see that people are working three shifts in a day and they are looking for ways to earn more money you know, for their families. And it is interesting that the fluctuation of foreign exchange rate in Iran has become a huge story these days. People are rushing to banks and foreign exchange centers in order to buy US dollar, keep those US dollars in order to sell it at a higher rate later. So these are not the signs that shows that Iran’s economy is suffering from bad diseases these days.

Werman: The BBC’s Mohsen Asgari speaking with us from Tehran, thank you very much indeed.

Asgari: My pleasure.

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Owner Elias Josephai is better known around here as Babu, and his well-organized store is a sanctuary from the sensory overload of the surrounding market. But little do most of Babu’s customers know that the heavy teak doors at the back of the store open into a different kind of sanctuary: the Kadavumbhagum Synagogue.

Babu is one of about 30 remaining members of the Malabari Jewish community. They’ve lived here, on the Malabar Coast in the south Indian state of Kerala, for generations. In 1948, the State of Israel was established, and within five years, all but 100 of Kerala’s 2,400 Malabari Jews had emigrated there. Babu himself tried to go. But there were other reasons to stay in Kerala.

“My family wouldn’t allow me,” says Babu. “My grandmother said that there wouldn’t be anyone for Friday prayer services if I left. I was about to go to Israel but God kept me over here.”

Ernakulam’s Kadavumbhagum Synagogue was likely built in the 16th or 17th century. It’s been closed since 1972 because there haven’t been enough congregants to keep it operating. But the synagogue’s earlier grandeur is readily apparent.

A rainbow array of glass lamps hangs near the entrance, and overhead, scores of hand carved and painted wooden lotuses decorate the two-story ceiling. The ten large windows are said to represent the Ten Commandments. And an intricate red and gold Torah ark stands at one end of the room. But like most of the Jewish residents of this area, the Torah that once stood in the ark now resides in Israel.

For centuries, Kerala’s Jewish minority lived in harmony among Hindus, Muslims, and Christians. Ironically – but perhaps not surprisingly, says Babu – the real conflict was with another group of Jews.

“It happens, all over the world,” says Babu. “Five Jews with six views.”

In the 16th century, Jews from Europe and the Middle East arrived in what is now Kerala and came to be known as Paradesis, a word that means “foreigner” in several Indian languages. A power struggle soon ensued between the lighter skinned Paradesi Jews and the darker skinned Malabari Jews as each group sought to establish itself as the first Jewish settlers in the region in order to claim certain privileges from local rulers.

Today, as Kerala’s young Jews emigrate to Israel and the elderly stay behind, these two communities now share a new commonality: both may soon be part of Kerala’s history.

In addition to the 30 Malabari Jews left in Kerala, there are only nine Paradesi Jews, making the Paradesi the smallest Jewish community in the world. According to Shalva Weil, a professor of anthropology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and a leading authority on the Jews of India, this makes the Paradesi the smallest Jewish community in the world. In fact, as Weil points out, there are actually too few Paradesis to even be called a community.

“According to Jewish tradition,” says Weil, “you have to have 10 men to be part of the minyan, which is a quorum, so there are not 10 Jewish men living there. And even if you add one or two Malabari Jews who might come occasionally, you still haven’t got ten men. Therefore, it’s really the end of a community from the point of view of the Jews.”

Babu plans to live out his days in Kerala. But he expects his younger daughter, 20-year-old Leya, to join her older sister, who has already moved to Israel. Leya, has mixed feelings.

“When I touched the Wailing Wall, it was, like, a totally different experience,” says Leya. “I felt proud to be a Jew. I cried, I had tears in my eyes.”

“If I leave India, I’ll surely miss my friends and the culture here,” she adds. “The culture here is different, no wall between Hindu, Muslims or Christians. There, you can see Muslims walking on one side and Jews walking on other side. Yeah, I will surely miss India.”

The Kadavumbhagam Synagogue has been closed since 1972 (Photo: Kavita Pillay)

“This is a holy land,” says Babu, offering a variation on a term traditionally reserved for Israel. “India is a holy land because of acceptance toward all the religions. This is my motherland, and I call Israel as a fatherland. But for the Jews, there is no life over here.”

This week, for the first time since the synagogue closed in 1972, the remaining Malabari Jews of Kerala will open the doors of the Kadavumbhagam Synagogue and light the menorah for Hanukah. For a dwindling community with an uncertain future, it’s also a chance to recall a moment in which abundance arose out of scarcity.