Ultra-Orthodox Leftists Gain Visibility — If Not Traction In Community
Image by facebook
By Ari Feldman June 15, 2017
It’s not just for secular lefties anymore: the 50th anniversary of the Six Day War has given a public soapbox to ultra-Orthodox Jews who are critical of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank.
Eli Bitan, 26, has become the public face of this group, whose visibility is rapidly growing.
In the past few years, left-wing Haredi activism and awareness has moved from Facebook groups into the open. Bitan’s appearance at a rally in Tel Aviv marking the 50th anniversary of the Six Day War was seized upon both by the secular left and the religious right. Bitan became the center of a smear campaign on social media by right-wing activists, and he was fired from his job at an ultra-Orthodox media group.
“Our role is to make [young Haredi men and women] feel at home. Ending the occupation is everyone’s task, everyone who lives here,” he told those gathered at the Tel Aviv rally.
But Gilad Malach, an expert on the ultra-Orthodox community, told Haaretz that the left-wing Haredi activism is “a marginal phenomenon.”
“Right now the phenomenon is largely confined to a certain elite in the Haredi world, but given the right conditions, it can certainly take off,” he says.
Contact Ari Feldman at feldman@forward.com or on Twitter @aefeldman.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
