I published this post Friday morning, and its now Sunday night – strange the tone and style of the responses I’ve been getting to this piece [all the comments were emailed to my Jpost account as the piece was posted on the Jpost website]. Religious people say I’m totally off the mark and that the Mercaz Harav attack was aimed squarely at Jews and not specifically at the religious Zionist sector – some religious Zionist people I really respect made this point very eloquently. Some secular people have told me I’m totally spot – on and that this attack was carried out against that particular institution in the hope that it would fan the flames of religious war and provoke the national religious sector into angry retaliation, which would send this country into a tailspin. Most of the emails I got from the religious readers were angry in tone, some even accused me of being a “Jew hater” and worse. What’s clear is that this attack is unusual in its brutality and will have serious consequences for the Israeli population as a whole.

Anyway, please judge for yourself:

While defense establishment officials sitting in the Kiriya military headquarters in Tel-Aviv ponder the diplomatic-security implications of last night’s attack, a totally different analysis will be taking place this weekend around Shabbat dinner tables across Jerusalem and most West Bank settlements. Continue reading →