France’s Multicultural Dystopia

Leon Hadar writes:

If you think this is a farfetched nightmare scenario concocted by an Islamophobic mind, consider the way that members of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community or Haredi in Israel have been winning the demographic wars, strengthening their political power, and gradually transforming their secular country.
The ultra-Orthodox Jews, who still dress like it’s 1815 in Eastern Europe, adhere to rigorous religious laws, including strict separation between men and women, and shun any form of modern education, including basic prerequisites of math, science, and language.
They constituted a tiny minority of 30,000 when Israel was established in 1948, residing in a few small neighborhoods in Jerusalem and near Tel Aviv, with many refusing to recognize the legitimacy of the new state. But Israel’s secular founders, including the first prime minister, David Ben Gurion, agreed to exempt the young Haredi studying in religious schools from mandatory military service, to provide them with government subsidies to study, and to support their expanding families of five to ten children (compared to secular Jewish families with two to three children).
A vicious cycle developed. With the number of the ultra-Orthodox Jews growing dramatically, the community was able to increase its political influence, with its parties joining coalition governments and acquiring new financial and other benefits for its members and allowing them to grow their families—which continued to live on government subsidies, becoming a drag on the economy.
Today the ultra-Orthodox Jews number around 800,000 and constitute 11 percent of the Israeli population. With a growth rate of 5 percent, one of the highest of the world, they could increase to 20 percent of the population by 2030.
While much of the public rhetoric in Israel has been about multiculturalism and coexistence between secular and ultra-Orthodox Jews, in reality the Haredi resist embracing the liberal and secular values of Israeli society. They not only maintain their separate religious and cultural identity, but also are gradually able to force their norms on the secular Jewish majority.
Hence their political parties ensure that, despite growing pressure from the younger, secular Israeli Jews who reside in advanced modern urban centers in and around Tel Aviv, no attempt will be made to separate religion and state in Israel. The Orthodox-controlled rabbinate continues to maintain jurisdiction over personal-status issues such as Jewish marriages and Jewish divorce, as well as Jewish burials, conversion to Judaism, and kosher laws, while rabbis representing the Reform and Conservative branches of American Judaism continue to fight for state recognition.
In addition to new towns established by the government to accommodate the growing Haredi population, many ultra-Orthodox Jews are also trying to establish a presence in other areas of the country. And the storyline is familiar: several Haredi families move to a mostly secular neighborhood, where they demand that their “religious rights” be protected by, for example, banning traffic and forcing stores to close down during the Sabbath. More Orthodox Jews then join the first group, and before you know it, the entire neighborhood becomes another Haredi outpost. Most recently, under pressure of the religious parties, stores in the Tel Aviv area have lost their permits to open during the Sabbath.