New Ban on Eretz Hakodesh!

Nobody could have possibly predicted this.

Eretz Hakodesh’s new election campaign is now banned:

A number of thoughts I had:

1. I was actually shocked how many votes they received the first time around. I was surprised that so many chareidim were willing to vote in the WZO elections.

2. I do not think they will be so successful this time around. Last time, there were rumors about who supports who, and some even claimed R Chaim allowed it. Now, everyone is pretty much aware that most gedolim oppose it.

3. Rav Shmuel Kaminetzky’s name is conspicuously missing - not sure if that’s because he supports Eretz Hakodesh, due to his health, or because he doesn’t want to get involved. (Same for R Elya Brudny - though he almost never signs things)

4. Eretz Hakodesh didn’t do that much the first time around, but it wasn’t the horrible chillul Hashem and boundary-breaking line that others thought it would be. Basically, frum Jews joined an organization. Nobody’s beliefs changed one iota. The only people making a big deal about this are some kannoyim.

5. I firmly believe that the anti-zionist approach in this letter is a historically fringe approach in the mainstream frum world. Zionism is far more nuanced than this kol koreh suggests (unfortunately, nuance is virtually nonexistant in the yeshivish world). Unlike the Reform movement, Zionism has done a lot of good and the people who supposedly went off the derech because of it probably would have gone off either way when exposed to secularist society. In fact, Zionism probably kept those people and their grandkids Jewish (compare secular Israeli assimilation rate to American Reform). Satmar’s black and white approach to it, popularized by the extraordinarily dumb book “The Empty Book Wagon” by former firebird driver and frumteen indoctrinator Yaakov Shapiro, is not the original derech of the American chareidi community. R Yaakov Kaminetzky zatzal had a completely different approach according to his grandkids.

6. Despite the appearance of these kol korehs implying official position becoming more antizionist, in reality, most yeshivish people are becoming more zionistic. See this article: https://mosaicmagazine.com/observation/israel-zionism/2020/06/the-ultra-orthodox-worlds-non-zionist-zionist-revolution/. It’s just that voting for the WZO is considered worse because it is an old school organization like hadassah.

What do you think?