The State of Israel celebrated its 62nd birthday this week, quite an achievement when one considers the many challenges to its existence that this tiny Jewish nation has faced since 1948.

The sad truth is that whatever trials and tribulations have been overcome thus far may well pale into insignificance with what lies ahead. Over the last few weeks I have spoken to quite a sample of people from across the political and religious spectrum, and whilst most are agreed that we have created an extraordinary country in such a relatively short space of time, most also fear the enormity of the problems that are staring us in the face.

I'm not trying to be a scaremonger or harbinger of doom, I'm simply attempting to relate to you the feelings of the man on the street, those that work hard for relatively low pay, whose children serve in the armed forces, who struggle to afford a mortgage due to the massive rise in house process here, but who believe passionately that  the Jewish people need a place of their own if we are to avoid a repeat of the awful happenings of the late-1930's and 1940's in western and central Europe.

I've been surprised at the level of agreement about exactly where the main dangers lie. We're all concerned about Iran's attempt to produce nuclear weapons given its leader's promise that he will wipe Israel off the face off the earth. There have been many  recently corroborated reports of Hizbollah arming themselves with longer range weapons on the Lebanese border, right under the nose of the 'supposed' UN peacekeeping force. And in Gaza, despite their assertion that they won't use the smuggling tunnels any more, there have been enough unsavoury incidents and sporadic clashes to suggest that it will take just the merest of touch papers to ignite further violence in that extremist Hamas entity.

For me, and for the majority of Israeli citizens, the most distasteful sight of the last week was the demonstration by members of the Haredi communities in Jerusalem and B'nei Barak against the very existence of the State of Israel! To those unfamiliar with mainstream Haredi thinking, they don't acknowledge the existence of Israel because the Messiah hasn't come, and only then can there be a country called Israel that will be home to the Jews – that it, of course, to ultra-religious Jews like themselves. Me, and those many Israeli citizens like me, (and that includes modern Orthodox Jews who pray every day and wear a 'kippa' (skullcap), are seen by many Haredim as not even Jewish, because we are not religious enough for their liking.

In both Jerusalem and B'nei Barak, a handful of young Haredim were arrested for burning the Israeli flag and chanting "death to Israel", as they refused to stand and respect the siren honouring the fallen soldiers of the wars and those that died in the Holocaust.
 
The token arrests have sickened many people over here who point out that if it were Arab, Bedouin, Druze or secular Israelis doing the same, they would be arrested in droves and sent down for long periods. This will not happen to the Haredim, you can be sure of that.

I've expressed my feelings about these people before in this blog, but it should be understood that I am not some renegade voice sailing against the tide. Judging by the masses of correspondence in the Israeli media and on the principal internet sites, a significant majority agree with me when I say that people that don't acknowledge the existence of the Israel, who refuse to work but have families of as many as 16 children and receive astounding amounts of social security and other benefits, whose children do not fight in the army, who pay no taxes, and who wish to impose their way of life on everyone else in the country (given the chance), represent the biggest threat to the continued existence of the State of Israel – as we know it.

According to a report in the Jerusalem Post this week, if the current demographic trends continue, in 25 years only 50% of the adult Israeli population will be from working families whose children are obliged to serve in the army. The Haredim know that if they continue breeding at the same rate as today, in 40 years they will form a majority of the electorate in this democracy.

The Arabs who surround Israel have no need to go to war against us, If they sit tight and consider feeding funds to the Haredim – you may or may not know that a deputation of Haredim was received warmly recently by President Ahmedinejad in Tehran where they expressed their solidarity with the megalomaniac leader who doubtless didn’t send them home empty-handed – Israel will be theirs for the taking as the formerly everyday secular, traditional and modern-Orthodox Jews will doubtless up sticks and go elsewhere. That is, of course, assuming there is somewhere else to go.

The other trump card for the Arabs is to again sit back and wait for Israel to descend into civil chaos as the religious and secular societies battle over a clash of ideologies. If there is one grain of hope, it might possibly come from the presently very small minority of Haredim who themselves have realized that their stance on many subjects is causing them to be hated by so many.

To their credit a few Haredi leaders came out and publicly condemned the violence seen this week, and the Hadrei Haredi website, using unprecedented strong words against one of their own, described the Deputy Health Minister Litzman's decision to scupper the building of an emergency room at a major hospital in Ashkleon because some ancient graves had been found their that he thought might be Jewish, (even though all archealogical evidence has proved otherwise), as "an unnecessary battle that caused immense damage to the Ultra-Orthodox sector".

The Hadre Haredi site went on to point out that Litzman had,"aggressively and disgracefully exploited his power in a way that turned the entire nation against us... it is not the honor of the dead at stake here, but solely that of the deputy minister." In an astonishing public attack against one of their own leading politicians, they concluded in a somewhat unfortunate turn of phrase, "…to safeguard the graves, while it was clear to [Litzman] and anyone who dealt with the topic that there is no halachic, ethical or moral problem, has brought a holocaust upon our heads that will take many years to amend."

The disproportionate power the Haredim have on the coalition government means that many of the leading parties are obliged to team up with these people if they want to govern. It's about time, having survived 62 hard and dramatic years, that a new political mettle is revealed that gives our politicians the backbone to stand up and say that no more will the law abiding, tax paying, military serving citizens of this country be held to ransom by people who, like Hamas, Syria and Iran, don't even accept that this country has a right to exist.