One of my fondest childhood memories was the summer I spent with my family in Israel. During the trip I recall going to Visit a very close friend of my grandfather’s at this man's yeshiva. Looking at him you saw kedushah in his face, you see a man who dedicated his life to building the Jewish state and torat eretz yisrael. I remember his lovingly showing us old seforim that he kept in his safe, how there was an esrog tree outside of his office and meeting with the chief military officer from his yeshiva (it is a hesder yeshiva). My grandfather was one on the leaders of the American Religious Zionist movement and this afforded him the opportunity to become friendly with many of the leaders of the Religious Zionist movement in Israel. I recall hearing this man speak over the years and meeting him at functions, his face radiates with kedusha and you can see in it someone who truly loves Klal yisrael and the torah. I speak of none other than Harav Chaim Drukman, Shlita, a man who over the last few weeks has been vilified by a number of extremist charedim and whose name is being besmirched by many amoratzim on both the internet and in the charedi press. If these people had an ounce of torah knowledge or ahavas yisrael that Rav Druckman has they would be in good shape.
I saw yesterday that R' Leib Tropper had a gathering of so called "gedolim" to discuss geirus and how there "would be no compromise when it comes to kabalos ohl mitzvos". Some of the charedim on the Blogs that are attacking Rav Druckman have never even heard of him. Hopefully this is the wakeup call our community needed to stop kowtowing to these charedi extremists and to start living our own lives together with our own leaders and to stop looking over our "right shoulder". This might have been the violent shove we have been waiting for.