Last month, YWN-ISRAEL reported that hundreds of mezuzos on IDF bases and facilities are pasul.

The IDF Rabbinate has gathered data over recent years showing that on bases in which non-Jewish units serve, such a Bedouin units, about 30%-40% of the mezuzos on those bases are vandalized or removed, Kol Yehudi News reports. The facts were censored and the IDF Spokesman’s Office declines comment, explaining it is not familiar with the statistics quoted.

Teams of IDF Rabbinate officials traveling around the country inspected the mezuzos on bases and they were displeased to discover the high level of vandalism on bases housing non-Jewish soldiers. Their findings were hushed by military authorities who preferred not making a scandal over mezuzos.

Brigade level military rabbonim have filed reports over the vandalism but the matter is ignored by the military so the IDF Rabbinate addressed it in a sefer addressing the laws of mezuzah but sections speaking of the thefts and vandalism were censored out of the sefer. After being published the sefer was removed from distribution and collected by the IDF as was reported by YWN-ISRAEL in 2013 after there were complaints about the sefer addressing a woman affixing a mezuzah or affixing a mezuzah on a home inhabited by Jews and goyim, as is the case in the IDF.

(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)