It would appear the ongoing dispute between hesder yeshivot and the IDF is already having ramifications. Despite calling for calm and exhibiting a unscathed exterior, Defense Minister Ehud Barak is indeed playing hardball, seeking to pressure hesder leaders into publicly denouncing insubordination, including a soldiers’ refusal to comply with orders that negate his Torah and religious philosophy.
Barak has ordered the Defense Ministry to hold off transferring hesder funds approved in the annual budget, NIS 22 million. MK (Likud) Ze’ev Elkin, a member of the Knesset Finance Committee, believes Barak’s move is directly to the ongoing conflict between hesder and the IDF.
He rejected Barak’s move, stating the hesder yeshivot rabbonim will not be blackmailed and using their budget to pressure them into compliance will only fuel the flames of conflict.
(Yechiel Spira – YWN Israel)
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One Response
So the IDF is withholding money from yeshivos that recommend that its soldiers don’t obey orders?
Only in Israel. In any other country these rabbis would already be in jail along with the soldiers they mislead.
Either you’re in the IDF or you’re not, and if you are you take orders. Period. (Unless they’re illegal by international law.)
I lived through one war in Israel, when we all nearly “bought the farm.” The soldiers who stayed on the Bar Lev line when it was basically suicide bought the time that saved the rest of us from certain death. They didn’t ask their rabbis. Would these “soldiers” obey orders if G-d forbid such a time would come again? Or would they find a “heter” to turn tail and retreat because they “don’t agree” with the orders? And how many would follow their parents back to the United States if living in Israel became Chas v’shalom as dangerous as it was twenty-five years ago?