Soldiers and yeshiva students from severa Hesder yeshivas have called on Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Benny Gantz to reconsider his order to forbid religious troops from leaving official IDF ceremonies that include women singing.

The students have also warned against creating a “needless and dangerous precedent” that could seriously damage the relationship between the IDF and the religious public.

The letter, sent to Gantz on Monday after it was first circulated among the students, claimed that “enforcing the attendance of religious soldiers when women are singing is in direct opposition to the Jewish Halacha and is in fact secular coercion, which goes against the principles of liberty, equality and justice in general and the spirit of the IDF particularly.”

A copy of the letter was sent to the IDF Chief Rabbi Brigadier General Raffi Peretz.

Those behind the move, students at the Sha’albim hesder yeshiva, claimed that the decision reached by the General Staff Forum last week was offensive and prevent religious soldiers him from properly observing their lifestyle. They noted that the IDF’s meticulousness in allowing the soldiers a setting that would allow them to keep a religious lifestyle is what enabled thousands of yeshiva students to enlist in the military.

The hesder students stressed that the attempt to link situations in which soldiers leave a ceremony when a woman sings to cases of women’s exclusion from the public sphere in Israel was an “imbecilic act” with the purpose of presenting religious soldiers as extremists.

The students made it clear that they are not opposed to the fact that women sing during military ceremonies and do not wish to force the Halachic opinion on the public in general, rather they are only seeking to allow soldiers to leave those ceremonies in a dignified and discreet manner – and only as long as the singing lasts.

READ MORE: YNET