Rabbi Eliezer Melamed, mora d’asra of Yishuv Har Bracha and rosh yeshiva of the community’s hesder yeshiva has come out against MK Elazar Stern. Rabbi Melamed points an accusing finger at Stern and his tenacious efforts to destroy the hesder program for the growing negative sentiment against the combined yeshiva military program.

In the rabbi’s column in the weekly BaSheva newspaper he points out that the most harmful criticism is that from the religious community for the latter fuels the attacks from the secular public against the hesder yeshivos. “Leading this attack is none other than MK Elazar Stern. I believe his intentions are good however in actuality, no single person has come out as harshly as he against hesder, starting when he was the commander of the IDF Manpower Branch and continuing to today.

Rav Melamed explains the simply secular person respects hesder, but after a religious person with a respectable military rank like himself expresses such harsh criticism against it, one can hardly expect more from the secular community.

MK Stern was asked to respond, doing so via the Srugim dati leumi forum, stating “This time again I have no argument with Rabbi Eliezer Melamed. Unfortunately he is correct. I think a lot of damage was caused and at the very least his portion could have been avoided. Additionally, I believe if the heads of hesder would have given serious consideration to my suggestion [of 24 months of IDF service instead of the current 16 months], the standing of hesder soldiers and talmidim would have returned to what it once was”.

“However, to my sorrow, I ran into a solid wall, not only in terms of a willingness to discuss change that is requested, but also they are impervious to criticism. They still foster the belief that brigade commander prefer hesder soldiers but in the last conference of brigade commanders, no one wanted the hesder soldiers, preferring regular soldiers instead”.

Stern continues that the bottom line is the damage is done and wherever he has dealings that connect to hesder; there is a feeling of resentment against the soldiers who only serve 16 months of active military service.

(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)