The Chardak campaign against chareidim serving in the IDF continues as do attacks against chareidi soldiers in uniform.
In response, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon is conferring with IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-General Gadi Eizenkott and other relevant officials towards possibly amending regulations to permit all chareidi military personnel to return home in civilian garb rather than in uniform.
Ya’alon feels the contribution to the IDF by chareidi is significant as well as the fact he explains 91% of discharged chareidi soldiers have entered the workplace. Hence he continues to view the integration of chareidim into the IDF as a critical component of overall integration and lowering unemployment in that sector.
In the past, individual soldiers have received permission to leave and return to base in civilian garb, usually limited to soldiers living in frum [problematic] areas. However, the senior minister is now weighing a new regulation that would apply to all chareidim serving as one of the methods in combating attacks against them by other chareidim who feel their service is unacceptable.
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
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4 Responses
I am a proud charadi that my sons and sons-in-laws were in the IDF and managed to show that we can be charadi and maintain ourselves and even bring a few non religious people over to our side.
Give your kids GOOD Jewish chinuch that they be proud of themselves and of Israel.
However those who are against boys going into the IDF should realize that the education that their system gives stinks since they are afraid that they will sink if they go out of the bais medresh.
What a chillul Hashem.
These young frum boys r risking their lives so we can live in this beautiful
Country. They should be able to walk any place in uniform .There is no mitzva to hurt somebody because udisagree with what they r doing.
If the army stopped trying to conscript hareidim (i.e. if the Kenesset either abolishes conscription for everyone, or allows hareidim to be exempt as conscientious objectors), they wouldn’t have their problem. Then showing up in shul dressed like a soldier would be no more scandalous than showing up dressed like a lawyer or a doctor or any other sort of “baal ha-bayis”.
It is well known that rabbanim are opposed to serving in the IDF since 1) the goal of the IDF is to make all into secular “Zionists” and 2) bec. the medina itself is as treif as hazar as it allows for intermarriage, public hillul Shabbos and other daroisas, thankfully the yeshivas in Eretz Yisroel provide a zechus for this medina’s temporary existence.