On Monday morning 25 Sivan, a special additional session of the Knesset Foreign Affairs & Defense Committee was held to address the planned closure of Yeshivat Ohr Etzion, the nation’s only yeshiva military academy. After Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman announced the planned closure, graduates of the yeshiva launched a campaign to save the school.

The decision to shut the yeshiva aroused great criticism in dati leumi community against the decision of the defense minister and the Defense Ministry. The committee was attended by Deputy Head of the IDF Personnel Directorate Meirav Kirchner and representatives of the Ministry of Defense, at the end of which the representatives of the Ministry of Defense undertook to re-examine the matter.

Members of the committee, including committee chair Avi Dichter and Knesset members Moti Yogev and Knesset Member Shuli Muallem, attacked the Defense Ministry’s representatives for the imbalance between the decision to close the religious school and leave the secular boarding military school open.

MK Moti Yogev, a member of the committee, said: “No one has properly examined the data, no one has sat to examine how it is possible to streamline it instead of closing it, the data presented by the Defense Ministry is shameful, and this committee is accustomed to practical and apolitical committees.

“This was the case in the IDF budget, and so it was on a variety of issues, but it is inconceivable that the IDF appears on the committee with distorted data, without thinking and without alternatives. The IDF is always endowed with creativity, where is all this gone? The defense establishment must not do such a serious job, it’s just sad.” Yogev said, “We are educating for dedication and mission, and this is the goal of the boarding school. We must turn the decision upside down, for the benefit of the State of Israel.”

Rabbi Chaim Druckman added, “I’m just amazed at the fact that in the State of Israel after 70 years, it’s not pleasant to say, they want to discriminate against the religious youth. What is happening here, I do not understand. They fired an arrow and then they mark the goal. This is an unjust decision, and this is an unjust injustice, what is happening here? You yourself, the Defense Ministry, know that this is an injustice, and you wanted to close both of them but the matter is political as you are only closing the religious one”.

(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)