Incoming IDF Chief Education Officer Brigadier-General Tzvika Fairaizen had harsh words during Hoshana Rabba learning in Yishuv Karnei Shomron, blaming the weekly Shabbos Torah sheets in the dati leumi community for the reduction in motivation among youths to enter the IDF.

In the transcript that was revealed in the weekly BaSheva newspaper, affiliated with the dati leumi tzibur, reported by Galei Tzahal (Army Radio), the new chief education officer was heard expressing criticism against elements in the right-wing and dati leumi communities.

In his remarks, Brigadier-General Fairaizen did not spare criticism of religious and right-wing elements, as well as elements in the secular and left-wing public, who force the IDF into the political vortex instead of running the Knesset debates.

“I am subject to the decisions of the democratically elected political echelon, and the IDF does not come to educate anyone, and one who wishes to err in a big way because it takes the only place that has only one goal – to win – and he causes this arena to be a forum for debate.”

Fairaizen sharply criticized the weekly torah handouts in the dati leumi sector, which he says are against the army and the decisions taken in the army. “In the past two years, when I decided that I might take this role, I began leafing through Shabbos leaflets and began to read. I am very saddened as there is hardly a Shabbos in which the Shabbos leaflets do not directly or indirectly attack the IDF, many things are between half-truths and lies.”

Growing up in Yishuv N’vei Tzuf, he explains how he was pressure to quit prior to the expulsion from Gaza in 2005, as some believed if he did, the expulsion would not have occurred.

When asked about his opinion regarding the quarrel between the Rabbinate and the IDF, Fairaizen replied that it was absurd. He claimed that only the IDF had the education entrusted to the Ministry of Religious Affairs. “If you told someone in the State of Israel that education in Israel is in the hands of the Ministry of Religious Affairs, The Education Ministry is in the Ministry of Education, and only through the Ministry of Religious Affairs, that is, the Rabbinate. Not only does the Ministry of Religious Affairs provide religious education, but it gives education to the entire IDF. This sounds absurd”.

Fairaizen was simply explaining that the Education Corps must be exclusively in charge of education in the military and it is not in any way the job of the IDF Rabbinate.

(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)