It is no secret that the IDF Education Branch has represented values that are distant from a Torah hashkafa. The Education Branch under the tenure of the current Chief of Staff, Lt.-General Gadi Eizenkott, has been given additional authority, as Eizenkott has stripped the IDF Rabbinate of much authority, preferring to have it in the trusty hands of the Education Branch, led by Jews with affiliation in the Conservative and Reform Movements.

In this latest example, the Education Branch released a special pamphlet for Holocaust Remembrance Day, one that blames the Holocaust on a loss of checks and balances by the Jews and not on anti-Semitism. The distasteful and disgraceful document speaks of how soldiers in the IDF must act appropriately for fear of becoming Nazis YM”S. The pamphlet explains this is possible as a result of the “deterioration of law and the erosion of democracy”, which it states authoritatively led to the death of the kedoshim, the six million HY”D.

MK (Bayit Yehudi) Betzalel Smotrich responded with a scathing rebuke of the repulsive document, insisting the cause of the Holocaust was the hate of Jews, anti-Semitism, and nothing to do with “erosion of democracy”.

He adds, “This disgraceful document is a denial of the Holocaust which compromises the memory of the six million Jews who were murdered, slaughtered, and burned alive Al Kiddush Hashem by the Nazi oppressor and the document is an embarrassment that must be amended.”

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)