Rabbi threatened with defunding: We won't yield to dictatorship

The storm over Rabbi Yigal Levinstein's recent incendiary remarks about women serving in the Israel Defense Forces rages on, and is starting to reverberate throughout the religious Zionist community, impacting the community's relations with the IDF.

IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot is slated to meet with religious Zionist rabbis in the coming weeks. According to sources in the military, the rabbis in question maintain contact with the IDF Personnel Directorate and meet with the chief of staff every so often. A few of them contacted Eizenkot and requested a meeting in light of Levinstein's latest comments and Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman's response -- threatening to revoke the accreditation of the pre-military academy Levinstein co-directs unless the rabbi is immediately dismissed.

But the Bnei David Pre-Military Torah Academy in Eli, which Levinstein co-founded, is refusing to act on Lieberman's ultimatum.

Rabbi Eli Sadan, who co-founded and runs the academy with Levinstein, recently addressed the students, telling them: "A representative of the Defense Ministry called and said, 'By 8 a.m. tomorrow you have to give us an answer about Rabbi Yigal [Levinstein].' I told him, 'We won't yield to this dictatorship -- do what you want about it.'"

According to Sadan, "We won't let politicians use us. The only objective of the attempt to fire Rabbi Yigal is to score political points. No minister would ever dare say what Lieberman said [about Levinstein] in regard to anyone on the Left."

Channel 2 reported that Sadan repeated his stance on men and women serving together in the military.

"If you put someone into a mixed-gender unit and there is no way of upholding the 'issur negiah' [the religious prohibition against physical contact between men and women who are not married to each other or close relatives] and 'issur yichud' [the prohibition against men and women who are not married to each other or close relatives being alone together], I think that we need to say, 'I'm sorry, I can't serve here.'

"We won't agree to anyone taking advantage of a military order to coerce us into any violation [of religious law], large or small," Sadan reportedly said.

"The battlefield is no place for a woman. I wouldn't want women to be involved in killing," Sadan said.

He also touched on the matter of combat medics and wounded soldiers, saying: "I don't want to have to tear off her [the female soldier's] clothes to bandage her."

However, Sadan emphasized that he saw female soldiers as "righteous for what they do, but I am not giving up my right to explain publicly why it bothers me."

Other politicians are also stepping into the fray. Shas chairman and Interior Minister Aryeh Deri attacked Lieberman over his ultimatum on Levinstein: "Defense Minister Lieberman, my friend, don't attack the pre-military program at Eli and don't lend your hand to the festival of hypocrisy that has been going on here for the last week.

"For years, we've heard offensive remarks about haredim, immigrants from Russia and Ethiopia, Sephardi Jews, Arabs, and settlers in the education system and in the army, and no one was horrified," Deri said.

Lieberman replied to the interior minister's allegations in a Facebook post that read: "As someone who recognizes the importance of the pre-military academy and hesder yeshiva at Eli, I have no doubt that it's important they continue to operate and prepare the next generation of IDF combat soldiers. The last thing I want to do is to attack them. Anyone who truly wants their continued success and functional operation understands that this cannot happen if Rabbi Levinstein continues to serve [as co-director]."

Lieberman's post went on to say that the pre-military academy and yeshiva were being "sacrificed on the altar of the primaries in the Habayit Hayehudi party, because of a person who has already apologized twice after offending entire sectors of the public and is now causing blatant offense to female soldiers in the IDF and the women of Israel."

The defense minister wrote that he was "sorry to see" that rather than supporting his call for Levinstein's dismissal, Habayit Hayehudi chairman and Education Minister Naftali Bennett was standing by Levinstein because of "political considerations."

"This is the time to come together and keep the people of Israel united," Lieberman wrote.

Bennett chose to aim his barbs at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. "At the moment of truth, the prime minister has abandoned religious Zionism," Bennett said.

Some political players think that Bennett's comments were made with the approaching primaries in Habayit Hayehudi in mind.

Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely said, "Bennett is trying to gather political might at the expense of the Likud. We all appreciate the educational enterprise of the pre-military program at Eli. The prime minister values the program, and in the last election visited there. It's a shame that the debate on an issue as important as how women serve in the IDF has turned into a political, populist argument."

In light of the clashes, the Joint Council of Pre-Military Academies put out a strongly worded open letter in which it called to put a stop to political intervention in the academy programs.

"Intervention by government officials in the activity of education institutions, including the pre-military academies, over the opinions of an educator is a slippery slope, and should be prevented as much as possible in the educational framework of a democratic society," the letter read.

The letter laid out three points: "We believe in the obligation to operate in a united, uniting manner that includes dialogue on matters of dispute; we have decided that offensive, exclusionary statements cannot be part of educational discourse; and we call on the IDF to allow the soldiers of Israel -- men and women, religious and secular -- to serve with dignity and in line with their worldviews, according to the IDF rules and for the sake of Israel's security."

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