Smotrich calls on rabbis not to send students to IDF

Jewish Home MK Bezalel Smotrich is calling on rabbis and teachers to keep students from enlisting into the army in order to protest what he labeled the “radical feminist” agenda which was leading to more mixed gender activities in the armed forces, and putting “equality above victory.”

Writing in the weekly religious newspaper B’Sheva, Smotrich says, “Just as a loving mother who sees her beloved son being dragged into the bad culture of a dangerous street gang, and pulls him back by force a moment before he descends into the abyss, even if she’s forced to cause him pain in so doing, so also we, with our great love for the army, must save it from the extreme post-modernist fingernails that have grasped hold of it…using pretty words about equality and accepting the other.”

Smotrich’s call comes following political fallout over the leak of a recording earlier this month in which Rabbi Yigal Levinstein, head of a pre-army religious academy in the West Bank settlement of Eli, told graduates from another academy that Israel Defense Forces service had “driven our girls crazy.”

In response, Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman has said he will cut funding to the Eli academy if Levinstein does not leave his teaching post.