Smotrich lambastes IDF for jailing soldiers who wouldn’t serve with female medic

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on Monday expressed his support for 16 Israel Defense Forces soldiers who were jailed for thwarting an operational mission in Gaza over their refusal to enter an armored personnel carrier with a female paramedic, drawing condemnation from opposition politicians, who accused him of undermining Israel’s security.

In a post to X, the far-right minister said the Givati Brigade soldiers had the right to “safeguard their values and beliefs” while serving in the military, and insisted that they “have the full backing” of their religious Zionist rabbis.

“I prayed and hoped with all my heart that the IDF would come to its senses and prevent the need for my intervention, but since that did not happen — as the leader of Religious Zionism, I cannot sit idly by,” wrote the minister, referring to his political party.

“It’s a real shame that the IDF is choosing, out of mistaken judgment, to antagonize the public that serves and contributes the most, in a way that will only cause damage and undermine the public’s trust in the IDF,” he wrote.

The Givati Brigade’s Rotem Battalion, in which the soldiers serve, is not an ultra-Orthodox unit, and therefore the soldiers serving there, under the IDF’s protocols, may have to serve alongside women.

The soldiers refused to enter an armored personnel carrier for an operation in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday night because a female paramedic was attached to the force, the IDF said, noting that as a result, the mission was canceled.

Gadi Eisenkot, the opposition frontrunner and a former IDF chief of staff, responded to Smotrich with a post to X, saying: “This isn’t the first time Smotrich has called for refusal [to serve].”

The Yashar chief noted Smotrich’s ministerial role in the Defense Ministry, and railed against his support for legislation to entrench broad exemptions from the draft for ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students.

“An abyss yawns between Smotrich and the values of religious Zionism’s sons and daughters,” Eisenkot wrote.

Smotrich’s party is called Religious Zionism, and it is aligned with that stream of Israeli Judaism; however, religious Zionism itself is older and broader than the far-right political faction, encompassing some 16-17% of Israeli Jews, according to the Jewish People Policy Institute.

Soldiers from the community are overrepresented in combat roles, a phenomenon to which Smotrich was apparently referring in his statement of support for the religious soldiers.

Former MK Matan Kahana, who resigned from the Knesset when he left the premier’s Likud party last year, posted: “Refusing an order = anarchy.”

The ex-lawmaker, a strictly Orthodox Jew who served in the IDF’s special forces and subsequently as an Air Force pilot, noted that rabbinic authorities have signed off on women’s integration into combat operations of this type, and also said Smotrich does not represent the majority of religious Zionists.

Yaya Fink, a candidate for the left-wing Democrats party in the upcoming October elections, took issue with Smotrich’s description of the religious Zionist sector as “the public that serves and contributes the most.”

Soldiers who study in yeshivas while also serving in the army “do less than half of the service that secular people do, while some religious women don’t serve at all,” Fink wrote on X, noting that the IDF “makes a great effort to ensure everyone can serve.”

Democrats MK Gilad Kariv, a Reform rabbi, accused Smotrich of “trampling on the heroism, dedication, and professionalism of the IDF’s female combat soldiers.”

And Opposition Leader Yair Lapid, the number two in former premier Naftali Bennett’s B’Yachad party, wrote: “A government minister backs soldiers who refused to go into combat with a female paramedic. I thought Iran was the enemy, not the inspiration.”

The 16 troops were sentenced to prison Sunday over their refusal last week.

The military said five troops who led the disobedience were sentenced by the battalion commander to 10 days in military jail. Two of those soldiers will also face a committee before being allowed to return to combat roles.

In addition, another 11 soldiers involved in the refusal were sentenced to five days in prison.

The incident was the latest in a series of cases of male Orthodox soldiers refusing to interact with servicewomen in the army, due to the men’s religious sensibilities. The cases play into the larger debate in Israeli society over whether Haredi men must serve in the military, and how much the IDF must do to accommodate their religious observances and strictures.

Emanuel Fabian contributed to this report.