That is how leading yeshiva heads, rabbis and teachers representing the Hesder system, which combines service in the Israeli military with study in rabbinic seminary, are framing the debate about whether or not their students may evacuate West Bank residents from their settlement homes. According to a just released letter by these religious leaders, “Unfortunately, the IDF has been used for purposes unrelated to Israel’s defense and directly opposed to God’s wishes for quite some time.”
The rabbis write in the letter, “This situation faces IDF soldiers with a contradiction between Jewish commandments and commanders’ orders. We are committed to teach that loyalty to the lord comes before any other loyalty, whether to the army or to the government”.
Needless to say, these comments have provoked outrage by the majority of Israelis. They speak of disloyalty, disregard for the “the law”, and the potential destruction of the State of Israel which could result from the culture of theocratic politics represented by these rabbis. Former IDF Chief Spokesman and current representative of the Kadima party in the Knesset, Nachman Shai, described this trend (these people?) as “a cancer” in Israeli culture.
Both sides are using dangerous language, and neither will get anything even close to what they want unless everyone slows down here. And because I am more sympathetic to Shai’s perspective than to that of people, some of whom are former teachers and current friends, my critique begins there.
While I hate the conclusion which the signers of this letter have reached, it is ironic that 65 years after the Holocaust, we are so angry at people who suggest that one cannot simply follow military orders without checking them against some higher authority. These rabbis are wrong, but the argument that the state comes before all else is also wrong. The response to fanatical religion must not be fanatical state-ism.
If more people had refused their orders 65 and 70 years ago, millions of people would have been spared and the Second World War quite possibly averted. Of course, had that happened there might well be no State of Israel now either, which also complicates the issue enormously.