Meeting cancelled over women in the army

A meeting between Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef and IDF Chief Rabbi Eyal Karim scheduled for Monday was cancelled due to the former’s comments against women serving in the IDF.

Safed Chief Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu made comments last week strongly criticizing the IDF’s joint service protocol, which he and other conservative national-religious rabbis said forces men to serve with women in inappropriate situations, and called for the IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Gadi Eisenkot to be fired.

Yosef called Eliyahu giving him his full support, which lead to a sharp response by Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman who banned Eliyahu and Yosef from IDF events and meetings with IDF officials.

A spokesman for Liberman confirmed to The Jerusalem Post that the meeting was cancelled on his orders because of Yosef’s comments about women in the IDF.

Bayit Yehudi MK Betzalel Smotrich condemned Liberman for his intervention, describing it as “severe” and “seemingly illegal”, since the IDF chief rabbi is a member of the council of the chief rabbinate and therefore entitled to attend meetings of the council together with Yosef.

“The politics of the defense minister and the orders of the IDF chief of staff do not overrule the law”, added Smotrich, calling on Eisenkot “to regain his composure”.

Eliyahu’s comments were made in defense of Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, who ruled last week that yeshiva students should not enlist to the IDF until they are guaranteed not to serve in a unit alongside women.

One of the most debated claims made by conservative national-rabbis regarding the new joint service protocol states that religious soldiers, officers and NCOs will not necessarily be able to refuse service in mixed-gender combat units.

However, the clause pertaining to this issue points out explicitly that any officer or NCO who is placed in a mixed-gender combat unit has the right to appeal the decision to the head of the IDF Manpower Directorate, whose decision should be based on the opinion of the IDF Chief Rabbi “and consideration for the faith of the officer or NCO”.

This issue remains one of the major points of opposition, and perhaps confusion, for the hard-line rabbis. In Aviner’s ruling last week, he stated that it is impossible for an enlisted soldier to ensure he does not get placed in a mixed gender combat unit.

Despite this claim, the joint service protocol states explicitly that mixed-gender combat units must have tracks for gender separate training and service at the company level for religious soldiers who do not want to serve in the mixed gender track.

The protocol also explicitly states that all sleeping and living quarters must be gender separate and clarifies how such arrangements must be implemented.