Jews who don't like some rabbis' inluence in the Israeli army
The sad part is that the following writer is dead serious...:

"Religious commissars in the IDF By Ze'ev Schiff"
http://www.haaretz.com/
Wed., October 27, 2004 Cheshvan 12, 5765

"One Hanukkah many years ago, I was sitting in the office of a man who was about to become the next chief of staff - Ehud Barak - when there was a knock at the door. It was a religious man who was introduced as a rabbi, and he invited Barak and myself to join in lighting the first candle.

A candelabra and candles were already laid out on a desk in the secretaries' room and all the preparations had been made in Barak's office without him knowing about it. The rabbi placed skullcaps on our heads and immediately began reciting the succession of blessings.

No one inquired how he had entered the office without permission, or who had allowed him to enter the IDF General Staff base without authorization. There was some bewilderment, but no one said a thing because, after all, the rabbi before us was performing a mitzvah.

The rabbi left Barak's office and headed for another one, all without any permit or authority. Those were days when Chabad and other religious groups could treat army bases and commanders as their own. What took place back then in a disorderly, partisan fashion has now taken on an orderly form.

Aside from the formal, sanctioned activities of the IDF Chief Rabbinate, other religious activity takes place within the IDF through external organizations. It resembles missionary activity and aims to create close links between religion and army through various methods.

All of the relevant parties gloss over this activity since it is not ostentatious and soldiers assume it has been approved by the army. The problem is not in lighting a hanukiah after barging into an army base, nor are religious soldiers and their adherence to their faith the source of objection.

Among the kippa-wearing soldiers are many disciplined and outstanding fighters who have reached high rank and senior position, up to and including the General Staff. In many respects, they have over the years taken the time-honored place that kibbutzniks have until now filled in the IDF.

The problem is the new status, albeit indirect, that rabbis in the IDF have been accorded. The leaders are the rabbis of the hesder yeshivas. The spotlight was recently trained on them in the wake of the Halachic decision issued by Rabbi Avraham Shapira, who called on soldiers and policemen to refuse orders to evacuate settlements.

Rabbis have now reached the status of commissars in the IDF, not unlike the former commissars in the Soviet army. They are not commanders, but at their word, decisions are made on important matters. The mere fact that they are involved, even indirectly, in army life is what makes the situation so irregular and problematic.

Who would have ever imagined, for instance, that the rabbis of the hesder yeshivas would be involved in determining what type of military service their pupils would perform in the IDF? They established the Council of Hesder Yeshivas, which the IDF proceeded to recognize.

Not long ago, they scheduled a meeting with the head of the army's manpower division, Elazar Stern, and then mocked him by not turning up at the meeting because the media were laying an ambush for them at the meeting place.

It does not matter what the political stand of these rabbis is, or how they translate the army's orders into Halachic rulings. Even if some of them do not accept Rabbi Shapira's call to refuse orders, it is not their function to "approve" orders in the IDF. With all due respect to the rabbis, their place is in the synagogues and the yeshivas or as army chaplains or other state-sanctioned posts.

They cannot play a role in the IDF, even an indirect one. Just as there are no religious commissars in the Ministry of the Environment or the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, it goes without saying that there should be no religious commissars in the IDF.

Until the War of Independence, the Palmach had its own commissars, at which point its units were reorganized under the IDF, or dismantled.

The kibbutz movement had, and still has, commissars in the army's Nahal settlement units. These two examples derived from partisan arrangements. Yet all of these groups are external bodies, and all of them ought to remain outside the bounds of the IDF."

- posted by Izak @ 11:44 AM