Amidror slams rabbis who encourage insubordination
“If we heed those rabbis, we will damage Israel’s national security...and bring down the State of Israel,” new NSC head says.
By JONAH MANDELAmidror 311(photo credit: Nisim Lev)
The incoming head of the National Security Council, Maj.- Gen. (res.) Ya’acov Amidror, spoke out harshly on Tuesday against rabbis who encourage military insubordination, which he called an existential danger to the State of Israel.Speaking at a panel on “the limits of obedience of the religious public” at the Jerusalem Conference, Amidror said that as a national security expert, he had determined that refusing orders, such as those to evacuate Jews from their homes, posed a far greater danger to Israel than the Gaza disengagement, to which he had vehemently objected.“I thought the disengagement was irresponsible from every possible aspect, and did my utmost to convince Likud members to oppose it,” he said.“At the same time, when the rabbis called to refuse orders, I went to one military unit after another to explain why there was one thing worse than the unilateral withdrawal, and that was if there were levels of military insubordination that would prevent completing the [withdrawal],” he explained.“If someone is sick, it is not the rabbi who determines what he can eat on Yom Kippur, and a rabbi would encourage such a person to follow the doctor’s orders,” Amidror continued.“The danger that refusing orders poses is to Israel’s national security, and there is no room here for rabbinic considerations – rabbis don’t know about national security, and their pretentiousness to understand it is like their pretentiousness to understand medicine.“The rabbis must understand that a sovereign country can make decisions,” he stated. “If we heed those rabbis, we will damage Israel’s national security...and bring down the State of Israel.”
