A Channel 13 report last week which aired a video of a lecture by a rabbi in a pre-army school with ties to Education Minister Rabbi Rafi Peretz, was false and based on only segments of the lecture that were taken out of context, the reporter behind the segment has admitted. In the class, which was filmed, Rabbi Asaf Naumberg is seen explaining that non-religious people are prone to heavy drinking and that men and women socially interact. “Where have you heard that it’s possible to bring [such] evil people closer [to religion]?” he asked his students.Naumberg even goes on to say that it’s wrong to enlist in the IDF if service brings you in touch with such people.
When challenged by a student, Naumberg confronted him and said that religious people should not “become a rag” and “nothing” just so “we could have an army.”On Sunday evening though, the reporter behind the story Omri Maniv apologized for the mistake and admitted that he had mistakenly misunderstood what had happened in the lecture. The mistake was discovered by Presspectiva, a Hebrew news monitoring site affiliated with CAMERA, that watched the entire lecture by Naumberg and discovered that he was playing the role of different types of people in Israeli society. When saying that secular people are evil, for example, he was mimicking how ultra-Orthodox extremists would sound in their criticism of secular-Zionist society. Yamina leader Ayelet Shaked slammed Maniv and Channel 13 and demanded that the station air a full apology in its nightly news show. "The indication I have is that this was intentional and even when under pressure, he [Maniv] did not apologize but kept on attacking," Shaked said. "What is needed here is a thorough correction."After the original broadcast, Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman said, “We’re no longer surprised. Time after time we are exposed to the true intentions of Education Minister Peretz and his buddies, trying to turn the State of Israel into a theocracy."Former Labor MK Revital Swid was also quick to react on Twitter: “In a properly functioning government, Rabbi Rafi Peretz would resign tonight from the Ministry of Education. The deplorable content heard in the Otzem school, which was headed by Peretz until recently, is starkly anti-secular, anti-IDF and anti-Ben Gurion. His silence regarding the report speaks volumes of his agreement on these matters. Shame on him and his entire party. That’s not the ‘Israeli’ unity they speak of.”Head of the Democratic Union Nitzan Horowitz responded that, “Peretz must be suspended immediately. We mustn’t leave the education system in his dangerous, violence-inciting hands for one more second. He is not Minister of Education – He is minister of darkness. A school that incites violence must be closed.”MK Meir Cohen from the Blue and White Party tweeted that the video was “A disgraceful horror show, that has absolutely nothing to do with education. It is disheartening to see how hate groups can form in the guise of educating and preparing for army service. It’s immoral, and mainly disgraces and stains the name of many other, very good pre-army service schools. Peretz, stop this shame.”Transportation Minister Bezalel Smotrich backed up his fellow Yamina Party member, saying that, “It’s hard to argue with the quality of people produced by Rabbi Peretz’s school and the wonderful pre-army service school program in general - the best fighters, officers and commanders in the IDF, and people who contribute so much to society. If these are the products, I guess the education there must be good. Everything else is fake.”Idan Zonshine contributed to this story.