Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich sharply attacked IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir on Thursday after Zamir reportedly excluded Rabbi Yigal Levinstein, head of the Eli pre-military academy, from a professional meeting on integrating religious soldiers into the Armored Corps. The decision triggered a boycott by heads of pre-army academies, who did not attend the session, deepening tensions between the army and religious-Zionist leadership.
Smotrich said he was “standing with the heroes’ academy in Eli,” describing it as a flagship institution that leads in combat and command enlistment and has lost about 30 alumni in the current war. He accused Zamir of joining what he called a “pile-on” against the academy, which he said was already under attack by Yair Golan, and said the army chief was hurting the academy, its leaders, and its thousands of students and graduates who are at the forefront of Israel’s security, Zionist, and social activity.
“The exclusion of the heads of the academy because of their clear value-based stance creates a very painful feeling,” Smotrich said. “I call on the chief of staff to retract and to listen to the important words of the academy heads, spoken from a hurting heart and from genuine concern for the strength of the IDF and the security of Israel.”
The dispute began after Zamir removed Levinstein from the invite list for a meeting that was meant to discuss the integration of religious soldiers into the Armored Corps and preserving their religious lifestyle, especially after the corps was opened to women. The article said the move followed a letter Levinstein published urging his students to avoid serving in Sayeret Matkal because of women being integrated into the unit. Despite the boycott, the meeting went ahead with senior rabbis from hesder yeshivot, including Yehoshua Weitzman, Yaakov Medan, Hananel Etrog, Eyal Greiner, Chaim Wolfson, Amichai Gordin and Eliezer Shנוולד. The report said the key question now is whether Zamir will seek reconciliation or whether the crisis will deepen.
