Israeli Army Rabbi ‘Not Sorry’ For Disparaging Female Soldiers
Rabbi Yigal Levinstein, the head of a prominent pre-army training academy in the occupied West Bank, is standing his ground after his denigrating remarks about women soldiers made waves in the Israel.
“They recruit them to the army, where they enter as Jews, but they’re not Jews by the time they leave,” Levinstein said, in a video broadcast on Channel 2 News Tuesday. “Not in the genetic sense, but all of their values and priorities have been upset and we must not allow it.”
Levinstein told Channel 2 News that his tone had been “inappropriate,” and said that he regretted “hurting people in the way I communicated myself,” but he maintained that the Israel Defense Forces’ “feminist approach” of letting men and women serve together in mixed-gender units was intolerable.
His comments drew rebukes from Defense Minister Avi Lieberman, who said that Levinstein could be stripped of his position at the academy based in the Eli settlement, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who extolled women in combat as critical to Israel’s security.
“Female Jewish fighters, from the time of Yael the heroine to the present — with Hannah Senesh and the fighters in the Etzel, the Palmach and the Lehi and the IDF, heroic warriors in the police and Border Police that we see here on the streets — are an active, and sometimes very senior, part of our national defense,” he said in a meeting at the Knesset.
Contact Daniel J. Solomon at solomon@forward.com or on Twitter @DanielJSolomon
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and the protests on college campuses.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.