A group of leading rabbis has scheduled a meeting with Defense Minister Ehud Barak Tuesday, following the attack by Maj-Gen Avi Mizrachi on the Har Bracha Yeshiva and his demand that the IDF cease enlisting its students. The rabbis intend to tell Barak that “under no circumstances” will they allow “damage to the academic and Torah freedom of the hesder yeshivas.” In using the term “academic freedom,” the rabbis are co-opting a term which until now has usually been used by the Left to justify seditious statements by academicians.
Interviewed by the Besheva weekly, Rabbi Amnon Sugarman, head of the Hispin Hesder Yeshiva in the Golan Heights, said that he does not understand the “onslaught” against Rabbi Eliezer Melamed, head of the Har Bracha yeshiva and Rabbi Elyakim Levanon, who heads the Elon Moreh yeshiva, since they were not aware of their students intentions to raise protest signs against evictions of Jews. He added that "all of the students' zeal to serve in the IDF comes from the rabbis."