MK Alex Miller
MK Alex MillerIsrael news photo: Flash 90

A Tel Aviv principal told his students the IDF is a part of the ‘Occupation” and that Hamas terrorists actually are “Palestinian freedom fighters.” His comments in a lecture prompted Knesset Member Alex Miller of Yisrael Beiteinu to demand that he be fired.

The principal, Ram Cohen, also called on students to “curse the Occupation” and that Israel should return to the borders that existed from 1949-1967.

“I do not even want to imagine what would have happened if a principal with nationalist views had preached his own political agenda to students. There would have been immediate calls to fire him. In this case, we discover excessive tolerance when talking about incitement from the left."

MK Miller also asked Knesset Education Committee Chairman Zevulun Orlev (Jewish Home) to hold a special session on the issue.

The incident occured several weeks after Defense Minister Ehud Barak cut ties with the Har Brachah Hesder yeshiva because its head rabbi, Eliezer Melamed, teaches students that army order to expel Jews from the homes in Judea and Samaria is against the law of the Torah.

Barak, generally backed by Israeli public media, charged that the rabbi has been inciting his students against the IDF. The Defense Minister argued that the IDF should not use taxpayers’ money to finance the Torah student-army service program at the yeshiva.