Omer Bar-Lev
Omer Bar-LevYonatan Sindel/Flash 90

MK Omer Bar-Lev (Zionist Union) said at a demonstration in Ramat Hasharon in central Israel on Saturday that “religionization,” in his view, includes soldiers praying at the Western Wall.

“It became known to me that, after Operation Protective Edge, one of the battalions of the Golani Brigade heading towards the south took a slight detour on the way and jumped to the Western Wall, and the whole battalion made [the blessing thanking God for being saved from a dangerous situation]. This is religionization at our expense,” he tweeted on the Walla news site.

Bar-Lev asserted that the battalion had travelled to the Western Wall “at the expense of the taxes we pay.”

Later, Bar-Lev heaped blame on the Religious Zionist public. “The Education Ministry at whose head stands Naftali Bennett issued a summary about the murder of Rabin to secular schools in which it stated that Rabin was murdered amidst political tensions in Israeli society, but ignored the fact that rabbis had decreed Rabin a ‘pursuer’ (thus permitting one to kill him in ‘self-defense,’ ed.) and the fact that the despicable murderer wore a kippa (ritual head-covering) and was connected to a certain sector...there is another attempt here to rewrite history.”

Bar-Lev called religionization “nationalistic,” and asserted that it is “connected to a very small party which, in my opinion, today leads the state, which is the Jewish Home, and it is joined by a large part of Likud MKs.”