Education Minister Naftali Bennett, chairman of the New Right party who is striving for the position of Defense Minister in the next government, claimed in a closed conversation with activists that religious officers are currently held back by the IDF from reaching its top echelons. Bennett said he is planning to change this in the near future.
Bennett says in the recordings, publicized by Channel 12 News, that the IDF must "go back to winning again" and attacks Gantz for being "a flawed chief of staff."
"Have you ever asked why there are no religious top-ranking IDF officers? How can it be that half of Battalion 1 are wearing kippahs (skullcaps), full of religious battalion and brigade commanders, and somewhere on the way to the rank of General Staff, this phenomenon is gone," Bennett asked. "There's a problem here and we must correct it."
Bennett also claimed that the IDF tries to block religious officers from advancing to senior positions: "If you want to advance in the IDF, you have to align with the liberal agenda of humanism, human rights, and workshops reminiscent of the 1930s. They forget only one thing - they forget how to win."