Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
The author is a former reporter and senior copy editor for American and Canadian newspapers and currently is a leading journalist with Arutz Sheva as well as contriibuting to the Jerusalem Post and various American Jewish newspapers.The secret now is out of the bag. The IDF and Israeli’s popular media are afraid, not of an enemy but of something that threatens the IDF's presumptuous position as an idol of Israel. It is afraid that its soldiers will believe that G-d is superior to military commanders.
The dispute between Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Rabbi Eliezer Melamed, head of the Har Brachah Hesder yeshiva, has brought the true issue to light. Ostensibly, Barak, along with IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi, argue that defending the Jewish State does not allow for rabbis stating an opinion that certain military orders may violate their interpretation of the Torah.
They claim that because the Hesder yeshiva are funded by the government in a program that combines Torah study with service in the Israel Defense Forces, the rabbis have no right to challenge military authority.
Statements by some rabbis, in particular by Rabbi Melamed, that there are two commanders -- the military and the Almighty -- gave Israel's media the opportunity to pounce on the rabbis, as if Torah scholars want every military order to be cleared by rabbinic authority.
When the secular popular media or political, business and military leaders proclaim that IDF officers are the one and only authority in a "democratic Jewish state", the secular society’s favorite buzz word, they reveal their own weakness.
The IDF’s greatest strength is the Jewish tradition of fearing G-d, but the heroes of the Six-Day War in 1967 lost that power when they forgot to realize that there was a greater force behind their victories. The self-congratulatory pride of secular Israelis was followed by the
A "democratic Jewish state" is the secular society’s favorite buzz word.
smugness and arrogance that resulted in the country’s lack of preparedness, which left it an easy target for invading forces in the Yom Kippur War in 1973.
Israel's secular society always has wanted it both ways when it comes to G-d. Political and military leaders, businessmen and athletes run to rabbis for blessings and often for advice in private but in public, they treat rabbis as treif (non kosher).
Their fear is not that a rabbi will decide that orders to expel Jews are not kosher. Even Chief of Staff Ashkenazi has said several times that the expulsions of Jews from their homes are police actions that should not involve soldiers. However, his allegiance to the secular onslaught, led by Voice of Israel, Yediot Acharonot and Ehud Barak, does not allow him to tell the government to keep the army out of politics.
Barak, instead, accuses the rabbis of mixing politics with the IDF by expressing an opinion on expulsion orders.
The real fear of Barak, General Ashkenazi and their chorus who constantly proclaim the 
The army is becoming more Jewish in its values and observance and not just on its surface.
importance of a Jewish State, is that the army is becoming more Jewish in its values and observance and not just on its surface.
They are afraid that Israeli society will come to believe that G-d actually is more powerful than the army.
They are fighting a losing battle.
Thank G-d.