The 60-year struggle to make the Israeli army a “safe” place for religious soldiers continues. The present debate is over the question of whether religious soldiers should be forced to take part in cultural programs that violate Halachah (Jewish Law), such as those that feature women singing.
Rabbi Ariel Bareli, a Rabbinical Court judge in the city of Sderot and a lecturer in the city’s Yeshivat Hesder, attacked the army’s decision to define cultural programs in the army as full-fledged military activity obligating all soldiers.
“This insensitive decision is a blatant disregard of the cultural milieu of yeshiva-student soldiers,” Rabbi Bareli said.
The argument is between those who advise soldiers how they can/should behave under the new military directive, and those who concentrate on how to have the directive changed. 
“The Chief of Staff is pushing us, the soldiers’ educators, into a corner. On the one hand, we are aware of the importance of uniting the soldiers, but on the other hand, the way that has been chosen to do this does not jibe with the Torah way in which the religious soldiers were taught. Jewish Law forbids a man from hearing a woman [aside from immediate relatives] singing.”
The military directive requiring all soldiers to participate in cultural programming does ask commanders to plan programs that are appropriate to all soldiers' beliefs.
Rabbi Bareli, grandson of the late Rabbi Moshe Tzvi Neriyah, the founder of the Yeshiva Bnei Akiva high school movement in Israel, feels that with some “advance planning, an event can be planned that would be acceptable for the entire soldier body. The Chief IDF Rabbi’s request for ‘justified consideration’ is correct and proper for the given situation.”
Rabbi Yisrael Rosen, head of the Zomet Institute for Science and Torah, calls for a more lenient Halakhic approach. In his column in the weekly synagogue sheet Shabbat B'Shabbato, he quotes a recent rabbinic article stating that just as the ban on seeing a married woman’s hair has become slightly more lenient because people have become accustomed to seeing it, a similarly lenient approach should be taken regarding hearing a woman singing. He also says that soldiers can either turn away or cover their ears when a woman is singing during a concert.
In Sum
Rabbi Rosen’s approach can be summed up as relating to how soldiers can and should behave under the new military directive, rather than with how to have the directive changed.
Rabbi Bareli relates to this approach by raising "strong doubts as to whether a general, permanent dispensation can or should be issued based on leniencies proposed only for exceptional circumstances."
“After all,” write the Sderot rabbi, “our goal is to be able to fulfill the Law as written, without relying on leniencies. The publication of a call for permanent leniencies harms our great efforts to uplift the public and strive for perfection in matters of purity and holiness.”