Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin (Likud) implored Defense Minister Ehud Barak Thursday to resolve the confrontation with Rabbi Eliezer Melamed of the Har Bracha Hesder Yeshiva.
"I call upon, or even beg the Defense Minister – please find the way to solve this dispute, a dispute that could bring great troubles,” the Speaker said during a tour of southern Mount Hevron. "The Hesder soldiers and its excellent officers are the vanguard that walks before the camp,” he said. “The contribution of the yeshivas is too meaningful and critical for us to be able to cast aspersions upon it,” Rivlin said.
“We must not harm the alliance between the Hesder yeshivas and the army” Rivlin said. “G-d forbid that we inject personal or political needs into this, or even seem as if we are. We also must not make unusual demands of it, that could lead to its demise. Damage to the alliance with the Hesder yeshivas, or even its erosion, will necessarily lead to the sacred consensual principle that the IDF is the army of the people, which is above any political question, and any challenge of its commands.”
Rivlin called upon both the Defense Minister and Rabbi Melamed to “wake up” and cast aside any personal consideration, and to solve the dispute before it is too late. “It is not their political or public fate that is on the balance, but one of the foundations that all of Israeli society rests upon.”
At the end of his tour, Rivlin inaugurated the study hall at the Reuta Hesder Yeshiva in Carmel. Also attending were Chief Rabbi Yonah Metzger, Head of Har Hevron Regional Council Tzviki Bar Chai, and rabbis from the Hevron area.