Duvi Honig is Founder & CEO, Orthodox Jewish Chamber of Commerce
For years, the haredi community has been told to stop worrying.
Send your sons to the IDF, they are told. Their religion will be respected. Shabbat will be protected. Their standards of modesty will be accommodated. They will be able to serve the Jewish state without being forced to compromise the Judaism around which they have built their lives.
And now, right in the middle of one of Israel's most politically charged debates over drafting haredi Jews, the system has been caught with its hand in the cookie jar.
The IDF itself has acknowledged that a Givati Brigade group's training exercise conducted on Shabbat had no operational justification. The exercise was not brought to the attention of the brigade Rabbi. The commander falsely told the soldiers the Rabbi had been asked and had permitted it, and the IDF later acknowledged that the commander's orders infringed upon the religious soldiers' way of life. It also infringed on the IDF's own orders forbidding activities not permitted on Shabbat unless lives are at stake (pikuach nefesh).
Read that again. There was no operational necessity.
This was not soldiers refusing to save lives. This was not war demanding an immediate response. This was a training exercise that did not have to happen on Shabbat.
That matters enormously.
Because while politicians use the haredi draft as a political and election issue, while Haredim who evade the draft are lectured about responsibility and accused of refusing to share the burden, an incident like this exposes exactly why so many do not simply accept the assurances they are being given.
Their concerns are not imaginary.
Then came the confrontation involving the same religious Givati soldiers ordered to enter a cramped armored vehicle with a female paramedic, which would be allowed by rabbis only in a life and death situation. It turns out this was an operational necessity, that there was a security situation and that there was no male paramedic available, but the soldiers had lost faith in their commander's veracity and did not believe him. Sixteen soldiers were ultimately sentenced to military prison after refusing. Five received ten-day sentences and eleven received five days.
These were not young men running away from military service. They were already there. They were already wearing the uniform. They were already putting themselves in danger to defend Israel. They were a group which had been commended for their outstanding service in live combat situations.
Their demand was that serving Israel should not mean surrendering the religious standards they were promised they could maintain.
Kudos to Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich for standing up and saying so publicly. He backed the soldiers and demanded answers from the IDF, saying religious soldiers must be able to serve while preserving their values and beliefs.
Kudos as well to the rabbinic leadership of the Hesder yeshivot for standing behind these young men. And kudos to Chief Rabbi Kalman Ber for challenging the punishment and asking the question that should be echoing throughout Israel right now: what happened to the rights of the religious soldier?
Most of all, kudos to the soldiers themselves.
These young men were prepared to go to military prison rather than quietly surrender what they understood to be their religious obligations.
People may disagree with their decision. Military commanders have their responsibilities, and an army obviously cannot function if every soldier individually decides which operational orders to follow. But that does not erase the underlying problem.
Israel cannot promise religious soldiers one set of protections and then accept conditions in which commanders do not keep the IDF's own orders so that soldiers believe they must choose between their commanders and their rabbanim.
Imagine for a moment that this controversy involved another religion.
If Muslim soldiers in a Western democracy were unnecessarily pressured to violate a central religious observance when there was no operational need, there would rightly be an outcry. The same would be true if committed Christian soldiers were unnecessarily forced into circumstances that violated deeply held religious requirements and then punished when they objected.
Religious soldiers deserve that same respect.
This is especially important because the debate is no longer simply about soldiers who are already inside the IDF. Israel is debating whether to compel an entire community of young Haredi men into that system.
Before demanding their trust, Israel has to earn it.
Shabbat is not a lifestyle preference. Tzniut is not a political slogan. Halakha is not something an observant Jew follows when convenient and abandons when an institution finds it inconvenient.
Of course, Judaism recognizes the overriding obligation to save lives. When genuine military necessity exists and lives are in danger, that is an entirely different halakhic and moral discussion.
But that is precisely what makes the Shabbat incident so damaging. The IDF itself says there was no operational reason for the exercise to have been held then.
So before another politician attacks the Haredi community for hesitating to send its sons into the military, that politician should look carefully at what just happened.
The haredi community has been asking a basic question: Will our sons truly be allowed to remain religious Jews inside the IDF? The religious Zionists had been promised that they could.
They deserve more than promises. They deserve guarantees that work on the ground.
They deserve commanders who, if unobservant, are taught to understand the seriousness of Shabbat. They deserve commanders who adhere to the IDF's clear protections regarding modesty and interaction between men and women. And when those protections are violated unnecessarily, someone must be held accountable. The parents of these soldiers, as well as hesder yeshiva heads, are demanding accountability for the commander who prevaricated.
This is not anti-IDF.
Our soldiers are defending the Jewish people with extraordinary courage, and their sacrifice deserves our gratitude and respect. But loving Israel does not require remaining silent when an Israeli institution gets something wrong.
Quite the opposite.
The Jewish state aspired to create an army in which defending the country and remaining faithful to Torah are not competing obligations.
Haredi and religious Zionist rabbis have been warning the IDF for years about their failures in living up to this aspiration.
Now, during the very debate in which the draft is being used as a political weapon against haredim, events inside Givati have put those concerns directly in front of the country.
The IDF hand has been caught in the cookie jar.
It should stop punishing the soldiers and start fixing the problem.
Because no Jewish young man should be told that in order to defend the Jewish state, he must first compromise on being a Torah-true Jew.