Their company commander rebuked them, yet they informed him that they were simply unable to take part in such a mission. The commander brought the IDF rabbi of the Central Command, Rabbi Yehuda Vizner, to convince the platoon to obey orders. He failed to convince them to change their minds.
The soldiers were reassigned from manning checkpoints surrounding Gush Katif to guard duty in the region with the mission of thwarting attempts by anti-disengagement activists to sneak into the Jewish towns slated for destruction. The soldiers told their commanders that they will refuse to arrest any Jews on their way to Gush Katif.
Rabbi Yitzchak Levy (Religious Zionist Renewal) said Monday that if he was still a soldier, and was placed in the situation of manning a roadblock to Gush Katif on the Sabbath – as soldiers faced this past Sabbath - he would refuse the order.
Rabbi Tzefania Drori, Chief Rabbi of Kiryat Shemona and Dean of the Hesder (Torah studies interspersed with Army duty) Yeshiva there, has called on soldiers not to implement Disengagement orders, though he is against explicit declarations of refusal.
Rabbi Drori said:
Ten IDF soldiers of the Lavi Batallion, who were said to have refused Disengagement orders publicly Sunday, had informed their commanders of their intent already last Thursday.
Their Battalion Commander reprimanded them and convinced two out of the ten to change their minds after threatening them with being kicked out of their unit.
A Golani Brigade company commander from the Gush Katif community of Gadid was placed in charge of a roadblock intended to prevent non-residents from entering Gush Katif Sunday night.
Captain Assaf Yemini was faced with former neighbors and family members at the Kisufim checkpoint as he checked the ID cards of those wishing to enter Gush Katif.
Shoshanna Alnakova, Yemini’s teacher and neighbor in the Gush Katif community of Gadid, described the scene to Arutz-7. “There was chaos at the Kisufim Crossing, with residents urging soldiers to refuse orders to bar Jews from Gush Katif. I arrived by car to the checkpoint and to my surprise I saw Assaf opposite me. I said to him, ‘Assaf, you can’t prevent Jews from going to their homes – refuse the order. He broke out in tears and said to me, ‘not near my soldiers,’ eventually allowing me to pass without showing my ID. Then his parents arrived and his mother begged him to come home. That scene was one of the hardest I have ever witnessed.”
Alnakova said she expected soldiers to follow the example set by Corporal Avi Bieber last month. “When Avi saw police and soldiers hitting and injuring youngsters he got up and said ‘I am unable’ – every soldier that sees an inhuman act must say ‘I am unable.’ A soldier that does not say this will never be able to forgive himself for the fact that he threw Jews out of their homes.”
The soldiers were reassigned from manning checkpoints surrounding Gush Katif to guard duty in the region with the mission of thwarting attempts by anti-disengagement activists to sneak into the Jewish towns slated for destruction. The soldiers told their commanders that they will refuse to arrest any Jews on their way to Gush Katif.
Rabbi Yitzchak Levy (Religious Zionist Renewal) said Monday that if he was still a soldier, and was placed in the situation of manning a roadblock to Gush Katif on the Sabbath – as soldiers faced this past Sabbath - he would refuse the order.
Rabbi Tzefania Drori, Chief Rabbi of Kiryat Shemona and Dean of the Hesder (Torah studies interspersed with Army duty) Yeshiva there, has called on soldiers not to implement Disengagement orders, though he is against explicit declarations of refusal.
Rabbi Drori said:
“Soldiers must take an example from the biblical personalities [midwives] Yocheved and Miriam, who received an order from Pharaoh [to kill all male Jewish children they deliver], did not refuse it, but in reality did not fulfill it. It is forbidden to uproot Jews from their homes and to turn them over to terrorists, but to refuse explicitly harms Israeli society.”
Ten IDF soldiers of the Lavi Batallion, who were said to have refused Disengagement orders publicly Sunday, had informed their commanders of their intent already last Thursday.
Their Battalion Commander reprimanded them and convinced two out of the ten to change their minds after threatening them with being kicked out of their unit.
A Golani Brigade company commander from the Gush Katif community of Gadid was placed in charge of a roadblock intended to prevent non-residents from entering Gush Katif Sunday night.
Captain Assaf Yemini was faced with former neighbors and family members at the Kisufim checkpoint as he checked the ID cards of those wishing to enter Gush Katif.
Shoshanna Alnakova, Yemini’s teacher and neighbor in the Gush Katif community of Gadid, described the scene to Arutz-7. “There was chaos at the Kisufim Crossing, with residents urging soldiers to refuse orders to bar Jews from Gush Katif. I arrived by car to the checkpoint and to my surprise I saw Assaf opposite me. I said to him, ‘Assaf, you can’t prevent Jews from going to their homes – refuse the order. He broke out in tears and said to me, ‘not near my soldiers,’ eventually allowing me to pass without showing my ID. Then his parents arrived and his mother begged him to come home. That scene was one of the hardest I have ever witnessed.”
Alnakova said she expected soldiers to follow the example set by Corporal Avi Bieber last month. “When Avi saw police and soldiers hitting and injuring youngsters he got up and said ‘I am unable’ – every soldier that sees an inhuman act must say ‘I am unable.’ A soldier that does not say this will never be able to forgive himself for the fact that he threw Jews out of their homes.”