IDF Major Explains Why He Is Joining The Charedi Rally

JERUSALEM (VINnews) — Major (Res.) Yoel Shilo, a company commander in the reserves, announced that he intends to attend tomorrow the Haredi rally opposite the High Court, and to repeat what he said last year, when he published an extensive post calling on members of Religious Zionism to stand alongside the Haredi public in its struggle against the Supreme Court’s ruling on the conscription issue.

This is what Major Shilo wrote then:
“Let’s start from the end: when the day comes, after the High Court, or its surrogate in the person of the State Attorney or the Attorney General, will veto any attempt to reach an agreement and regulation of the status of yeshiva students, whose Torah-study is their craft, and the legal dictatorship will again try with all its might to push the State of Israel into anarchy and civil war against the will of the people in the middle of a real war, using its dictatorial power, and the charedi public will have to again stand in its hundreds of thousands opposite the High Court and remind it that the public is stronger than it; you will not stand there alone. We, many of the Religious Zionist yeshiva graduates who serve in the army and take an active part in the current war, will stand there with you and say to the High Court: enough.

We understand very well the ‘draft the Haredim’ campaign. It is not a campaign to increase the Haredi public’s involvement in the State of Israel; on the contrary, it is a campaign to humiliate the Haredi public and reduce its power in the State of Israel.
Does anyone think the Haredim will be drafted without the consent of the great rabbis of the generation? Even Yair Lapid does not think that, but at least they think for themselves: let’s cut off their budgets, let’s turn them into beggars personally and publicly so they won’t influence, so they won’t express an opinion, so they’ll be busy surviving. All this while, by contrast, Arab Israelis who support our enemy are promoted by affirmative preference and invited to be members of leftist governments.

We, the Religious Zionists who merited to study Torah, know how to appreciate the personal and familial devotion in the diligence of Torah study; we know that loyalty to Shulchan Aruch, to Rashi, and to the Tosafot demands true self-sacrifice and deep belonging to the people of Israel and its mission.

Some of our Torah scholars participate in the learning projects ‘V’shinantam’ and ‘Dirshu’ and see the many thousands who give themselves day after day to the world of Torah, and we will never belittle the charedi public.

There is among us a real and great dispute about the mitzvah of military service, which in our view is a great privilege, but it is a dispute within the house of study; we have no intention of relying on the dictatorial and arrogant ruling of the High Court that thinks it will decide the fate of Torah scholars in Israel.

I commanded fighters from the charedi sector, and I know that when the will exists, and the qualities of seriousness, self-sacrifice and high self-discipline are expressed in military service, they perform great and wondrous deeds.

We want increased partnership of the charedi sector in the State of Israel in all fields, because the State of Israel needs you, needs people full of faith and Torah, needs great forces of those who believe that the Lord chose us from all nations.We do not buy into the ‘draft the Haredim’ campaign, whose real purpose is to create division, to weaken the people of Israel in a time of war, and to create ‘humiliated and weakened Haredim.’

The people of Israel do not buy it either.The people of Israel believe in a path of love and respect, and therefore through its representatives in the Knesset reaches again and again agreements with the charedi sector on various laws that are struck down by the High Court and its agents in state institutions.

I am not a great rabbi, nor a party leader, but among my people — yeshiva graduates who take a significant part in the fighting — I sit. When things reach the limit and you will need to stand with force before the High Court and ensure that its dictatorship will not govern us, call us, and we will stand before the High Court together with you.”