IDF rabbi: Insubordination shows failure of command

"When soldiers refuse orders – that is a failure of both the human and command factors… I'm against refusing orders and I told the troops not to do so," Rabbi Ram Hacohen, head of the Otniel yeshiva, told Ynet Monday.

Three of Otniel's yeshiva students are among the soldiers sentenced to 28 days in prison for refusing military orders to evacuate settlers in Hebron on Tuesday.

"It is known that I oppose insubordination," Rabbi Hacohen emphasized. "The three squad commanders that were sentenced tonight graduated from our yeshiva. This situation of soldiers refusing orders bears on a real failure by the commanders."

The rabbi believes it would have been possible, by properly dealing with the soldiers, to dissuade them from refusing orders and solve the affair without prosecution and punishment.

"The Kfir division commander could have managed everything with a bit of intelligence and without giving up the army's orders. Having three squad commanders do 28 days jailtime shows the complete failure on the part of the brigade commander," he said.

"We see yet again how these soldiers follow their rabbi and not their commanding officers," said an IDF source. "We have to make it clear – once and for all – that insubordination and benefits do not go together."

Rabbinical encouragement?

One of the questions that arises among the public every time this issue comes up is whether the rabbis were in fact those encouraging the soldiers to refuse and causing confusion in the ranks.

During the 2005 disengagement, rabbis both in the settlements and elsewhere advised soldiers to insubordination. 

Lt-General Dan Halutz, the IDF Chief of Staff at the time, condemned such behavior by the rabbis. "One can't undermine the system and, at the same time, enjoy the conditions of the yeshiva arrangement with the system," he said.

Rabbi Hacohen, however, refutes these claims. "The rabbis did not say to refuse orders. One of the rabbis came today to smooth things over and the rest of the rabbis talked to the soldiers by phone."

"The state of Israel exists under existential threat, and that should be the main concern, and nothing else," he noted.

Meanwhile, while the refusnik soldiers sit in jail, security forces and settlers continue to prepare for Tuesday morning's evacuation of two families from the Hebron market. The IDF has started erected roadblocks around the Etzion Bloc and Judea to prevent right wing activists and settlers from reaching the marketplace.

The evacuation is expected to start in the early morning hours. IDF officials told Ynet that there "will be absolutely zero compassion for any settlers who behave violently towards security forces. Forces will respond firmly towards anyone who misbehaves and will enforce the law to the fullest."

Still, hundreds of settlers and right-wing activists, most of them teenagers, arrived in Hebron Monday to resist the eviction of the two families. Residents of the settlement there gathered the youths and instructed them not to use violence but to "resist with determination."