In an op-ed for the weekly Besheva, Rabbi Itai Asman argues that religious-Zionist leaders who led a harsh campaign against Haredi military service have inadvertently fueled calls to dissolve the Hesder yeshiva track and question religious women's national service, as the secular 'covenant of those who serve' now targets them.
Rabbi Itai Asman, a religious-Zionist commentator and educator, published a sharply-worded opinion piece in the Besheva weekly on Friday. He argues that parts of the religious-Zionist public — including Knesset members and journalists — who joined a left-wing campaign against the Haredi community's Torah-study exemption have now created a rhetorical weapon that is turning inward.
Asman writes that the campaign, which centered on the secular concept of a 'covenant of those who serve' (ברית המשרתים), made military service the sole measure of contribution to the state. This, he says, has already produced calls from within religious-Zionist circles to abolish the shortened Hesder track and to send religious women to combat roles. The piece contends that the sector's leadership undermined its own ideological defense — the argument for Torah study as a parallel national value — by having ridiculed that same argument when Haredi leaders made it.
The op-ed situates itself against the backdrop of ongoing legislative debates in Israel over military conscription and a Basic Law equating Torah study with IDF service, which the Knesset advanced on a preliminary vote in early June. Asman's analysis reflects a deepening internal controversy within religious-Zionism about its identity and priorities, distinct from the broader coalition-vs-opposition conscription policy debate.
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