Analysis / Hesder yeshivas' `dual loyalty' dilemma

It is hardly surprising that the largest group of soldiers (to date) to collectively refuse orders related to the disengagement comes from a hesder yeshiva unit, which combines army service with Torah study. Soldiers who are not yeshiva students, even if they oppose the disengagement, serve as individuals rather than as a unit, and even when there are many such individuals, there is also social pressure in the opposite direction: not to separate themselves from their comrades in the unit. If there was once talk of not using the Golani Brigade in the evacuation because of its "high proportion" - about 33 percent - of religious soldiers, in the hesder units the rate is 100 percent, meaning that social pressure may be directed toward refusal rather than against it.

Moreover, the yeshiva soldiers differ from other religious soldiers - even those who studied in pre-army preparatory yeshivas - because they are still in the "hothouse" of the religious education system, and will return there after their army service. Their rabbis guide them throughout their army service, and the young men will have to account to the rabbis and their fellow yeshiva students, rather than only to the army, for their behavior during their service. They are also more attentive to the rabbis' opinions than are other religious soldiers. In short, while many religious soldiers face a "dual loyalty" dilemma these days, the dilemma is particularly acute for hesder soldiers.

Did these soldiers' rabbis tell them to refuse orders? It is hard to know. Most of the rabbis who have explicitly called for this are not affiliated with hesder yeshivas, but some hesder yeshiva heads, such as Rabbis Dov Lior of Kiryat Arba, Nachum Rabinowitz of Ma'aleh Adumim and Elyakim Levanon of Elon Moreh, do support refusal. Moreover, many rabbis who do not explicitly support it, or who even oppose it, nevertheless "understand" and even encourage "gray refusal": declaring oneself personally "incapable" of participating in the evacuation when the day comes, rather than explicitly refusing to obey orders for political reasons. That is why it is hard to predict the ultimate dimensions of refusal: Those who feel themselves "incapable" of evacuating settlers will not be revealed until the evacuation begins.

How can religious refusal be handled? First, it would be unwise to exacerbate things by threatening to dismantle all hesder yeshivas. The question of whether these institutions are either needed or justified is a complex one that should not be decided in the heat of the moment. Moreover, not only is there no justification for collective punishment, but it might well be counterproductive, as Rabbi Yuval Cherlow of the Petah Tivka hesder yeshiva demonstrates. Cherlow is a vocal opponent of refusal, even the "gray" kind. Yet he says that recent threats by Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Dan Halutz to shut down the hesder yeshivas make it harder for people like him to speak out, lest he be perceived as "caving in" to Halutz's threats.

However, there is justification for saying that any yeshiva whose leaders encourage refusal, even of the "gray" variety, will be removed from the hesder framework. It is untenable for a yeshiva whose students are defined as soldiers even while they are studying, to simultaneously incite them to refuse orders.