By Matt Agorist of The Free Thought Project
Outgoing chief rabbi, Brig. Gen. Rafi Peretz, of the
Israeili Defense Forces, who is stepping down after six years in the
position is being replaced. And, his successor, Rabbi Col. Eyal Karim’s
appointment is being met with backlash — as he is outspoken for allowing
soldiers to rape women during wartime.
Karim, who was announced on
Monday as the intended new IDF chief rabbi, has provoked controversy with
previous misogynistic statements, such as opposing female conscription and
implying that rape was permissible in times of war.
According to Ynet News, Karim has been serving
as the head of the Rabbinate Department in the Military Rabbinate. He is an
alumnus of the Bnei Akiva Nachalim and the Ateret Cohanim yeshivas, and he
served previously as a combat paratrooper, eventually commanding their elite reconnaissance
unit, before taking a break from the military and eventually returning to its
rabbinate.
In 2012, Karim’s controversy
started when the Hebrew religious website KIPA, asked him, in the light of
certain biblical passages, if IDF soldiers were permitted to commit rape during
wartime despite the general understanding that such an act is widely considered
repugnant.
His answer enraged many
Israelis.
“Although
intercourse with a female gentile is very grave, it was permitted during
wartime (under the conditions it stipulated) out of consideration for the
soldiers’ difficulties,” he wrote. “And since our concern is the success of the
collective in the war, the Torah permitted [soldiers] to satisfy the evil
urge under the conditions it stipulated for the sake of the collective’s
success.”
In other words, soldiers can rape
innocent women during times of war in order to keep their morale up.
The head of the Knesset Committee on
the Status of Women and Gender Equality, MK Aida Touma-Sliman (Joint Arab
List), said, “Col. Karim’s ruling on permitting raping non-Jewish women is
similar to the fatwa of a murderous organization that’s not so far from
Israel’s borders. I will contact the attorney general and oppose the
appointment, and I call on female and male members of Knesset to join my
request.”
The chairperson of Na’amat —Movement
of Working Women & Volunteers, Galia Wolloch, said, “Anyone who thinks that
rape is okay as a morale-booster for soldiers, so long as it’s of gentile
women, cannot lead the army to good moral and spiritual places.”
When he is not advocating for the
rape of women, Karim is outspoken about refusing to allow women in the IDF.
Karim wrote in 2002 that it was
explicitly forbidden.
“In a situation such as the one
during the War of Independence, in which there was a real pikuah nefesh [matter
of life or death] of the Jewish people, women also participated in the defense
of the nation and country, even though the situation was not so modest,” he
wrote. “But in our era, we do not live with a real threat to our survival.
“And because of the liable damage to
the modesty of the girl and the nation, the great rabbis and the Chief
Rabbinate have ruled that the enlistment of girls to the IDF is entirely
forbidden.”
Karim is also outspoken about women
singing at military events. If a woman sings at an event, he claims, men should
not have to attend as it is repugnant.
According to the Times of
Israel, the IDF on
Monday responded to allegations against Karim, saying the colonel “wishes to
clarify that his words were only uttered in response to a theoretical
hermeneutical question, certainly not to a practical halachic question.
“Rabbi Karim never wrote, said, or
even thought that an IDF soldier is permitted to sexually harm a woman during
wartime,” the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit added in a statement.
Except that he did — as evidenced by
the above quote.
Meretz party leader Zehava Galon
said that Karim is not “suitable to be the rabbinic authority of the army, in
which tens of thousands of women serve, and is not suitable to represent Jewish
morality in any form.” She also condemned “his frightening, racist, and
inflammatory statement” regarding wartime rape.
Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid urged
Karim to disavow his remarks about women’s enlistment, saying, according to the
Times of Israel, that without a public statement to that effect “he cannot be
the military chief rabbi.”
“Regarding the reports that he said
that beautiful gentile women can be raped during wartime, it appears this is not
his opinion,” Lapid continued. “But if he thinks this, not only may he not be
the chief military rabbi, he can’t even be a rabbi.”
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