Rabbi Avigdor Miller: IDF=House of Shame!
Q: Why isn’t unified support for Israel today encouraged by all Orthodox Jews?
A: And the answer is because it’s the opposite of Orthodoxy. Now, I’ll have to explain that.
Suppose somebody would make a big movement to take in all Jewish girls and to teach them to be harlots. Would you say that it’s justified by any purpose under the sun? Let’s say you wanted it for the purposes that their wages should go to support a kollel.
The State of Israel drafts girls. And they state openly in their writings, they have authorities who say what their reason is. They want to create a cultural rebuilding of the Jewish people; which means they want to teach the girls immorality, and the army is one of the best means for doing it.
The truth is, that a great part of the abortions are performed on girls in the army. A great many abortions are performed on girls in the army! Now, abortions don’t come from learning Rambam and Mesilas Yesharim.
And there are a lot of girls who don’t have to make abortions because they are using precautions. So the question is, can we approve of such a state? To us, it’s the greatest contradiction to the Torah.
Not only for Jews. Even if it was a gentile state, we would be violently opposed to such an order. Let’s say, suppose Japan were to draft girls, we would hate them for it! Japanese girls should all become harlots? If they want to become, let them do it voluntarily. But to force them into an army?! So how could anybody who is Orthodox or is a little bit decent think it’s a necessity to support the State of Israel?
Of course if they’re attacked by others who are trying to endanger the lives of the Jews there, we have to speak up. But we have to be opponents of that regime.
Now the present regime is one of the best that they ever had up till now, but still despite all the improvements, it’s still so wicked, it’s still so opposed to what we stand for that we can never make peace with such a state. It’s a huge bordello into which girls are forced to come and learn to sacrifice the principles for which the Jewish nation stand.
(December 1981)