ROB – I want to clarify my previous post, which you have twisted to your advantage. There was an incident that occurred on approximately 9/5/11, where four soldiers walked out of an event where women were singing. They refused orders to return. They were subsequently removed from the IDF for failure to follow orders. There was only a little bit of noise in the beginning from this event, but a few months later it suddenly burst into a very “newsworthy” issue, even coming to the attention of Hillary Clinton, who claimed that the refusal of the soldiers to listen to the women sing was “disappointing” and reminded her of the situation in Iran.
There were articles in the Jerusalem Post alone – not to mention any other newspaper written in the western world on the following dates: 9/8/11, 9/27/11, 11/25/11, 12/7/11, 12/9/11, 12/14/11, 12/23/11, 12/27/11, 12/28/11, 1/2/12, 1/5/12, 1/11/12, and finally on 4/24/12. That totals 13 articles over this not quite 8 month period, but 10 of them came in a 7 week period, which is more than 1 article per week. Finally, the rule came out that the soldiers cannot even use ear plugs when being forced to attend such events. So much for the IDF respecting someone’s religious beliefs. What is the problem with a soldier not listening to a woman sing? Is she going to sing his orders? I doubt it. This was purely a morale issue and they went with boosting the morale of the chiloni soldiers and totally trampled on an important principle of the religious soldiers. In my opinion, this was totally unnecessary since it was not an action that was required for proper military service, only something that someone who wants to rob a person of his religious identity.