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ISRAELI PERSECUTION OF ANOTHER RELIGIOUS GIRL IN MILITARY PRISON

4 Shvat, 5781, Parshas Bo °°  January 17, ’21

Sunday, January 17, 2021

By Binyomin Feinberg

We received confirmation of yet another religious girl, Odel bas Oshras Sorah, incarcerated in Military Prison Number Six. She hails from a Chassidishe family of longtime ba’alei teshuva in Southern Israel. She’s been imprisoned for two weeks, in wake of her refusal to enlist in the Israeli Army.

According to Rabbis from across the spectrum, it’s absolutely prohibited for any girl to enlist in the Army. In Judaism, some prohibitions rise to the level of “Yai’horaig Ve’al Ya’avor,” requiring us to do everything possible to avoid transgression, including sacrificing one’s life, if need be (Shulchan Aruch, Yoreh Daiyoh 157:1). As stated by numerous Torah leaders over approximately the past 70 years, women serving in the Israeli Army is included under the rubric of “Yai’horaig Ve’al Ya’avor.”

°  In recent months, the Army has been summoning religious girls to submit to a Rayon Dat (religiosity interview, or interrogation) – on the pretext that they studied at a non-religious school, and therefore ostensibly need to confirm their religiosity (to a panel of military officers intent on leveraging the Torah to undermine it). However, in the wake of widespread neglect by the Media, some askonim and Rabbonim, and most of the public, the Army is continuing their escalation of Giyus Banos.

This case of Odel is just one of an increasing number of religious girls recently being targeted by the Draft Offices – even without the pretext of a non-religious school.  Other religious girls being currently targeted include Anna bas Miriam and Shulamis bas Shoshana Bas Sheva (19 y/o). The Draft Offices are persecuting both, and in an apparently lawless manner.

° In addition, we’ve also received credible information that Odel is being severely mistreated in prison. Having covered these female refusenik cases for about two years, we know for a fact that this is a frequent occurrence – clearly part of an Israeli Army policy, a policy hard to construe as anything less than antireligious, specifically: anti-Jewish.   Sometimes they’ll deny the principled refusenik kosher food. Sometimes they’ll deny or severely limit communication with family or legal counsel. Sometimes they’ll even deny critical healthcare. Additionally, intensive verbal abuse appears to be a staple of the military prison regimen for female religious objectors.

°  Another frequent example of how many girls are persecuted in Israeli military prison is the widespread refusal to allow girls to wear skirts.  The hypocrisy is glaring: When the IDF wishes to market the Army to women around the world, they feign compatibility with Judaism and basic modesty by ensuring religious recruits have easy access to skirts. However, when a religious girl in military prison insists on wearing a skirt, in compliance with the Mesorah (religious tradition) of observant Jewish communities throughout the world, the IDF suddenly encounters acute clothing shortages. They employ a ridiculous rationing of skirts,  extending to the point that the prisons will often only provide makeshift skirts. They take pants,  cut open the legs, and ostensibly resew them, forcing the religious girl to walk around in a bizarre imitation skirt, as if to punish her for her resolve to maintain her modesty and the Jewish Minhag.  Thus, those women who cooperate with the Army’s “Mizron Tzahali” paradigm merit designer quality uniforms (for reasons best left unsaid here), while girls who insist on following the Torah are condemned to walk around in abnormal, if not disgraceful garb.

°  Worse, many girls are denied skirts altogether. Some have even been punished by solitary confinement for merely insisting on their religious and civil rights to wear a skirt. Solitary confinement in Israeli military prison is emotional tormenting. The room is intentionally undersized, often with poor ventilation. It’s a form of psychological warfare designed to break and severely punish those who insist on their human and religious rights.

°  Another reason for the Military Prison’s “Thou Shalt Wear No Skirt Before Me” policy is that the religious girls must be made to feel that they’re really not religious. There’s a concept of “gaslighting,” convincing you to question your own convictions.  This is a technique often employed against religious girls seeking to secure their legal entitlement to a military service exemption, in the Religiosity Interview (“Rayon Dat”) process. This trend is more than alluded to in the recently published Chotam Guidebook (for girls to avoid conscription:
https://www.chotam.org.il/media/61762/pinkaskis-orange-english.pdf?fbclid=IwAR1hBP9tHJxSIfF07n8ywx27I_kWn0jfd9EOBy7fYfRe1xNChBPBU4qLLo0 ).

°  The Army also seeks to compel the girls to violate the Halacha, and their own moral principles and sensibilities (see also
http://firstamendmentactivist.blogspot.com/2020/02/creep-state.html ). Thus, even if the girl ultimately prevails in obtaining her exemption, the antireligious establishment feels it still has had an impact – in eroding the inherent Jewish modesty nurtured by generations of Jewish mothers for four thousand years.