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Regev Responds

President of Hiddush, Rabbi Uri Regev, gives his views on the topics that are most affecting Israel's campaign to establish religious fairness and equality.

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Hiddush fights for soldiers' liberty and dignity

Lawfare Project vs. Hiddush – They Got it All Wrong

We were astonished to read the blatant and baseless attack against Hiddush, which fights for freedom of religion and equality, and against our partners in the petition we filed with Israel’s Supreme Court: The Secular Forum and fourteen parents of Israeli soldiers.

Uri Regev 02/06/2022 20:51

Tags: IDF kashrut · kosher · legal advocacy · Passover · Lawfare Project

Source: IDF

Our petition is intended to protect the liberty and dignity of non-religious Jewish soldiers and non-Jewish soldiers who serve in the Israel Defense Force. The attacker is the CEO of an American organization, the Lawfare Project, which defines its mission as "the protection of the human and civil rights of Jews and fighting discrimination." We also found out that the Lawfare Project funded a counter-petition by a number of Yeshiva’s and pre-army preparatory programs.

Upon reading her remarks it becomes apparent that that she has absolutely no comprehension of the facts and their legal significance, of the reality in the IDF, nor of the position of Jewish halachic tradition. To clear the true facts and the true context and motivations we too published an op-ed in Hebrew and English, emphasizing the key challenge at stake: safeguarding the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, according to the values of the Declaration of Independence, which guarantees freedom of religion and conscience and full equality of rights regardless of religion. Clearly, the Lawfare Project either does not share these values or, as we suspect, simply doesn’t have the faintest idea of the real facts, nor of the long established Orthodox religious practices in the US armed forces, and has been misled by fundamentalist groups that wish to block pluralism and religious freedom from blossoming in Israel.

We hope that when you read our response, you too will agree that the time has come for both foreign organizations such as the Lawfare Project and for cynical Israeli politicians to heed the will of the public majority and respect the fundamental principles of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state: freedom of religion and conscience!