Rabbi Lazer Brody Shlit"a

"The Ministers of the European Union want to split Jerusalem, G-d forbid. All types of little birds tell me that the top White House advisors are in on this too. I guess they don't know the meaning of Chanuka... the Hellenist Israeli Government has declared war on the Maccabees of this generation and will fall, all our enemies abroad will fall, and the light of Torah and emuna will continue to burn bright from Jerusalem"

Rabbi Eliezer Melamed

“Unfortunately I have become a focus of public interest and of an act of malevolence by the Defense Minister,” he said. “They attack us and say that a soldier must have a commander and that the commander cannot be his rabbi. The Defense Minister accuses us of destabilizing the foundations of democracy and inciting the students to refusal, and of damaging the spirit of the IDF.”

"There are deep disagreements in Israeli society but this is a libel against us and against our Torah, whose words are good and true," he continued. "The public is being incited to believe that the rabbis are endangering the existence of the army. But this is not true. A defense establishment which makes it possible to drag the army into political disputes is the one endangering the army, because there is no conflict between the commander and the rabbi on security matters. The Halacha [Jewish Law] says that a soldier must obey his commander in both training and battle.”

"“I wrote in my weekly column Revivim that it is still a mitzvah [commandment] to go out to battle because, as bad as things are in the IDF, our situation would be infinitely worse if we did not have the IDF,” he said. “And women called me and asked for rabbinical permission to exempt their husbands from service. And I told them that according to Halacha, their husbands should go and fight. And so they were able to sleep more soundly, but I was not able to sleep soundly."

For the full article and video (in Hebrew), visit Israel National News

Rabbi Eliezer Waldman: "We Are All Har Bracha"

"Rabbi Eliezer Waldman, head of the Nir Yeshiva in Kiryat Arba, told Arutz Sheva on Monday that the Defense Minister's removal of the Har Bracha Yeshiva from the Hesder program has essentially united all factions among religious-Zionist rabbis.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak's behavior towards the Har Bracha Yeshiva and its dean, Rabbi Eliezer Melamed, is "extremely grave," in Rabbi Waldman's words. "It was an action taken in opposition to all the agreements and relations between Hesder yeshiva heads and the Defense Ministry," he added." Full article