Israeli opposition leaders accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government of "complete silence" Tuesday after a rabbi publicly cursed the IDF chief of staff.

The accusation lands as Israel's military fights on multiple fronts while short on manpower, and as the country's decades-old arrangement exempting ultra-Orthodox men from conscription has collapsed in court, leaving Netanyahu caught between his coalition partners and a military establishment that says it cannot fill its ranks.

The remarks at the center of the controversy came Monday night in Bnei Brak, where hundreds of protesters gathered to oppose the detention of draft refusers. Rabbi Aryeh Yezdi told the crowd that "the army teaches people to commit the gravest sins in this impure state," and called the IDF an institution that exists "to desecrate the name of God." He went further, targeting a specific individual. "May the name of the accursed chief of staff be erased from memory," Yezdi said, referring to IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir. "Do not fall into this trap. Do not join the army."

No government minister had issued a public condemnation of Yezdi's remarks by Tuesday, according to opposition leader Yair Lapid, who posted his criticism on X. "The Haredim are inciting against our fighters, spilling the blood of the Chief of Staff," Lapid wrote. "Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his ministers are silent as fish. Not a word of condemnation, not a single arrest warrant for incitement to violence." He closed with a blunt line: "Our soldiers are heroes; this government is a heap of cowards."

Lapid was not alone. Former Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman called the Bnei Brak rally a "national disgrace," and attributed it to what he termed a "draft-dodger government" willing to sacrifice military readiness for political survival. Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett took a different angle, focused on money rather than rhetoric. Bennett noted that Yezdi receives a government salary, and threatened to end that arrangement if he returns to power. "In the next government, we'll put an end to this," Bennett said.

Other Rabbis, Other Targets

Yezdi was not the only religious figure to speak at the gathering. Former Sephardic Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef addressed the crowd as well, framing the protest as opposition to judicial authorities and what he called "oppressive authorities." Yosef argued that jailing yeshiva students for refusing the draft insults Torah scholarship itself.

A third speaker, Rabbi Shabtai Levy, made a different claim entirely. Levy told the crowd that Israel has failed to defeat Hamas and Hezbollah because the Torah is not being respected, tying military setbacks directly to what he described as religious neglect. None of the three rabbis' remarks have drawn a recorded government response as of Tuesday.

The President Steps In

Israeli President Isaac Herzog, whose role is largely ceremonial but carries moral weight, issued his own statement on X condemning the rhetoric. "Even in times of deep discord, there is no place for curses, insults, or degrading language, certainly not when it comes to the supreme commander of the IDF and of our soldiers," Herzog wrote. Herzog's intervention is notable mainly for what it isn't: a statement from Netanyahu himself, who as of Tuesday had made no public comment on Yezdi's remarks targeting Zamir by title.

Why Netanyahu Hasn't Spoken

The political mechanics behind the silence are straightforward. Netanyahu's parliamentary majority depends on ultra-Orthodox parties, the same bloc whose constituents organized and attended Monday's rally. A direct condemnation of Yezdi risks alienating coalition partners Netanyahu cannot currently afford to lose. He is also operating under an International Criminal Court warrant issued in 2024 over alleged war crimes in Gaza, a separate legal pressure that has shaped much of his political positioning over the past two years, though no link between that warrant and his silence on the rabbi's remarks has been established or claimed by any of the sources cited.

The underlying legal trigger for the protests is a June 2024 Supreme Court ruling that struck down the decades-old exemption allowing ultra-Orthodox men to defer military service indefinitely through religious study. That ruling requires conscription of ultra-Orthodox men and threatens funding cuts to religious institutions whose students refuse to serve, the financial lever now driving confrontations like Monday's rally.

One detail stood out from the rally's coverage: Zamir's name was not spoken by Yezdi directly, only his title, "the accursed chief of staff," a rhetorical distancing that has not stopped opposition figures from treating the remark as a direct threat against a named military officer.

No arrest warrant has been issued over the remarks. No government ministry has confirmed whether Yezdi's state salary, the detail Bennett raised, is currently under any kind of review. And Netanyahu's office has not said whether, or when, the prime minister intends to respond to a sitting president's public rebuke of language used against his own military's chief of staff.