Q&A: Military Service and the Cabinet
Military Service and the Cabinet
Question
Is it proper for elected public officials who did not serve in the army to sit on the cabinet and decide the course of the war?
Answer
If this were a personal matter, then there would be no problem. A particular person who did not enlist for justified reasons can sit in any forum, so long as his thinking is objective and matter-of-fact. But when they represent a public that as a matter of principle does not enlist, it is an outrage that they sit there. (That is, of course, an outrage even aside from this, because of their corruption, dishonesty, and parasitism.) And when they decide on increasing the reserve-duty quota for all the Jewish people while exempting their own people, and make decisions about the course of the war and the fate of the hostages, that is a moral and halakhic low the likes of which have never been heard. Simply a collection of pathetic scoundrels. Ahab and Jeroboam were complete righteous men compared to these scoundrels.