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Two of Israel’s senior cabinet members have clashed over comments made by a rabbi, who oversees a pre-army preparatory programme, about females serving in the IDF.

Delivering a recent lecture, Rabbi Yigal Levinstein was recorded telling students: “They’re [the IDF] driving our girls crazy. They draft them. They go in Jewish and they’re not Jewish when they come out… their whole system of values becomes confused, their priorities – home, career.”

Defence Minister and Yisrael Beitenu head Avigdor Lieberman yesterday wrote a letter to Levinstein, calling for him to resign or else lose his ministry’s backing for the programme he heads.

Lieberman said that Levinstein had made “clear statements that you undoubtedly stand behind,” which are at odds with the values of the IDF and Israel. Lieberman accused Levinstein of either an “intentional desire to provoke” or a “loss of judgment” or both.

Responding to Lieberman’s resignation demand, Education Minister and Jewish Home leader Naftali Bennett, whose party is closely identified with the religious Zionist sector, accused Lieberman of making threats “for political reasons”. Bennett said via social media that “the last thing Lieberman cares about is the IDF’s female soldiers”.

Tensions also emerged yesterday between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Finance Minister and Kulanu head Moshe Kahlon over the new public broadcasting corporation.

At a coalition team-building event in Hadera, Netanyahu called on Kahlon to delay the launch of the broadcasting corporation by six months and called the new body’s employees “leftists”.

Netanyahu and Kahlon have clashed on the issue previously, with Kahlon insisting that such a delay would prove costly and suggesting that Netanyahu desires greater control over the media.

Maariv quotes a Kahlon aide, who said: “There will be no delay, not even for a single minute, in the public broadcasting corporation going on the air.”

Yediot Ahronot calls the dispute a “new and serious crisis” in relations between Netanyahu and Kahlon.