Protest against Rabbi Levinstein is justified - Merav Michaeli

Attacking Rabbi Yigal Levinstein is justified, said Labor leader Merav Michaeli the day after the rabbi was extracted from a large protest against him by police.

"This is a man who fights against women in the public sphere in general and specifically women in the IDF," she said. "He fights against women's right to equal military service and for men's rights to serve in a space empty of women."

Michaeli went on to say that it was good his movement was restricted by protestors because usually, he "gets the freedom to fight against women, against the people's army model, against IDF resilience, and against the image of Israeli as a democratic Jewish state."

Opposition leader Yair Lapid also refused to condemn the incident.

"Let's start with condemning the awful things he said about the LGBTQ community, secular people, and every liberal citizen of the State of Israel," he said.

A litany of controversial statements

Rabbi Levinstein has spoken strongly against the LGBTQ community, even telling his students to "exterminate" same-sex tendencies "just like AIDS was exterminated."

He's also been vocal in the past against women serving in combat positions in the army, saying that women would need to be reinvented before they were able to handle combat and that women go into the IDF Jewish and come out non-Jewish.