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A soldier is buried with full military honors at Mt. Herzl cemetery.

Controversy Prompts
New Knesset Bill

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Jerusalem (JTA) — A
Knesset member has in-
troduced legislation that
would require the Israel
Defense Force to bury all
soldiers who die in the line of
duty in military cemeteries
as long as they enlisted as
Jews.
The issue, a source of ten-
sion between secular and re-
ligious parties in Israel's co-
alition government, heated
up after the interment of a
soldier who was not Jewish
according to traditional re-
ligious law.
The move was made by
Knesset member Naomi
Chazan of the secularist
Meretz bloc. It followed the
burial the same day of Sgt.
Lev Pesahov, a recent immi-
grant from Russia who was
shot to death in a terrorist
attack on an army check-
point last week.
Because his mother is not
Jewish, Sgt. Pesahov was
buried at the fringe of the
military cemetery in Beit
She' an.
The military rabbinate
first refused to bury Lev at
all in the military cemetery.
But it later agreed to inter
him at the edge of the
cemetery, a considerable
distance from other graves.
Education Minister Am-
non Rubinstein, also of
Meretz, termed the burial a
"disgrace." He said he would
demand that Prime Minister

Yitzhak Rabin issue the
necessary instructions so
that such an incident is not
repeated.
Knesset member Avraham
Ravitz of the fervently Or-
thodox Degel HaTorah fac-
tion, said he saw nothing
wrong with the way the
soldier was buried as he was
not, he said, Jewish accor-
ding to Halachah, or tradi-
tional Jewish law.
Rabbi Menachem Porush,
also of Degel HaTorah, con-
tended that although Sgt.
Pesahov should be appreci-
ated for having fallen for the
country, "people who are
Jewish would not want a
non-Jew to be buried next to
them."
A similar debate erupted
in early July, when Olga
Chaikov, a Soviet immi-
grant, was killed when ter-
rorists attacked a bus in
Jerusalem on July 1.
She was ordered buried in
a special cemetery section
reserved for "questionable
Jews" after officials of the
chevra kadisha, or burial
society, consulted Jerusalem
Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Kolitz.
Members of the Meretz
bloc subsequently announc-
ed they would propose a bill
calling for the creation of
"civil cemeteries."
The fervently Orthodox
Shas party countered that it
would fight such a bill if it
ran counter to Halachah.