Interior Minister and leader of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party Eli Yishai on Tuesday said something absolutely regrettable in its evil.

This is what he said:

“During the Six-Day War each and every Jew who went to battle raised his eyes to the Creator. But in the Second Lebanon War we said, ‘By my strength and the might of my hand, and then God said to us, ‘Let’s see the results of, ‘By my strength and the might of my hand.’”

In other words: The Israel Defense Forces lost the Second Lebanon War in 2006 because its soldiers didn’t pray enough, and the army wasn’t religious enough.

Not only did he offend the families of the soldiers who died in that war, he outraged many secular and religious Israelis who can’t understand why this man can say something so idiotic and still keep his job.

What Yishai doesn’t say is that in 2006 was a member of Ehud Olmert’s government; and as a price for joining the coalition, Yishai demanded a halt to cuts in child allowances which amounted to one billion shekels, and which benefitted his electorate that doesn’t work and lives off state subsidies. And partly because Olmert had to pay off Shas, the IDF was short-changed on the defense budget. So one of the reasons we ‘lost’ that war was because reserve training was drastically cut during those times so that the army could save money. The army needed to save money because Yishai demanded a huge dowry for his flock. Many units didn’t have the proper equipment because of the budget cuts. That was one of the factors that lead to the army’s bad performance.

And another thing: During the Six Day War in 1967, many of the elite soldiers and commanders of most of the units were secular men from kibbutzim. By 2006, many battalion commanders were religious Zionists. These are very good soldiers, and they’re in some of the best units in the IDF. If there ever was a war in which the IDF was led on the ground by religious men, the Second Lebanon War was it. The soldiers’ performance in battle against Hezbollah was exemplary. In fact, in almost every encounter with Hezbollah fighters, Israeli soldiers excelled and came out on top. It was the contradictory orders of the political leadership [move out! no, wait, come back! Move out now! Stop] that made many IDF formations sitting ducks to Hezbollah mobile teams. It was a novice Prime Minister who ran a bad war, and appointed a union boss with no military experience at all as defense minister, that led to such terrible indecision.

And it was Eli Yishai’s plunder of the state’s budget that forced the army to cut corners.

“When all Arab countries are confronting the Jewish people, what will save them is Torah scholars, those who lead people to do mitzvot [good deeds], and those who bring non-observant people back into the religious fold,” Yishai added Tuesday.

Yishai is sounding more and more like his Supreme Leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, who is famous for saying some pretty outlandish things himself. Yishai must be thinking that elections are close, and thus it is necessary to start spreading demagoguery.

I wonder if he also thinks that 44 Prisons Service members died in the Carmel Fire because they weren’t religious enough. Oh wait, as the Interior Minister responsible for the Fire Service Eli Yishai couldn’t find the necessary funds to equip the firefighters with trucks and planes, and enough men. For all the years under his watch, the Fire Service was ignored. Maybe that’s the real reason the 44 people died?