The defense apparatus on Tuesday agreed to lower the age of exemption from military service for Haredim to under 23, provided that a Haredi young man is not under 21 and is able to enter the labor market, Kan 11 News reported. The Finance Ministry wants to lower the exemption age to allow young Haredim to go to work as early as possible.
The Haredi draft has been the subject of fierce debate in Israeli society since the founding of the state, and over the years, the conscription of Haredi yeshiva students has been postponed under various arrangements, while the increase in the number of Haredim who are absolved from the draft on the grounds of “his learning is his profession” is drawing angry criticism of what constitutes an unequal share in the security burden. The High Court of Justice has contributed greatly to the public’s impatience with the slow progress of the Haredi draft, causing the 2017 collapse of the Netanyahu government.
Now, at last, the IDF and the government have reached the inevitable conclusion that forcing the Haredim to do time in yeshiva until they turn 26 if they wish to avoid the draft is not helping anybody: the Haredim will not enlist, and most of them who don’t have the head for intense yeshiva learning are destined to work off the books at low wages instead of seeking more rewarding careers. And the Finance Ministry, meanwhile, is deprived of five years’ worth of income taxes from each illegally-employed Haredi man.
The new legislation––which is far from being submitted to the Knesset at this point––involves allowing the Haredim to join the workforce as soon as they would have been discharged from the IDF had they enlisted. At the same time, soldiers who do serve, religious and secular alike, will receive much more substantial pay which should take care of the equal share of the burden thing.
The essence of the new plan is to cut the compulsory service of IDF non-combatants to 24 months (from 30), with the exception of Intelligence and Cyber units. Combatants will continue to serve three years, but in their third year will be paid NIS 6,000 ($1,650) per month. It’s the starting salary of many jobs in Israel, including teachers.
The resistance to this idea comes from Israelis who insist on the IDF remaining the country’s melting pot, the one-time opportunity for young men and women from all walks of life to serve shoulder-to-shoulder and forge life-long relationships. And they have a point, but the Haredim were never part of the IDF melting pot, all the current system is doing is making sure they live in poverty. I suppose that, too, is a kind of equal share of the burden: non-Haredim will risk their lives in combat, and in return, Haredim will be stacked in tiny apartments and linger in yeshivas where many of them will be bored out of their minds. Sounds fair.
Arab journalist Ode Basharat offered a surprisingly insightful observation in Haaretz on Monday: “One of the beautiful things about the Haredim is their refusal to bear the burden of militarism, and it is precisely this noble virtue that the enlightened seek to destroy. Really, why be so chintz, where did the obsession to infect everyone with the germ of occupation and machoism come from? It’s probably more of a psychological thing than a military necessity.”
It’s funny because it’s true. Basharat is poking fun at the leftist elite that push the Haredi draft in the name of equality, only for those drafted Haredim to be engaged in maintaining the grotesquely unequal military occupation of Judea and Samaria. From an Arab’s point of view, this is hilarious.
Israel Ziv wrote in Maariv that the new draft law will be the point of transition of the IDF from the people’s army to a professional army, as well as “the beginning of the end of the glorious national chapter of the State of Israel as a Zionist and egalitarian state.”
OK, that’s a bit much on the egalitarian thing, having seen how the Air Force Pilot and the brainy recruits of the elite Unit 8200 leveraged their privileged service into a jackhammer kind of political maneuver causing a majority government to run for its life. The IDF was never egalitarian. A recent documentary on the Sayeret Matkal special force revealed how candidates were screened based on cultural and, yes, ethnic origins. Like the Supreme Court and other components of Israel’s permanent government, you either belong in the family or you don’t.
I, for one, would like very much to see the IDF turn professional, especially since over the past few years it has been used by the powers that be to promote social causes and disseminate anti-religious propaganda. Israel badly needs an army that focuses on killing the enemy, thank you very much.
