Channel 10 News chareidi affairs correspondent Avishai Ben-Chaim used his Facebook page to challenge the IDF’s seemingly encouraging statements regarding plans to draft chareidim into the military. He explains the army is not going to permit any chareidim to enter the elite ‘sayeret’ units.
“Some negligent intelligence personnel in the Ground Forces Command announced the establishment of a chareidi sayeret in the Armored Division. Who [is it that] didn’t tell him the chareidim haven’t a chance of enlisting into sayeret units or the military in general?”
Ben-Chaim quotes senior chareidi military correspondent Yisrael Katzover, who already correctly pointed out there are few chareidim in Nachal Chareidi. He continues, pointing to a Walla News report in which the outgoing Ground Forces Commander and incoming Southern District Commander Major-General Sami Turgeman states the IDF plans to build a chareidi reconnaissance unit in the 188th Armored Division in addition to another force based on chareidi manpower that will simulate the enemy in training exercises in the ground forces training center.
Ben-Chaim says this is absurd, and that there are not enough chareidi soldiers to fill this mission, not even on a smaller level such as a company, platoon or even a squad, seeking to highlight the fact there are no enough combat chareidi soldiers for this grandiose plan.
He makes reference to coalition talks between Likud and Bayit HaYehudi and Yesh Atid, in which the issue of drafting chareidim is a high priority, speaking of a reality in which married avreichim who are fathers will be drafted, at a high cost to the military, and the absurdity of thinking these avreichim will be turned into sayeret combat infantry soldiers. He uses the Shachar program to prove his point, explaining those soldiers return home at night, receive a relatively high salary compared to other soldiers, and don’t work on Shabbos. In short, Ben-Chaim says talk of chareidim in elite units is simply absurd. He questions how this will be accomplished when Nachal Chareidi, which he praises, has failed to fill its ranks with chareidim.
Ben-Chaim adds that in Nachal Chareidi, one only serves two years and the third is dedicated to studies along with other perks, yet the program is not full of chareidim, seeking to understand where these elite soldiers will come from.
Ben-Chaim feels the remarks released by officials regarding IDF service for chareidim lack responsibility and they are simply deceiving the public. He feels that the bottom line is there is no master plan for the induction of many chareidim, and in his opinion, the only way to address the ‘sharing the burden’ issue properly is not by compelling the chareidim, but by rewarding those who serve in the military.
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
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9 Responses
Ending conscription and relying on incentives is was virtually every other country does. It’s the only thing that will keep Israel from self-destructing.
Israel is still stuck in Cold War thinking. You’re not going to shoot down Iranian missiles with waves and waves of drafted conscripts. There’s only one use for thousands of new soldiers: for evacuating Jews from West Bank settlements.
“Ending conscription and relying on incentives is was virtually every other country does.”
Israel isn’t virtually like any other country.
“You’re not going to shoot down Iranian missiles with waves and waves of drafted conscripts.”
Actually, the wars against Hezbollah and Hamas (not to mention US vs. Sadaam and the Taliban) have demonstrated that the only war to win a war is with a ground offensive.
#3 et al.,
How is it that Ariel Sharon wrote to Ben Gurion in 1959!!
requesting to get rid of conscription?
If the Israelis were motivated by a desire to get more soldiers, they could enact rules to make the army friendly, rather than hostile, to frum soldiers. Strict kashrus on all bases, observing Shabbos based on haeidi interpretations rather than the Dati Leumi’s concept of “military reason” justifying work on Shabbos (as opposed to a requirement of pikuach nefesh), observing halachas pertaining to hol ha-moed (which they ignore) or fast days (soldiers are penalized for adjusting work schedules), etc., etc. The army would probably ban its infamous toleration of the sorts of things that we don’t discuss on YWN but in the United States are called fraternization and are a crime in the military.
The obvious real reason for attempting to draft all 18 year old yeshiva students is a desire to “break” the hareidi community. At best this will force the hareidim to ally with those on the left who have evolved from being anti-religious to a more “live and let live” approach (in part since the left includes a sizeable number of Arabs who prefer to be Israeli Arabs rather than to live in an Islamic Palestine). At worst, which could occur if there are mass arrests of draft refusers and closures of non-zionist yeshivos – as advocated by the many zionists, it force a return to the situaion as it was in the 1920s when the Hareidi will ally with the Arabs in hope of replacing a zionist state with a non-Jewish one with an autonomous Jewish minority (better to be a second class citizen under the Muslims than a persecuted third class citizen under the Zionists).
just for the record making the army free for recruiting and no drafting gives society the freedom to choose. the right of privelage in sociey. and the army, the one to choose to hire and educate and prize!
thats how it should be!
#5. I dont know where you live and what army you were a part of, but I was in the IDF. I had strictly Glatt food and I only did missions on Shabbos if they were deemed pikuach nefesh. Do not blame the army for not meeting the needs of the chareidi community because I was in Nachal Chareidi and I know how hard the army works to make sure there are no girls and all needs are met. So please do not speak about the army unless you served in it and know what you are talking about.
#3 — “Actually, the wars against Hezbollah and Hamas (not to mention US vs. Sadaam and the Taliban) have demonstrated that the only war to win a war is with a ground offensive.”
This is a bit off topic, but I couldn’t let your statement pass — you are missing a critical phrase. What this shows is the only way to win a a war WITH MINIMAL COLLATERAL DAMAGE is with a ground offensive. If Israel (and the U.S. in the referenced cases) would be less concerned with protecting the enemy civilians among whom the enemy combatants are shielding themselves, it would be quite simple to win these wars without any ground offensive whatsoever. The point of the ground offensive is to be able to target only militants — or at least mostly militants, which more complete aerial bombing could not do.
#7- if that were true then why was there an article on Arutz7 saying that the army wasn’t keeping to it’s promises to the Nachal Chareidi. I also read a mother of a Nachal Chareidi soldier who stated that there were other soldiers trying to entice her son with girls. I highly doubt if what you were saying was totally true that the Chareidi Gedolim would be so against the army.