Israel Matzav

Sharing the burden?

We've heard a lot lately about 'equality of service' and 'sharing the burden.' The claim has been advanced that if only Haredim would serve in the IDF, they could go out to work and become 'productive' members of society. There's also an underlying assumption that only Haredim (ultra-Orthodox) among Israel's Jews don't serve in the army. Seth Frantzman argues that it just ain't so.

TO UNDERSTAND how the army’s burden is not equally distributed we must start with the facts. At the Knesset Tuesday Yair Lapid claimed: “10 percent of the population cannot threaten the other 90% with civil war.” What he should have said was that 10% should not threaten the other 50% with civil war; of enlistment-age Israelis, i.e men and women aged 18, only half serve in the IDF. Of Jewish men, 75% serve. In a report from the IDF’s manpower division published in Yediot Aharonot, by 2020 some 40% of Israeli Jews will not be serving in the IDF.

According to most published data sources, of the Jewish men who do not serve, only half do not serve because they receive Torah study exemptions. The other half are exempted due to medical reasons, criminal backgrounds or because they are abroad, or because they simply dodge the draft. In short, there are an equal number of secular and haredi men who do not serve in the army. 

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ACCORDING TO the sources, 6% of those drafted receive medical exemptions. Medical exemptions can be for all manner of problems, such as severe asthma, but also for mental health reasons. A report by Yossi Yehoshua in Yediot noted that an army program “aims to fight the number of exemptions being issued to teenagers on mental health grounds under the Profile 21 clause.” A 25% drop in the number of people receiving these exemptions was achieved.

Yehoshua wrote, “the IDF has boosted inspection on exemptions issued by non-military psychiatrists.

Teens were known to show up at recruiting centers with psychiatric opinions bought for thousands of shekels from leading doctors.”

An article by Joshua Mitnik at The Christian Science Monitor adds further evidence: “One trend that disturbs many Israelis is an increase in middle- and upper-class teens – considered the potential leaders and brains of the army – who seek health-related discharges to avoid military service.”

It’s important to stress that while the army sends those claiming medical conditions to its own specialists, those with documentation from non-military doctors have a better chance of being discharged, because those without such documentation are less likely to be considered for discharge.

According to the report the army reduced these exemptions by 25 percent. Evidently that doesn’t mean a large number of people with dangerous mental problems are now in the army. It represents the ferreting out of people who faked psychiatric problems in collaboration with medical professionals.

The army however did not prosecute the youths or the doctors, according to the report.

There are people whose medical exemptions are legitimate, but the existence of fake doctor’s notes is wasting the valuable time of the army’s medical staff.

Many Israeli celebrities received medical exemptions from army service. Daphni Leef, the social justice protest leader, who comes from one of Israel’s wealthiest communities, received an exemption because she’s epileptic. Aviv Geffen, the famous singer, has claimed he received a medical exemption.

Jason Danino-Holt, a television presenter and one-time host of MTV Europe, received a medical exemption.

What is interesting is that the health issues that prevented these people from serving evidently didn’t prevent them from carrying on successful careers as television personalities, performers or activists. Some might consider that odd, since the army has positions, such as the military band, that are not dissimilar from the professional career of these celebrities. It appears that increasingly for some, medical exemptions from army service are becoming the secular man’s yeshiva.

MODI’IN AND Jewish communities in the West Bank have the highest enlistment rates, while Tel Aviv has one of the lowest, and the same breakdown goes for combat units. Within the army therefore there are deep geographical differences in “equality.”

While some of this is self-selective – national-religious people from the West Bank want to serve in combat units – some of it is not. One study found that people from the “periphery” or poor development towns like Kiryat Gat were more likely to end up in the Border Guard units. Yitzhak Laor, a leftist writer, notes that “new immigrants from Ethiopia and Russia are the ones sent there. The soldiers who grew up more comfortably by and large end up serving in cushier positions like Intelligence Corps Unit 8200 or at Army Radio.”

The army doesn’t release data on the birthplaces or socio-economic status of soldiers in Army Radio or Intelligence, but again, there is overwhelming evidence that these positions are filled with those from wealthier secular communities.

These differences are exacerbated by the role an Israeli’s army service plays in his or her later life; three years in the Border Police doesn’t look as good on the resume or provide the same connections as unit 8200 or Army Radio. It’s no coincidence that Yair Lapid and Ehud Olmert were both army journalists, not Border Police.

When one looks at the hi-tech pioneers, one again finds people from “good units.” When one looks at members of the judiciary, they find people who served in the IDF Military Advocate General corps (of current sitting Supreme Court Justices, Hanan Melcer and Uri Shoham were both in the MAG while Yizthak Amit was in unit 8200). The ethnic and socio-economic breakdowns in these units are hardly representative of Israeli society; they are made up almost exclusively of those from the Ashkenazi secular middle and upper classes. Try to find a pilot in the Israel Air Force from a development town. How do people secure placement at Army Radio and why is it so unrepresentative of Israeli society? And inequality exists in other parts of the IDF.

Fifty-three percent of male Ethiopian Jews do time in military prisons during their service, compared to only 23% of non-Ethiopians; 91% of Ethiopian men serve in the army, versus only 74% of non- Ethiopians.

So even though they are disproportionately serving, the army disproportionately sentences them to prison, indicative of a discriminatory pattern. If the army can’t treat black Jews well, how well would it treat black-hat Jews who it has trained itself to hate for so long? THE RHETORIC about “equalizing the burden” breeds populist demonization of haredim. Some of the same people who celebrate conscientious objectors who refuse to serve due to “moral” qualms with the occupation, bash the haredim for lack of service.

The same people in Ramat Aviv and Kiryat Yovel that won’t sell apartments to “dirty haredi cockroaches” and proudly tear down eruvim are the same ones who hypocritically demand “equality” – of duty, not privilege.

Read the whole thing.

The week before the elections, I heard Naftali Bennett speak at a conference for Haredi high-tech entrepreneurs. He admitted that if a Haredi had walked into his high tech company in Herzliya (the one he sold several years ago), the Haredi would not have been hired regardless of his qualifications.

He also demolished the argument that it's necessary to force Haredi schools to have a 'core curriculum' for the kids to be able to go out and work as adults. He said that everything can  be made up later except for English. He said that people who study Talmud all their lives pick up the math in no time, and that the rest of the 'core curriculum' is not necessary to work.

So what's the real goal of Yair Lapid and the seculars? As far as I can tell, it's to shut the yeshivas down.

Labels: Haredim, IDF, Naftali Bennett, Yair Lapid

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:46 PM