Army blasts MKs for rebuffing plan to lengthen service
Shaked Committee has decided to lengthen yeshiva students' service by only a month, and women's not at all
A Defense Ministry official reacted angrily on Tuesday to the failure of a Knesset committee the previous day to approve the army’s recommendation for extending the length of service for women and for yeshiva students in the Hesder program.
The Shaked Committee agreed Monday that IDF service for male noncombat soldiers would be shortened to 32 months, instead of the current 36. The IDF representative to the committee had agreed to the change on condition that, in order to make up the manpower shortfall, the service period of women would be extended by four months from 24 to 28 and that of Hesder students by eight months, from 16 to 24.
Soldiers who participate in the five-year Hesder program typically do 16 months of actual army service, including training and active duty, with the balance devoted to several years of Torah study in their yeshivas. The committee voted to extend the 16 months to 17.
Said the defense official, “You cannot make a mockery of an entire establishment and of the army.” The IDF proposal, which he called extremely thorough and well-thought-out, “must not disappear into oblivion based on a whim or on politics.”
Committee head MK Ayelet Shaked (Jewish Home) said that the committee did not support the lengthening of women’s service. Members objected to the extension because, as women can obtain an exemption simply by signing a declaration that they are religious, it would be unfair to increase the burden on those who actually choose to serve.
One MK on the committee said Monday that it would be particularly unjust to extend women’s service when the committee was only extending Hesder soldiers’ service by one month, after having bowed to pressure from rabbis and Shaked’s Orthodox-nationalist Jewish Home party, Haaretz reported.
Since the IDF’s manpower cycle is four months — every four months a new cohort is drafted and a veteran cohort is discharged — it is unclear how the additional single month of service will help fill the IDF’s manpower needs, since it will leave a three-month gap before the next cohort is drafted.
The committee has faced criticism, including from Justice Minister Tzipi Livni and the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, for not requiring Hesder participants to perform as much army service as ultra-Orthodox citizens who would be drafted into the army — as long as 24 months in the developing compromise.
Shaked fired back on Israel Radio Tuesday, noting that there are 8,000 religious-nationalist soldiers in the IDF, of which just 900 are part of the shortened Hesder program (one-third of whom eventually decide to remain in the army for the full term). She said, “Shas has nothing to complain about; when all of their yeshiva graduates go to the army and 900 go to Hesder, then we can talk.” Yeshiva students affiliated with Shas rarely serve in the IDF at all.
The committee, tasked with drafting a bill for the parameters of ultra-Orthodox army conscription, is set to present a version for a final Knesset vote in March, and will meet again on Wednesday to discuss the hot-button issue of criminal sanctions for Haredi young men who do not report for enlistment.
Finance Minister Yair Lapid, the leader of the Yesh Atid party, said Saturday that his party would pull out of the ruling coalition if a bill mandating military or national service for the ultra-Orthodox was not passed.The implementation of such a bill was a central pillar of Yesh Atid’s platform in the last general election.
The arrest of an ultra-Orthodox man who refused to enlist in the IDF sparked widespread protests throughout the country last week, as thousands of Haredi demonstrators demanded the young man’s immediate release from army prison and called on the government to reinstate payments to religious seminaries which were frozen earlier in the week by the Finance Ministry.
Earlier last week, Lapid brought a halt to state payments to yeshivas attended by ultra-Orthodox men who refuse to register for the draft. Lapid’s freeze order on the funds came just hours before the cash was due to be paid out.
Times of Israel Staff contributed to this report.