[Peace-discuss] WaPo: Israel confronts flagging interest in military service

[E. Wayne Johnson]

I suppose that Israel needs to hire more missionaries. I mean mercenaries.


On 11/9/2010 4:24 AM, Robert Naiman wrote:
> Israel confronts flagging interest in military service
> Janine Zacharia, Washington Post, Sunday, November 7, 2010; 12:18 AM
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/06/AR2010110604283.html
>
> Tel Hashomer, Israel - Since Israel's founding, the military here has
> served not just as a defender against outside threats, but as the glue
> that brings together a patchwork nation of immigrants.
>
> Now, the Israel Defense Forces' position as the country's most
> venerated institution appears to be slipping. While service is
> compulsory for most young men and women, a growing minority is
> avoiding conscription, leaving planners to worry the military won't
> have the troops it says it needs.
>
> The characteristics of those who do serve are changing in striking
> ways. Officers who are ideologically opposed to relinquishing Israeli
> control of the West Bank are taking on a more prominent role,
> potentially complicating any eventual Israeli withdrawal of Jewish
> settlers from the territory as part of a peace deal with the
> Palestinians.
>
> A recent series of scandals has reignited debate about morals and
> accountability in the armed forces, and analysts say public trust in
> the military is declining. Last month, a YouTube video of a dancing
> Israeli soldier shimmying near a bound and blindfolded Palestinian
> woman went viral on the Internet, further embarrassing the military.
>
> "The military understands its position has eroded," said Yagil Levy, a
> professor at Israel's Open University and a leading expert on the
> military.
>
> The share of military-age Jewish Israelis who don't serve grew from
> 12.1 percent in 1980 to 26 percent in 2007, according to a study by
> Haifa University political scientists published in August. The
> military projects that figure will reach 43 percent by 2020. And the
> portion of 11th- and 12th-grade males who said they would volunteer if
> service was not mandatory was only 58 percent in 2007, compared with
> 94 percent in 1988, the study found.
>
> "Fifteen or 20 years ago, not serving in the army or not doing miluim
> [reserve duty] was something to be ashamed of and today, I wouldn't
> say it's the other way around, but definitely people have no problem
> to declare that they just don't go to the army or don't serve in the
> reserve duty," said reservist Shahaf Kieselstein, who handles combat
> unit recruitment. Youth icons who have evaded service in recent years
> like Leonardo DiCaprio's girlfriend, model Bar Refaeli, give
> legitimacy to evading service, he said. "It trickles down."
>
> A changing population
> The biggest explanation for the declining service rate is the growing
> number of ultra-Orthodox Jews, who study full-time in yeshivas, or
> religious schools, and are eligible for exemptions from military
> service. Others are exempted for health reasons, criminal records or
> because they live abroad.
>
> Today, the military loses 13 percent of its potential draftees because
> of ultra-Orthodox exemptions, compared with 4 percent 10 years ago. In
> 2020, that number is expected to reach 20 percent because of a
> drastically higher birthrate among the ultra-Orthodox compared with
> secular Israelis. To help persuade more ultra-Orthodox to volunteer,
> the Israeli military is expanding its efforts to provide special food,
> extra time for prayer and other adjustments to make service compatible
> with their religious practices.
>
> In the past, officers largely came from secular, elite families from
> the Tel Aviv area or the collective farms known as kibbutzim. But
> today, increasing numbers are observant Jews who tend to be more
> politically oriented, more committed to the Zionist cause and more
> integrated into society than the ultra-Orthodox. An Israeli military
> magazine, Ma'arachot, reported recently that one-third of those who
> complete officers' courses come from this group, a roughly tenfold
> increase over a decade ago.
>
> Kieselstein, a reserve officer from an infantry combat unit who lives
> in Har Adar, a community midway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, has
> been doing reserve duty for 18 years. He's watched the changes among
> the officers.
>
> "What I do feel is a bad thing is the miluim are not spread equally
> among the potential society parts that could take on the burden,"
> Kieselstein said. "The reality is I'm almost 40 now. The only reason I
> keep serving is because I want to. People who don't want to serve,
> they find a way to get out early. The army hardly tries to fight back.
> That's a paradox I cannot explain. On the one hand they talk about
> shortages. But all my friends . . . if they don't want to serve after
> 30 or 35, they get out of it and the army does nothing about it.''
>
> While the military says it still fills its combat unit quotas today,
> officials say they don't have enough soldiers for support units and
> administrative jobs.
>
> "Right now we have a problem because we lack soldiers," said Brig.
> Gen. Amir Rogovski, head of personnel planning in the IDF's manpower
> branch. "When you see the forecast for 2020, it's going to be worse.''
>
> But one 22-year-old soldier, identified only as D, says the motivation
> to serve in combat is still strong. "People want to be fighters
> because that's what society values," said D, who lives in the Jewish
> settlement of Ma'aleh Adumim outside Jerusalem and will complete his
> three-year service on Sunday.
>
> He said he most valued the personal enrichment. "I was drafted as a
> child with a head of a kid, and now I feel different, if it's the
> music I listen to, if it's in my behavior, even if in the clothing
> that I wear," said D, who served in the elite Golani infantry brigade.
>
> The IDF does not make public the size of its force. But according to
> Tel Aviv University's Institute for National Security Studies, an
> independent research institution, Israel maintains a standing army of
> 176,500 soldiers and another 445,000 reservists. The Jerusalem Post
> reported in May that the military faced a shortage of 10,000 soldiers.
> Israel has a total population of about 7.6 million, of which about 5.7
> million are Jewish Israelis and 1.5 million are Arab Israelis,
> according to Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics. Arab Israelis are
> not drafted, and very few volunteer.
>
> Public relations push
> With peaceful relations between Israel and former foes such as Egypt
> and Jordan, some Israelis have questioned the need for maintaining so
> many combat troops.
>
> In recent years, Israelis successfully pushed to shorten the length of
> reserve duty. But periodic efforts to make service in the IDF
> voluntary have gone nowhere. Military officials say that, given
> today's low motivation levels, they would be unable to recruit enough
> volunteers to meet their needs.
>
> "You ask me, 'Why do you have to convince or promote the service when
> you have a compulsory service?' " Rogovski said during an interview
> at the IDF induction center in Tel Hashomer. "If we don't explain
> every day the importance of serving the country and the importance of
> being in the military service, we won't fill the numbers and the
> quality needs for the next decade."
>
> Most Jewish men in the country are required to serve three years and
> most Jewish women two, and the military historically had little direct
> contact with future soldiers before their induction.
>
> But, faced with projected shortages, the IDF is making an
> unprecedented investment in public relations. Next year it will
> introduce several "Mobile Draft Offices," to be dispatched to some 700
> schools a year to generate enthusiasm for military service among
> Israeli teenagers. The IDF is also belatedly embracing SMS, or text
> messaging, as well as online chats and other technological means
> employed for years by militaries around the world to interact with
> youth before they are drafted.
>
> Casualties less accepted
> The IDF remains by far the most trusted public institution in Israel -
> although a survey last year by the Israel Democracy Institute, an
> independent research center in Jerusalem, found a small five-year
> decline in the country's faith in the military, from 86 percent in
> 2004 to 79 percent in 2009. And the draft is still a core rite of
> passage in mainstream Israeli society, with acceptance into an elite
> unit generating the kind of pride an American family feels when a
> child gets in to Harvard.
>
> But these days, according to Dan Sagir, a former military
> correspondent for the newspaper Haaretz, some wealthy Tel Aviv
> families are hiring Arabic tutors to boost their children's chances of
> being drafted into intelligence units rather than risk ending up with
> dangerous combat assignments.
>
> "I think it's like in every place around the world," said the IDF's
> Rogovski. "In the big cities, Tel Aviv, you have less soldiers that
> volunteer for combat units. And from the . . . geographical periphery,
> you have more youth that want to serve in combat units."
>
> In Israel's early years, when the country was fighting for its
> survival, the public had a higher tolerance for military casualties.
> As the country has grown more powerful, that has changed.
>
> Officers point to the war between Israel and the Lebanese Shiite
> militia Hezbollah in 2006. The Israeli campaign was waged mostly from
> the air, they say, because politicians and military planners
> understood the public's tolerance for Israeli casualties had dwindled.
> The fighting left Hezbollah intact and reminded Israelis of the
> persistent need for ground troops.
>
> For Israel's military, there is enough uncertainty to require the
> maintenance of a large force: conflicts with Palestinians, Lebanon and
> Syria remain unresolved, and the prospect of a confrontation with Iran
> looms as the Iranian nuclear program advances.
>
> But in a recent opinion piece in Haaretz, Sagir, an avowed leftist
> whose son will soon be drafted, worried that the Israeli government's
> failure to reach a peace agreement with the Palestinians would further
> erode public enthusiasm for military service.
>
> "Israeli society is at a crossroads with respect to conscription in
> the IDF," Sagir wrote. "The issue is the erosion of the legitimacy of
> service in the IDF as the conflict drags on."
>
> Special correspondent Samuel Sockol in Jerusalem contributed to this report.
>
>
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