-- MK Moshe Gafni (UTJ), during discussion in committee dealing with the details of the laws for equality of service..
MK Porush also spoke about those not learning full time going to the army and the Haredi MKs do not protect them. Their big concern is that even if everyone not learning full time would go to the army, and those who are learning full time would stay in yeshiva, they might very well not meet the quotas stated in the current version of the law and they would be forced to pull people out of yeshiva - people who really are learning full time.
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Well i could paraphrase right back:
ReplyDeleteJust like 9 out of 10 avreichim in kollel are not real learners but are considered to be defending the Nation of Israel, so too those who actually work in the army are also defending the State of
Israel.
Or how about this suggestion: Yes, all full-time learners get exempted. That means that if the IDF's truant officers catch you on the street shopping, watching public TV monitors or just sitting and shmoozing you will be immediately drafted since, in fact, you are not really learning full time. That should empty their neighbourhoods damn quick.
Tangential point, but MK Gafni doesn't know the ratios in Tzahal. The '90% support to 10% warriors' is simply not true. In the support-heavy US military, about 16% are combat troops. The IDF famously is much slimmer on tooth-to-tail ratio. About 38% are combat troops. So actually about 6 out of 10 are not combat soldiers. This is according to Gebicke and Magid's groundbreaking paper on benchmarking defense performance.
ReplyDeleteSince when has not knowing the facts stopped any Chareidi PR person from opening his mouth?
Deletethe problem I have with such statements by MKs Gafni, Porush and others, and they have said such things before, is that they never back up these words with actions. They always then seem to defend the need to protect the haredi boys who arent learning because the IDF is not an appropriate place for a good haredi boy. He seems to say statements like the one above only as lip service - in theory someone not learning should be in the IDF.
ReplyDeletePerhaps they should draft everyone without exception and have the Army assign some agreed upon number of soldiers, in uniform, to full-time learning. They can use the same sort of aptitude testing they use for other specialties. And the learning would be supervised and taught by officers who could make sure no one was AWOL or slacking. This way not only would the Chareidim do their share of Army duty to protect the nation, but some of the chilonim will do their share of Torah study to protect the nation. Surely there is nothing in this proposal the UTJ MKs can object to.
ReplyDeleteMike S, awesome!
ReplyDelete