Featured Post
Free The Hostages! Bring Them Home!
(this is a featured post and will stay at the top for the foreseeable future.. scroll down for new posts) -------------------------------...
Feb 9, 2014
Criminal sanctions or economic sanctions for draft dodgers?
It seems the big showdown regarding the new law being prepared for the army draft of yeshiva students is coming down to the issue of what type of sanctions will there be against those who refuse the draft and go AWOL.
Lapid is strong-arming the push for criminal sanctions, meaning anybody AWOL will have to go to jail and be treated like a criminal. Bennet, Shaked, and others are pushing, seemingly not too strongly, for economic sanctions, meaning anybody AAWOL will lose budgets, subsidies, and funding.
I really prefer not having criminal sanctions, because I think the impetus for change and for bringing more yeshiva boys into the army will not come about as a result of forcing the issue, throwing them in jail (or threatening to), and the like - I think this will only reverse any actually progress (at least in the short term) and make the societal conflict even greater.
However, the problem I see is, how can you possibly not impose criminal sanctions when you have a mandatory draft?
I mean, if everyone who is drafted into the IDF knows that going AWOL will put him at risk of being thrown into the brig, why should haredi boys be different. A haredi boy can go AWOL and lose some government funding for the school he attends or mortgage benefits, while a non-haredi boy goes AWOL and ends up in prison. When working for "shivyon b'netel", I don't see how a different punishment can justifiably be defined for the same action by people from different sectors.
And, if criminal sanctions are not imposed, but only economic, when a secular boy goes AWOL, why should he be thrown in jail - he should also only suffer economic sanctions? Or, perhaps he can right then and there declare that he is haredi and must only suffer from economic sanctions?
While I do not like criminal sanctions, I do not see how it can be justified, in the context of a law defining equality of service, anything but.
If you do understand it, please explain.
Lapid is strong-arming the push for criminal sanctions, meaning anybody AWOL will have to go to jail and be treated like a criminal. Bennet, Shaked, and others are pushing, seemingly not too strongly, for economic sanctions, meaning anybody AAWOL will lose budgets, subsidies, and funding.
I really prefer not having criminal sanctions, because I think the impetus for change and for bringing more yeshiva boys into the army will not come about as a result of forcing the issue, throwing them in jail (or threatening to), and the like - I think this will only reverse any actually progress (at least in the short term) and make the societal conflict even greater.
However, the problem I see is, how can you possibly not impose criminal sanctions when you have a mandatory draft?
I mean, if everyone who is drafted into the IDF knows that going AWOL will put him at risk of being thrown into the brig, why should haredi boys be different. A haredi boy can go AWOL and lose some government funding for the school he attends or mortgage benefits, while a non-haredi boy goes AWOL and ends up in prison. When working for "shivyon b'netel", I don't see how a different punishment can justifiably be defined for the same action by people from different sectors.
And, if criminal sanctions are not imposed, but only economic, when a secular boy goes AWOL, why should he be thrown in jail - he should also only suffer economic sanctions? Or, perhaps he can right then and there declare that he is haredi and must only suffer from economic sanctions?
While I do not like criminal sanctions, I do not see how it can be justified, in the context of a law defining equality of service, anything but.
If you do understand it, please explain.
------------------------------------------------------
Reach thousands of readers with your ad by advertising on Life in Israel
------------------------------------------------------
Labels:
haredim,
shivyon b'netel
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Related Posts
I agree that it is not equal.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I have never understood the basis for striking down the Tal Law for being "unequal" in the first place, as it was never based on what people *are* but on what they are *doing* - which is theoretically open to anyone. So the same logic, with a bit of stretching, could be applied here - it's not that "a chareidi" gets a different punishment, it's instead based on what he is doing.
By the way, how many chilonim actually do get thrown in jail for draft-dodging? In Tel Aviv the enlistment rate is less than 50%. Does anyone know anyone who was jailed for it? It seems like dropping criminal sanctions for everybody wouldn't be such a great loss. Unless they're keeping it on the books *just* for the chareidim - which is again not exactly equal.
This is not about equality but about sticking it to the religious and Haredim. If it really were for building a cohesive 'citzenship', then the Arabs would be part of the package as well and the Supreme Court would not have been discriminatory for telling the government to stop financing yeshivot, but nothing about educational institutions where non-Haredim and/or Arabs study.
ReplyDeleteRafi, I think a soldier going AWOL will get punished, maybe army jail time, but I'm not sure that that is considered criminal, and at most, the time in the brig is added on to your service, and then no one cares later on.
I can't think of any way to justify the distinction as a matter of fairness. I do think there's a good justification as a matter of practical policymaking. This law is dealing with a large, self-aware group that has so far, for the most part, avoided army service, has strong reasons (whether valid or not) to oppose army service, and may have the will and ability to cause a great deal of difficulty if the draft is enforced on them the way it is on their fellow Jewish citizens, by criminal penalities, i.e., jail. A law that imposes economic sanctions may well be easier to enforce, and may accomplish the goal of increasing haredi enlistment whereas a law that imposes criminal penalties may fail to increase enlistement, further entrench the opposition to the draft, and cost the country large sums of money for enforcement. Personally, I think it is worth sacrificing fairness in exchange for practicality in this case.
ReplyDeleteAs for SB's comment, I've heard this argument tossed around, but I have yet to see any convincing proof of this supposed widespread draft dodging. I work with people in Tel-Aviv, and while I haven't taken any official survey, I do know that army service is a common reference point, and it is generally assumed that people have served in the army. I read an article in HaAretz about a year ago that gave very precise statistics from some of the more well-known high schools in the Tel Aviv area showing a greater than 90% enlistment rate for almost all of them. You can dismiss this is leftist anti-haredi propaganda if you want (oh, its HaAretz, they hate us, etc.), but I have yet to read any comparable statistics showing a different picture - only vague accusations, which strikes me as an argument that has no basis in truth, but which gets stated and repeated often enough so that people start accepting it as a proven fact. I think anyone who has been in this country for any length of time and knows a fair number of both haredi and non-haredi people can see quite clearly that in the haredi community, army service is the exception, whereas in the non-haredi community, non-service is the exception.