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| Israel-Palestine-Jordan |
| IDF Inductees Prefer Combat Units |
| 2007-03-11 |
| Attn. Trailing Wife (IsraelNN.com) Despite the difficulties faced by combat troops in Lebanon during last summer's war against Hizbullah terrorists, more IDF inductees signed up for spots in Golani combat units than for positions in other units. IDF statistics for the newest round of inductees, which begins this week, shows that there were 2.7 applicants for each open spot in Golani brigades. In second place was the Nachal brigades, with 2.3 applicants for each open spot. A senior IDF official said that while many in the media expected the motivation of youth for enlisting in combat units to go down after last summer's war, it had actually gone up. "The war united the country. It's clear to the youth that their role in the army is important, and there have been no reports of draft resistance," the official said. |
| Posted by:gromgoru |
| #2 Same goes for US inductees. Professional soldiers like the rush of battle. |
| Posted by: Sneaze 2007-03-11 08:05 |
| #1 How thoughtful, gromgoru. Thanks! Not surprising, the youngsters who'll inherit the mess want to fix it themselves. This speaks as well to the soul of the people, who clearly aren't so tired of fighting for their existence as Olmert had thought. Same in the US, where tip-of-the-spear units are oversubscribed, while the support functions -- the ones that provide training for similar civilian jobs -- languish. My neighbor boy, first born son of a man quite successful in the corporate world, gifted intellectually and musically (they measured -- he was waaay off in the right tail of the bell curve), applied only to Annapolis with the goal of becoming a Navy Seal. At his high school graduation party he explained to me that after 9/11 he could make no other choice. I was in the high school the other day, and noticed a small poster for the Seals hanging in a stairwell; Most of the tear-off strips with the contact phone number had been torn off. It's little things like this that give me hope that the noisiest here are considerably less representative than they appear. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2007-03-11 01:33 |