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| Israel-Palestine-Jordan | |
| Draft-Dodging Israeli Youth Trigger Campaign to Shame Evaders | |
| 2008-03-18 | |
| March 17 (Bloomberg) -- Young Israelis sit in a café drinking tea and talking about their time in the army. All except one, who is awkwardly silent when asked where he served. The scene is captured in a 30-second commercial that's part of a campaign to fight the rising number of draft dodgers in Israel. ``A True Israeli Doesn't Evade'' is playing on television and movie screens across the country, and the slogan appears on bumper stickers and billboards. ``It disappoints me that people don't want to contribute,'' said Lieutenant Reut Eisenberg, 21, who is responsible for youth programs in the southern Israeli towns under daily rocket attack from the Gaza Strip. ``People are no longer ashamed of the fact that they don't serve.'' It's an issue Israel says the nation can't ignore as it fights Hamas in Gaza, watches Hezbollah militia mass rockets on its northern border and faces threats from Iran. Opponents, who produced their own video titled ``A Real Israeli Doesn't Evade the Truth,'' say many young people refuse to serve because the army doesn't take care of soldiers and oppresses Palestinians. Israeli men are required to spend three years on active duty once they reach age 18. Women spend two years in the army. More than one in four draft-age men and almost half of women avoided the draft last year, according to the Israel Defense Forces. In 1990, 18 percent of men and 33 percent of women didn't serve. Arabs, ultra-Orthodox Jews enrolled in seminaries and married women are exempt from the draft. Young people also avoid service if they have low test scores or criminal records, or are found to be emotionally unfit. ``There is a danger in draft dodging, especially to the extent we see it now,'' said Sharga Brosh, director of the Manufacturers Association of Israel, who endorsed the ads with Israel Discount Bank Ltd. Chief Executive Officer Giora Offer. Celebrities now openly talk about how they evaded the draft, as more lenient rules on psychological exemptions and the rising number of Orthodox Jews who opt out increase the number of youths who avoid service, said Reuven Gal, a former chief military psychologist. The 2006 war against Hezbollah in Lebanon ignited public debate about the topic. ``It brought up the whole issue that some people risk their lives and even lose their lives and others don't do any service at all,'' Gal said. There is also more awareness that service to the state doesn't have to be in uniform, Gal said. ``Military service was so predominant we almost forgot there are also other ways to serve society, the nation and your community,'' said Gal, head of a government program to place draft-age people in civilian service. Elisha Baskin, a conscientious objector, faced a two-year jail sentence after she refused to join the army. She was eventually allowed to do national service with Amnesty International after she argued she was a pacifist and couldn't fight against people like her former classmates at the Jewish-Arab kindergarten she attended. Israelis need to find more topics of conversation than just their military service, as portrayed in the TV ad, Baskin said. ``It's sad that the only thing everyone in the country has in common or can relate to is what they did in the army,'' Baskin, 21, said at a Jerusalem café where a suicide bombing killed seven people in September 2003.
Active duty forces number about 177,000, and the reserves can add 445,000, according to the Middle East Military Balance published by Tel Aviv University's International for National Security Studies. Yet evading military service is becoming less of a taboo in a country where army service has traditionally been a prerequisite for many jobs, according to Brigadier General Eli Shermeister, head of the army's education corps. ``Israeli society is going through global processes based on individualism with less emphasis placed on the collective,'' Shermeister said at a conference in January. Among the young people who received exemptions last year, 11 percent of men and 33 percent of women were released on religious grounds. A third of the women who received religious exemptions made fraudulent claims, Shermeister said. Of the men, almost half were let out because of emotional problems. The army is tightening the rules on emotional exemptions, making the process longer and setting up special committees to hear cases, said Captain Noa Meir, a military spokeswoman. ``We live in a country where we don't have the privilege of canceling the draft,'' Meir said. ``We are surrounded by enemies and that hasn't changed.'' | |
| Posted by:Steve White |
| #6 Hey! That's what I was gomnna say... |
| Posted by: tu3031 2008-03-18 21:13 |
| #5 she argued she was a pacifist and couldn't fight against people like her former classmates at the Jewish-Arab kindergarten she attended. I wonder how many of her Arab former classmates have a reciprocal mindset? |
| Posted by: Pappy 2008-03-18 21:02 |
| #4 not too mention there are some fine israeli women serving the the IDF |
| Posted by: sinse 2008-03-18 18:06 |
| #3 IMO, missing a golden opportunity here. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2008-03-18 17:52 |
| #2 People who don't want to do the heavy lifting involved in being free will end up unfree - or dead. Hey, everybody makes choices. Just don't whine about the consequences, eh, Elisha? |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2008-03-18 10:31 |
| #1 Someone should explain in very small words to conscientious objectors like Elisha Baskin what would happen to her if the IDF were not there. |
| Posted by: RWV 2008-03-18 07:22 |