Sam2: JR: “The issue now is that the state has determined that the status quo is untenable. There are too many people choosing to learn and the state can’t afford it as much anymore.”
You make this sound like an economic problem. It is not. Bringing charedim into the army would cost the state much more than letting them learn, because charedim marry and have children younger and therefore get higher salaries. Masses of charedim is the last thing the army wants or needs, in a time of budget cuts and staff surpluses. They are davka trying to eliminate “jobnik” positions in the army. This is a spiritual war, plain and simple. Lapid and his ilk simply want to pull people out of the beis medrash, to “empty the pool.”
“And just a technicality, but I thought a married person can work at 24?”
That’s what the new law seeks to change it to. Now it is 28.