A short time before heading to Knesset for the swearing in of the 33rd Government of Israel, incoming Finance Minister Yair Lapid made a public announcement to the chareidi parties. He said “The door remains open to them. Those who say we are trying to exclude them are wrong and misleading.”
Lapid calls on the chareidim “to give us a try”; promising the chareidim will find he and his colleagues are more than willing to assist.
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
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13 Responses
Yeah right
Right…assist in becoming a chiloini Yep he earned the title, ימח שמו וזכרו במהרה
OKAY – abolish conscription.
1. It will reduce the number of hareidim listed as learning in yeshivos, since those who want to be Baal ha-battim can then do so without getting conscripted. Tax revenues will rise. The economy will boom.
2. The army will be free to actively recruit hareidim by offering tolerable conditions of service and economic incentives.
“More than willing to assist”
Assist in what? Limud Hatorah? Helping orima yungelite, financialy? Shmiras Shabbos? Religious freedom?
Please explain.
Mr Akuperma – About the single thing I’ve head you say so far that I agree with you about is the need to abolish mandatory conscription here! The only MK I know of currently promoting the idea is Moshe Feiglin.
It was a terrible idea to tie military service to right to employment. If Haredim are able to go out to work en masse they will be able to support their own Yeshiva systems to their heart’s desire. If they are self-sufficient noone should force them to accept a way of life that’s alien to them.
“OKAY – abolish conscription.”
by akuperma on 2013-03-18 at 10:28 am
Um, you mean for everyone?
Why not abolish taxes and make it voluntary? First get it thru your head that the Jewish people have a country and it’s called Israel. It is surrounded by a billion people who want to kill them and to survive they need an army with tanks, guns, and soldiers to use them. There is no free ride. There has always been a concept of Yessochor and Zevulun with how to arrange your finances and balance your learning Torah. But to expect that people who have no understanding and/or appreciation for Torah should serve an extra year so the Chareidi should not serve at all, does not make any sense.
After stating clearly that he sees no reason to include the chareidi parties regardless of whether or not they “come around”, it is quite amusing to see him say that the door remains open. How can a door that he slammed “remain” open?
#6: Yes, for everyone. In other words, move to a professional, all-volunteer army. Most of the top brass in the IDF has said numerous times that it has no need or desire to be inundated with thousands of chareidim.
#6 – Why not? The reason very few countries use conscription is that it is too expensive. The days when you hand someone a rifle, a crash course on loading it, and send him to front are ancient history. Modern soldiers require extensive training. Even the most simple infantry weapons are computerized. Conscripts not only tend to be very unwilling, but they aren’t around long enough to get trained before they leave.
Note that in Israel the important units, the combat units, the Air Force and navy, etc., are all oversubscribed even though they have relatively harsh conditions of service and longer terms of service in many cases. Anyone who is volunteering for extra service, will still volunteer without being drafted. The draft of hareidim is NOT motivated by a need for more soldiers (which means it is unlikely the hareidim gedolim will ever agree to tolerate it).
The US has had a professional army for 40 years. Britain usually had a professional army back when it was a superpower – and conquered the largest empire in history with professionals, not conscripts. The Roman army was professional. The German, Russian and French armies relied on conscription in most of the 19th and 20th centuries – in all fairness they didn’t do well with it.
Would you want to be treated by a doctor who was drafted and ordered to learn medicine? Would you want your house build by someone dragged off the street and set to work building after a cram course? Modern war is for professionals.
a person who will not sit with the charadim is asking them to give him a chance? not a chance!
Eliyahud0 and others, the right to employment is not linked to military service. Persons who receive special purpose deferments, such as torato-umanuto, may not work because they are deferred soldiers as it were. People who receive outright exemptions for whatever reason (psychiatric problems, being Arab, being a frum woman, etc.) are free of the army and have no such obstacle. The confusion exists among haredim because, until now, their deferment was almost time-unlimited and everyone but the law treated it as an outright exemption.
did the charedi parties offer a better plan – or for that matter ANY plan?
The door is open for chareidim to leave that’s what the shmendrick lapid meant.