Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid announced that he now backs efforts to increase the salaries of IDF soldiers in their compulsory service. Lapid’s statements are being attacked from all directions as cheap electioneering since he opposed the move during his tenure as finance minister.
Now Lapid is expressing his concerns, how soldiers that fought in Operation Protective Edge this past summer do not have sufficient funds to complete month and buy their basic needs.
Kulanu party leader Moshe Kahlon announced that if his party is elected into Knesset this will be among the social economic issues on its agenda.
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
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One Response
Clever idea. If they paid soldiers a living wage, it would become unaffordable to have mass conscription, and the army would want to get rid of the many soldiers whose “work” isn’t worth their pay. Be eliminating most jobniks, you get a better army, and eliminate the need for conscription.
If you offer to abolish conscription, there is no longer a “burdern” to “share”, meaning it would be practical for Lapid to join a government that includes hareidim (and Arabs). Lapid wants to be in the coalition, and his current unwillingness to be in one with hareidim will prevent (note that even with Shas’s splitting, and two religius factions falling under the threshold, there will still be more hareidim in the next kenesset than Yesh Atid).