End the draft? In Israel, some mourn what would be lost.
| TEL AVIV
Israel’s military draft has long enjoyed consensus support for its contribution to Israeli identity, with the army celebrated for breaking down social barriers and fostering a sense of a shared national burden. But there’s been a significant shift in thinking among the public about whether or not the army needs to draft everyone or should become a smaller professional army.
A recent poll by the Israel Democracy Institute found that 47% of Jewish Israelis now think the army should make that transition. This rising sentiment “tells us that the army is no longer the flag around which everyone is gathering,” says Tamar Hermann, a senior research fellow at the institute who conducted the survey.
Why We Wrote This
Advocates of mandatory national service extol it as a means of creating social cohesion. As Israelis consider a volunteer army, some wonder what would fill the unifying role of the military draft.
Defense Minister Benny Gantz has already said he supports adopting a model whereby everyone is drafted, but then selected for either civilian or military service.
The debate stirs deep emotions. Noah Efron, who hosts a podcast about Israeli politics and society, says his own service in the infantry “entirely altered my understanding and experience of the country. I would be a very different person and citizen without that.”
“There’s something sad to me,” he says, “about this sense of commitment to the broader whole no longer being an axiom of society.”
Adi Itin is a high school senior whose days are packed not just with schoolwork and babysitting, but assessments and tryouts for what position she’ll have in the Israeli army when she’s drafted this summer.
She’s been tested for her readiness for pilot training (she didn’t get accepted) and computer programming (she’s waiting to hear back). But what she’s hoping for most of all is to be selected as an instructor in a tank battalion.
She’s looking forward to the day her parents drop her off at a military draft base where she will be officially inducted, given an Israel Defense Forces identification number, outfitted with an olive-drab uniform and black leather boots, and bused to a base to begin her training.
Why We Wrote This
Advocates of mandatory national service extol it as a means of creating social cohesion. As Israelis consider a volunteer army, some wonder what would fill the unifying role of the military draft.
“I feel ready for this new phase of my life. I think it’s important to serve in the army both for my own personal growth and to contribute to my country,” says Ms. Itin, 17, from Beit Herut, a village in central Israel next to the Mediterranean Sea.
Throughout Israel’s history, such attitudes toward military service – as a national rite of passage connecting the individual to Israeli society as a whole – have helped make the battle-tested IDF one of the world’s most effective fighting forces.
The mandatory military draft has long enjoyed consensus support for its core contribution to Israeli identity, with the IDF celebrated as a “people’s army” that breaks down social barriers, increases social mobility, and fosters a sense of a shared national burden. Most Jewish 18-year-olds are conscripted – men and women, rich and poor, from every part of the country.
But in recent years there’s been a significant shift in thinking among the public about whether or not the army needs to draft everyone or should become a smaller, volunteer, professional army, a transition that most Western countries have made.
Demographic shifts
Fueling that shift are a range of factors: a larger population to draw from to fill the military’s ranks; youth who are more individualistic and driven more by capitalist aspirations than a communal ideology; and a backlash against the very notion of a “people’s army” when 49% of the draft age cohort is exempted from serving.
The bulk of those exempted are ultra-Orthodox Jews or Arab citizens. Many modern Orthodox young women have a waiver, performing civilian national service instead. Others seek exemptions, often citing mental health reasons.
Not serving was once highly stigmatized, but no longer.
A recent poll by the Israel Democracy Institute found that 47% of Jewish Israelis now think that the IDF should make that transition to a professional army.
This rising new public sentiment, “tells us that the army is no longer the flag around which everyone is gathering,” says Tamar Hermann, a senior research fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute who conducted the survey.
Aside from recent bursts of fighting with vastly outgunned Palestinians in Gaza, and some broader earlier offensives in southern Lebanon, it has been almost 50 years since Israel fought a massive ground war against conventional armies on multiple fronts: the 1973 October War against both Syria and Egypt. The specter of mass call-ups of infantry and tanks rolling across borders to repel an existential threat appears less likely in an era in which the military is increasingly reliant on airpower and hi-tech and cyber warfare.
That, too, is changing the equation regarding individual sacrifice and the common good.
“A system that temporarily denies young men and women their freedom, imposing forced labor on them to deal with an external threat that is seen to be gradually diminishing, and imposing this unequally, is a contradiction in a society where liberal civic values and neoliberal economics are growing stronger,” Yagil Levy, an expert in military-civilian relations, wrote in the Haaretz newspaper.
Nevertheless, most experts in Israel have concluded it still cannot afford a volunteer force given its security threats, arguing that it needs both the manpower and the most capable among its recruits for key jobs in combat and intelligence. Without a draft, they warn, those with better options outside the military would choose not to serve.
Identity and collective security
Shifting attitudes toward identity are also in play.
Some see the pushback against the draft as Israelis feeling less attached to once-hallowed notions of the collective. The country was founded to grant safe refuge to the Jewish people, enabling a historic ingathering after 2,000 years of Diaspora life.
But in Israel today there’s talk of the country breaking down along “tribal” lines dividing national religious, secular, Arab, and ultra-Orthodox populations. That makes it harder to articulate common security needs.
“Part of that is the loss of trust in political leadership. The feeling that [security] decisions are being made on the basis of politics,” says Ehud Eiran, a political science professor at Haifa University, who fears something fundamental will be lost if the draft is scrapped. He himself served in combat and intelligence roles, and values the experience.
Among those also wistful as they imagine an end to what has been a core principle of Israeli life is Noah Efron, host of “The Promised Podcast” about Israeli politics and society.
“There’s something sad to me about this sense of commitment to the broader whole no longer being an axiom of society,” says Dr. Efron.
His service in the infantry introduced him to a cross section of other Israelis, an experience that continued for two more decades of annual mandatory reserve duty.
Riding in a jeep patrolling the country’s borders, and sleeping outside next to people from backgrounds entirely different from his own, he says, “entirely altered my understanding and experience of the country. I would be a very different person and citizen without that experience.”
Dr. Efron’s son, who recently completed his own army service and requested that his name not be used, was one of the few of his graduating class from a Tel Aviv high school to become a combat soldier.
Most of his counterparts sought out spots in noncombat roles. Most coveted of all: a place in the 8200, an elite intelligence unit known for its use of cyber skills. It’s considered a training ground for high-tech jobs later.
Defense Ministry reforms
There’s a tension within the IDF itself: Does it see itself exclusively as a fighting force defending its citizens, or a key institution serving Israeli society as a whole?
Those internal contradictions have only intensified. Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, the IDF’s chief of staff, harshly criticized a billboard sponsored by a company that runs cyber-skills competitions for young people that reads, “The cream of the crop to cyber,” an appropriation of an Air Force recruiting slogan.
The preference of some recruits to serve in cyber-intelligence roles over combat, he said, “reflects a loss of values and weakens the foundations of society.” Recalling threats Israel faces on various fronts, he said, “the best are first of all the fighters, measured by their willingness to contribute to the country and sacrifice their lives to protect others.”
At the Defense Ministry, plans for possible reforms are underway. The goal is both for a more efficient army and to create a situation that changes the current dynamic so that everyone in the post-high school cohort adheres to the ethos of serving the country.
As the population of ultra-Orthodox and Arab youth swells, there’s a fear within the defense establishment that in approximately 15 years, when only 40% of 18-year-olds are expected to be drafted, there will be more reluctance to serve when so many visibly do not.
Getting to that stage, says a defense official on condition of anonymity, would be “a security disaster.” He also cited research that people who serve their country perform better in their lives later on and feel more connected to their country. “We want to foster equality and strengthen the military, that is the vision.”
Defense Minister Benny Gantz, a former IDF chief of staff, has already said he supports adopting a model whereby everyone is drafted, but then selected for either civilian or military service.
Pushback is expected, but the plan is that religious women would continue in nonmilitary national service and be joined by ultra-Orthodox and Arab youths, along with others of draft age deemed more suited to contributing via work with youth, in hospitals, or at community-run charities.
“We want them to feel they are part of the Israeli story,” the defense official says.
