"You ask: 'Do we need more Chareidim in the army?' The answer is: No. About three thousand chareidim enlist every year – most of them into combat units; any more would just cause more [administrative] headaches. Every chareidei framework costs tons of money and inhibits our new project of increasing the number of women in combat units… In two years, the number of soldiers in the army is [expected] to grow to a surplus of 17,000. 17,000 soldiers that the army does not know what to do with. A committee has been established to find a solution for all those extra soldiers – how to let them go. In two years, we are looking at a surplus of soldiers… Everyone knows that the army has no need for chareidi soldiers… They cost too much: every chareidei soldier costs double that of a regular one. This whole debate was unnecessary." (Yossi Joshua, Military Correspondent for “Latest News,” on IDF Radio)
So if the country doesn't need the Charedim in the military, if in fact, having Charedim in the military is a waste of tax dollars, then why was formation of the government held up by Lieberman's insistence of having more Charedim entlist? (Already 30% enlist.) Is it because the purpose of Zionism is to destroy the Torah as R' Chaim Brisker said?
Do you want to say Charedim have to share the burden? How about the Chilonim share the burden? Charedim are the ones keeping the mitzvos, and not just for 2.5 years, but for life. Overall, the Charedim make a much bigger contribution to society than Chilonim do.
Oh, so you say that the Chilonim don't believe in the Torah. Well, I for one, don't believe in the military, not the way Israelis do. Why does the 100th biggest country in the world need the 5th most powerful military?
Surrounded by enemies? Israel has had peace with Jordan and Egypt for 40 years. There's no enmity with the Mediterranean sea. Syria has its own problems. What's left, the border with Lebanon? There has been peace there as well for decades, since Israel ended its occupation of Southern Lebanon. Israel has not been invaded by another country in nearly 50 years and even that war was avoidable by diplomacy. The last invasion was 70 years ago and even that one was caused arguably by Ben-Gurion's declaration of a state following heavy political pressure and terrorism to force UN Resolution 181. Israel has started nearly all of its wars. It's an Israeli thing: aggression, militarism. Why should the Charedim have to shoulder that obsession?
The notion that Israel’s wars were wars of self-defense and that its limited military actions were primarily “retaliatory” in nature rests on shaky foundations. Many Israeli politicians and institutional historians have tried to sell the world and the Israeli public for decades the conception that Israel’s military actions were primarily actions of self-defense.
….most of Israel’s wars were the result of deliberate aggressive designs or flawed conflict management strategies. At least one war (the Yom Kippur War) could have been avoided by judicious diplomacy. Israel’s war experience is a story of folly, recklessness, and self-made traps. None of the wars – with the possible exception of the 1948 War of Independence – was what Israelis call Milhemet Ein Brerah (“war of necessity”). They were all wars of choice or wars of folly. (Zeev Maoz, Defending the Holy Land, p. 552.)
Maoz, Professor of Political Science and Director of the Correlates of War Project at the University of California, Davis and Distinguished Fellow at the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya, Israel, is the former head of the prestigious Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University and the former academic director of the IDF M.A. (graduate studies) program. He is not somebody “who doesn’t get it,” who has no right to speak because he does not know the State of Israel and its unique situation, a charge that auto-defenders of Israeli government policy like to say about all critics. He is a man who the Israeli military itself made the academic director of its graduate program.
What's really going on here is a religious war. Zionism vs. Torah. Militarism vs. Torah. It's the final battle of world history. The eruv rav against faithful Jews. Which side will you be on?
