The Government of Israel has responded to High Court of Justice
petitions demanding that haredim be drafted and serve in the country’s
military as all other Jewish citizens do by claiming that haredi 'modesty demands' and their demands for complete and total gender segregation through all aspects of military life will cost the IDF too much money to make drafing haredim safe or feasible.
Netanyahu Government Tells High Court It Doesn’t Want To Draft Haredim Because It Costs The IDF Too Much Money Due To Haredi Gender Segregation
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com
The Government of Israel has responded to High Court of Justice petitions demanding that haredim be drafted and serve in the country’s military as all other Jewish citizens do. (Many Christian and Druze citizens and even some Muslims also serve in the IDF).
"A universal draft of haredim is not necessarily in the best interest of the military," the state wrote in a brief filed today with the High Court and obtained by Ynet.
Why is drafting haredim “not necessarily in best interest of the military”?
Because, unlike armies in most other parts of the world, including the US, Israel doesn’t really draft or enlist haredim into the same military everyone else serves in. Instead, Israel’s coalition government ordered the IDF to meet special haredi “needs” that exceed what Jewish law demands, and those needs cost the IDF millions of dollars and a whole lot of time and trouble.
Almost every haredi “need” revolves around two things – excluding women from all contact with haredi soldiers and keeping haredi soldiers away from contact with non-haredi troops, even if they are all males.
To accomplish this, the IDF has to build dedicated bases for haredim and create new male-only battalions.
In the same way, the state’s brief notes, the IDF's ability to screen and classify haredi inductees also mandates the formation of all-male teams on every level of the induction process, including introductory interviewers, doctors, placement coordinators, etc.
The state also claims that the IDF will also have to create a special series of aptitude tests for haredim that are suited to their way of life and educational background – meaning that because almost all haredi yeshivas fail to secular subjects like math, science, Modern Hebrew language, civics, etc., and because many haredim lack even a basic understanding of Israeli history or the function of a democracy and a civil society, the tests given haredim to judge their aptitude for various jobs in the military have to be dumbed down.
All of this will cost the IDF a tremendous amount of money and time, the state claimed, and hurt its primary goal of defending Israel from its enemies, the state’s brief claimed.
"Making the IDF divert such funds to facilitate this change will infringe on its ability to meet its primary missions and goals."
At least 19,500 haredim should be drafted by 2015.
A source in Israel’s defense establishment told Ynet that a universal draft would be “an unprecedented, historic and dramatic move," adding that the IDF would prefer that the government finds a solution to the various issues that arise from it [rather than dumping that responsibility on the military].