Half of IDF's New Combat Officers are Religious

(IsraelNN.com) Half of the IDF's young combat officers are religious Jews, according to statistics published in Ma'ariv Sunday. The report also says that about 40% of the cadets of the most recent Officer Course in BAHAD 1, the IDF's officer training school, were religious (this number refers to all officers, as opposed to just combat officers).

"This says something very good about about the sons of the religious Zionist movement," opines the writer of the piece, senior correspondent Ben Caspit. "They are becoming the IDF's backbone. Their presence in the army is several times larger than it is in the general population."

"Any way we look at it," he says, "it's about education. It is clear that religious Zionist movement's educational institutions continue to disseminate values, Zionism, Judaism amd mission-orientedness."

by Gil Ronen

(IsraelNN.com) Half of the IDF's young combat officers are religious Jews, according to statistics published as the lead story in Ma'ariv, Israel's second largest daily newspaper, Sunday. The report also says that about 40% of the cadets of the most recent Officer Course in BAHAD 1, the IDF's officer training school, were religious (this number refers to all officers, as opposed to just combat officers).

"This says something very good about the sons of the religious Zionist movement," opines the writer of the piece, senior correspondent Ben Caspit. "They are becoming the IDF's backbone. Their presence in the army is several times larger than it is in the general population." "Any way we look at it," he says, "it's about education." It is clear, he states, that "the religious Zionist movement's educational institutions continue to disseminate values, Zionism, Judaism and mission orientation. The religious youth is mission-oriented. [It sets out to] conquer the hilltops. Then to conquer the military service and the officership."

The entry of the religious Zionists into the officer corps began after the Yom Kippur War, says Caspit, when Major Generals Yair Naveh and El'azar Stern entered service. "It continues with the pre-military academies, which send a sizeable percentage of their graduates to the Officers' Course." The "Hesder" yeshivas, he says – t "They do everything willingly, with their entire soul," Caspit says of the religious Zionist soldiers. he seminaries that combine religious study with a shortened army service – do not contribute many officers.

"They do everything willingly, with their entire soul," Caspit says of the religious Zionist soldiers. Alongside them one finds, he claims, many youths from the socialist-agricultural moshav and kibbutz movements, as well as soldiers from new-immigrant and lower-income families who see the military as a chance for upward social mobility.

However, what Caspit refers to as "the First Israel" - the middle and upper classes - is no longer very visible among the officers. More and more of its sons either actively evade service, or opt for what he calls "a gray evasion" – the employment of various tricks to serve less time, serve closer to home, and without endangering themselves. "They find all the ways in the world to fool the system, to see the IDF as some foreign element which is meant to curtail their personal advancement, independent thought, private ambition and other legitimate aspirations of 21st century man."

Caspit sees this trend as a worrying one and calls for urgent action to raise the motivation of non-religious Israelis to serve and excel. He does not specify what this action might be.

Socio-political ramifications
Religious Zionists have often noted, in the course of political debates, that their youth plays a disproportionate role in the IDF, but secular Israelis have usually denied this. The article by Caspit, who is one of Israel's top journalists and the author of several books, including biographies of Binyamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak, can be seen as admission by a secular Israeli that the religious Zionists have been right on this subject.

The statistics are important for Israeli society because the IDF is seen as the nation's backbone and its pride. Since the State of Israel was founded it has had five native-born Prime Ministers, four of whom were from the military: Yitzchak Rabin, Netanyahu, Barak and Ariel Sharon. Rabin and Barak both served as IDF Chiefs of Staff, Sharon was a Major General and Netanyahu had been an officer in an elite unit that was commanded by his brother, Yoni, a military hero who was killed in the rescue of a hijacked Air France jet at Entebbe in 1976. Thus, traditionally, service as combat officers goes hand in hand with leadership potential.

Another reason these statistics are significant is that many religious soldiers have been refusing orders to evict Jews from their homes in Judea, Samaria and Gaza. If half of the IDF's new officers are religious, this means that the refusal movement could indeed have a deep deterrent impact on the IDF and government when and if it decides to attempt additional pullouts from territory, as the movement's leaders claim.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/123492

One clarification. These are not Haredi/Chasidic Jews who in large part seek and obtain religious exemptions to army service. The “Hesder” soldiers combine religious study AND army service. Further the religious Zionists are very prominent in the settlement movement.

When the exemption was first approved in 1948, it involved barely 400 men. Four decades later, in 1992, the Torah-study exemption was granted to 5% of that year’s conscription-age cohort of 18-year-olds. This year, 2007, the proportion reached 11%. In 2019, the exempted yeshiva students are projected to top 23% of the cohort, which is the proportion of Haredi students among this year’s first graders — the most straightforward predictor.

The figures are contained in reports issued in July by two Israeli government agencies. One, released by the army’s manpower division, simply states the proportions of conscripts and exemptees. According to the report, just under 24% of all 18-year-olds will be exempted from the draft this coming fall. Of those, 11% — close to half — will be excused because of Torah studies. The rest will be divided roughly evenly among Israelis living abroad, those with criminal records, medical deferments and those found “psychologically unfit” — by health or inclination — for military service.

http://www.forward.com/articles/11292/

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