Protesting Plesner
In case you haven’t heard there was a hafgana(protest) today in Kikar Shabbat. I only found out when I was trying to make my way to and from Mishmeret Sofrim to pick up some stuff I had taken to have checked. This is what I encountered:
Here is some more video of my trying to fight my way through the crowd in order to get home:
Since no protest would be complete without the children from the various schools showing up to say that they don’t want to be sacrificed for someone else there is this:
Now let me say that I am against a universal draft. Yes I have said many times, even on this blog, that it would do the average avereich good to learn discipline and responsibility and all the various things that one should learn in the Military. However, I don’t think history has shown that conscript armies rarely teach any of those things, and wind up being a lot like the Boy Scouts. Just look at the number of field trips heritage and cultural enrichment tiyulim the average Israeli soldier takes.
Or let me spell it out a different way. The United States has what is probably the best equipped best trained military anywhere in the world. Basic Training is 12 weeks(8 weeks during war time when they need to turn them out for the meat grinder faster) 7days a week, no breaks. Israeli Basic training, is 8 weeks, with weekends off. Following Basic training every US army soldier(we’re talking basic infantry Marines ect have their own, longer training periods) go on to another 14 weeks of Infantry School. The average Israeli soldier is now in uniform and done training. Let’s say you wanted to become a US commando, assuming you did well enough in Infantry school, you would go on to another two years of training(Delta, Green Beret, that sort of thing). Israeli army, forget it, by the time the guy has been in the military for 2.5yrs he is already looking at his discharge not finally going active.
What am I saying? It is simple. I don’t think Hareidim(or anyone else) should face mandatory service. I think the military would do much better if it was purely a professional volunteer outfit, not a place to stick 18yr olds who don’t know what else they want to do with their lives yet.
> without the children from the various schools showing up to say that they don’t want to be sacrificed for someone else
How ironic since that’s what the Chiloni children are saying about the Chareidim.
At any rate, I disagree about a universal draft. I think in a diverse society like Israel where so many groups have, as part of their identity, a principle that says “Everyone not like us is inferior” a universal draft is essential. The boy from an uptight Ashkenazic family who grew up in a solid Ashkenazic neighbourhood and school will finally meet a Sephardi comrade and discover that this guy is just as human as he is.
One of the main points of the army is specifically to increase tolerance by forcing different groups to interact and come to respect one another. And I would suggest that the lower rate of friction between Sephardim and Ashkenazim, or Ethiopians and everyone else, in secular Israeli society is because they have had to interact like this while the Chareidi community has been able to maintain its isolation and illusions.
I don’t see the function of a military as increasing tolerance. The US military was desegregated by executive order 9981 in 1948, and as can be seen clear through the Vietnam war, it didn’t work to promote equality even within the military. Prejudice is prejudice.
Second to that, and really primarily as I stated the point of a military is not to achieve internal social aims within a nation. Rather it is a tool of State and diplomacy. In other words it is to enforce the will of the state, or body politic, through the application of measured and directed force. Conversely it is also responsible to ensure that another state doesn’t so force it’s will on it’s own body politic(i.e. national defense).
Thus I think that national defense and the ability to sufficiently project force ought to be the primary priorities of a military. As such, history has shown, that a professional volunteer military is preferred.
If you want some sort of national service corp that cleans up trash, helps build homes for the indigent or holds sick kids hands in the medical ward in order to achieve your goals of social engineering I would be willing to discuss that. In fact if you billed it right the Hareidi Gedolim wouldn’t be able to refuse it. The thing is, that just isn’t the point of the military.
Although I agree with most of your points, I would note the following:
1) The country in the world that is the most-invasion proof is Switzerland which has a universal draft and in which every citizen is expected to help protect the country if need be.
2) One cannot compare the US and Israeli armies. Remember that at the dawn of the State, there were not 1 but 3 military forces operating in Israel. Integration of those forces was essential in order to prevent civil war (key word: Altalena). Furthermore, the US, in its early years, was composed of a mostly homogenous population: European whites. Israel, almost from the get go, underwent a massive influx of almost 1.5 million people from all corners of the globe. Therefore the US army never needed to develop a tradition of integration but the Israeli army did.
3) The “yehareg v’al ya’avor” prohibition invented by the Chazon Ish to prevent Chareidi army service has long since been extended to Sheirut Leumi. Billed right, the Chareidi “Gedolim” would still reject it. Why? Well, to quote Commander Kruge from Star Trek III: The Search for Spoke: “Because you want it!”
Switzerland in an anomaly on many levels, not the least of which is their doctrine of absolute neutrality. Followed by being the only true Democracy in the world. Nor is their military overly effective.
Your grasp on US history is extremely shaky. Far from being homogenous at its beginning the US was comprised of thirteen separate nations each with their own Army. That didn’t change until 1860 and the US Civil war, when people finally decided that a federally controlled military was less likely to force a rebellion than a State controlled military.
Sheriut Leumi being opposed by the Chazon Ish was primarily for women(which most no longer observe) and the reasons if examined were quite good. In some sense they still are.
Re: Frustration. I’m curious why you don’t just put a matlis on the back, etc?
Well, that’s the conclusion the US, France and Germany came to when they abolished the draft.
It might be that the situation is slightly different in Israel, because there is a permanent actual risk of war and it is a small country. So it might be that they need an “expandable” army and that those needs are better met with draft & miluim than with a purely professional army…