Monday, May 13, 2013

Lapid's financial program is sabotaging his promises for universal draft

Times of Israel   One of the central campaign promises of the governing coalition parties was to institute a universal draft to the IDF or civil service for Israel’s ultra-Orthodox and Arab populations, but that promise is in jeopardy due to austerity measures sought by those same parties. At a Sunday meeting of the Peri Committee, tasked by the government with formulating a solution to the problem of the universal draft, a Finance Ministry representative told the committee members that under the current 2013-2014 budget draft there won’t be enough funding to implement wide-scale recruitment of the ultra-Orthodox and Arab populations into the IDF or civil service, Israeli media reported on Monday. [...]

The implementation of a true universal draft would require a wide budget outlay in several areas, including training and preparation for each recruit, regular payments for new IDF soldiers or civil service workers, and employment, educational programs and economic incentives aimed to entice the ultra-Orthodox community to enlist.

“The Finance Ministry doesn’t have the funding for this,” the representative said, according to Maariv. “We expect very heavy cuts… I doubt if there will be an additional budget so that we can give incentives and rewards.” [...]

2 comments:

  1. The implementation of a true universal draft would require a wide budget outlay in several areas, including training and preparation for each recruit, regular payments for new IDF soldiers or civil service workers, and employment, educational programs and economic incentives aimed to entice the ultra-Orthodox community to enlist.

    Once again we see that conscript armies are wastfully expensive. Why pay all that money to train people, half of whom you only have for 18mos and the other half you let go after 3yrs(or less)?

    So not only can the IDF not afford a universal draft it under it's current budget, it certainly will not be able to afford one under a decreased budget. Which is probably why Israel is the only Parliamentary Democracy in the world that still has conscription.

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  2. This isn't the first time that a department essential to Israel's well-being was politically assigned to a lightweight thinker lacking any trace of the right experience and attitude. This points to the serious flaws in Israel's whole parliamentary system.

    I'm reminded of the forced evacuations from Gaza. No one was responsible and competent enough to plan, organize and make good on Israel's obligations to the evacuees. It's as if a government devoted to bombastic self-promotion couldn't care less about real people, fellow Jews, outside the ruling clique.

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