Drafting Non-Religious Girls Vs. Kiruv

BS"D

Drafting Non-Dati girls: Enemy of Outreach

by Binyomin Feinberg

feinbergbinyomin@gmail.com

4 Teves, 5780  °°  Jan. 1, '20

Question: In addition to all other considerations, if we're so interested in Outreach ("Kiruv") -  which we should be - why do we tolerate, even support a policy that systematically tramples on the legitimate needs of "non-Dati" girls for the same "automatic" exemption from Israeli military service that we (some of us) demand for religious girls?

Forcing girls into the immoral, exploitive military environment is one of the most effective ways of harming prospects for effective Kiruv (for some of the reasons that the girls are prohibited from enlisting to the extent of yai'horaig ve'al ya'avor).  The military environment takes a heavy spiritual/ religious toll on many religious soldiers, men and women. How much more so on those with a tenuous relationship with Judaism, or worse.

it's of course never too late for anyone who has a sincere desire to return to do so. But what are the prospects that someone who spends two years (or two weeks) in that promiscuous environment will opt to give up that lifestyle of hefkairus?

Secondly, how do you think those tens of thousands of non-"Dati" girls denied their legitimate needs to avoid conscription - into a notoriously exploitive military environment - feel about frum Jews? That we just care about ourselves, even when we have increased political power massively since the original draft issues arose about 70 years ago? 

Especially now, that the military is reneging on the initial status quo, and now pursuing religious girls (of all strata) with brazen indifference -- what substantive pretext do we really have to remain silent about the ongoing abomination of drafting girls of any type? 

Previously, some may have argued that those in Israel had sparse ability to organize major protests over "non-Dati" girls because that would endanger the protect status of religious girls.  [In reality, the argument initially probably was that, back in the early days of the State of Israel, most of the nonreligious girls wanted to enlist, so there simply weren't too many nonreligious girls for whom to fight. Now, that's changed radically. Many of them do not want want to serve in the military, for obvious reasons.]

That era clearly ended, as has been especially evident over the last year or two, under the faux rightwing government of Mr. Netanyahu.  Religious girls are no longer truly protected from conscription. [It's only a matter of time for everyone to wake up to that "new normal."] And we have reasonable expectation that that era will never return, especially with the ascension of religious parties to positions of massive "kabbolas tak'tzivim" (which we leave untranslated here). When Greed encounters Creed, the outcome is generally predictable. And that's even where the programs in question are totally legitimate.

We're now in the New Exploitive Order, where no type of girl, with the apparent but temporal exception of the politically connected communities, is safe from military conscription.  Thus, the argument for passivity that may have possibly once existed doesn't anymore. To the contrary, perhaps if the Maitav recruiters running after religious girls would realize that they're helping foment a united front (of sorts) - with religious Jews fighting for the nonreligious too - they'd step back, somewhat. Perhaps they would realize that they're undermining their own cause by fueling religious rage, via their antireligious focus on denying exemptions from religious girls. Thus, there is reason to fight for exemption for all girls even from a purely pragmatic perspective. So what are we waiting for?