Professor Yagil Levy of the Open University in Israel discusses the Charedi draft, and an alternative direction on Iran.
You have claimed that the religious community has a growing amount of influence in the Israeli military – why is this a negative thing? Does it impair the army’s operational capabilities, and in what ways?
There is nothing wrong in the growing presence of religious soldiers in the IDF. The problem is with the attempts of the soldiers’ leadership to impair the military’s autonomy in several areas, such as: exclusion of women from many roles in field units, the expansion of the role of military chaplains – from the traditional role of providing religious services to the religious socialization of secular soldiers, and many instances in which religious solders refused, or threatened to refuse, to carry out orders to evacuate settlements in the West Bank.
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