After more than a year of deadly operations in the Gaza Strip since the start of the war with Hamas, Israel’s military is struggling to find new soldiers, while reserves struggle to cope with the burden of repeated missions.
After October 7, 2023, approximately 300,000 reservists were called up by the Israeli army, 18.3% of whom were exempted because they were over 40 years old.
The reservist has been called up four times for service in the Israeli army since October 7 and criticized those who want Israel to ‘maintain a presence in Lebanon and Gaza’.
Israel’s military has approximately 170,000 active duty soldiers, and military service is mandatory for both males and females at age 18, but some are exempt from service for various reasons.
Israel is waging a war on multiple fronts, mainly against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, which has so far killed 771 Israeli soldiers and wounded 4,500.
“We’re Parting”
Reservists’ terms of service in the army are extended, and some complain that it deprives them of their family life, sometimes by more than six months.
“We are collapsing,” Ariel Cheri-Levi wrote on Facebook in a post that was retweeted thousands of times on social media.
Sherry-Levy has been called up four times to serve in the Israeli army since October 7 and has criticized those who want Israel to “maintain a presence in Lebanon and Gaza”.
“We have to finish this war because we still have no soldiers,” he assessed. He himself believes that serving one’s country is important, but said that “the retreats we have made are too great.”
Another booker, a father of two, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told AFP, “Physical exhaustion and a drop in morale added to the fact that I lost my job.”
“The collective (interest) is always greater than the individual, but the price is too high for my family,” he added, adding that he has spent nearly six months in the Gaza Strip in the past year.
Ultra-Orthodox Jews
Also, the conscription of ultra-Orthodox Jews was subject to public debate, as most did not serve in the military.
Ultra-Orthodox Jews make up about 14% of Israel’s population, according to the Israel Institute for Democracy (ITI), or nearly 1.3 million people.
The Israeli military says some 66,000 ultra-Orthodox men of conscription age are exempted from conscription because they devote themselves to studying Judaism’s holy books, based on a regulation enacted when the state of Israel was founded in 1948.
But in June the Supreme Court ordered the recruitment of Talmudic school students, saying the government had no right to exempt them “in the absence of an adequate legal framework”.
Ultra-Orthodox political parties in the ruling coalition under Benjamin Netanyahu have called on the government to pass a bill exempting Talmudic school students from military service ahead of a crucial state budget vote later this year.
Aryeh Deri, head of the ultra-Orthodox Shaz party, said in an interview that he hopes to “solve the problem” for Talmudic school students.
“A dark cloud hangs over us”
Filmmaker Hakai Lubert, whose son was killed in the Gaza war, responded with an open letter.
“The problem is that my beloved son Jonathan was killed in Gaza 10 months ago, my wonderful son Itamar who is currently fighting in Gaza, my loyal son Eland who will soon enter Gaza (…) Now we cannot “That’s the problem. Sleep in fear of another announcement, it’s a dark cloud hanging over us,” he wrote.
Another open letter signed by more than 2,000 wives of religious Zionist reservists, who combine religious life with military service, calls for “lightening the burden on those who serve.”
“There is no opposition between Torah study and military service, the two can be combined,” university student Tehila Elizur, wife and mother of deportees, told the Yediot Aharonot newspaper.
Six men who were exempted from conscription and joined the army as volunteers were killed in action between October 22 and 28, among them a father of ten.
For David Zeno, 52, who served more than 250 days in the Israeli army, including several weeks in Lebanon, “serving my country is important, and as long as I can do that, I will continue. . . .”
“But above all, we must not forget that this is a war and that we have no soldiers,” said the father of seven daughters and grandfather of six grandchildren.
Source: APE, AFP