I say this despite acknowledging that he recognizes the
tremendous burden being borne by reservists because Charedim unwilling to share
the burden of military service. In fact, that admission is precisely what makes
me so angry.
In a number of columns, Mr. Paley has been trying to explain
the rationale for his staunch support for the Charedi leadership’s position of
refusing to allow Charedim to serve in the IDF. Even as the burden on those who
have been serving continuously for three years continues to grow.
That he acknowledges their pain while continuing to justify
an ideology that says everyone who studies Torah full-time should be exempt is,
in my view, an exercise in perpetuating the very pain he freely admits exists.
The Charedi refusal to allow their own to serve means that a burden that could
so easily be relieved by Charedi enlistment – will continue. In what world is
this a just outcome?
First, not every Charedi man learns full-time. Second, I
would be willing to bet that among those who do “learn” full-time, many do so
because it is expected of them after a lifetime of indoctrination to that
effect. And there are probably more than a few among them who do not learn much
at all, but simply hang around in and out of the Beis HaMedrash.
Even though I do not agree with a blanket exemption for all
learning Charedim, let us, for the moment, concede that those who genuinely
learn full-time should automatically be exempt. What about working Charedim?
Why should they be exempt? That is where his argument begins to fall apart.
His argument now is that political and military figures who
are not generally supportive of Charedim or their agenda have said that the IDF
does not need Charedim and could not accommodate all of them anyway if they
decided to enlist. He adds that there are other ways of addressing the IDF’s
manpower shortage that have been suggested by people with no connection to the
Charedi world.
From this, he concludes that the push to draft Charedim is
not really about relieving the manpower shortage at all, but rather:
“The proposals that were put forward did not seek a temporary response. They sought to use the crisis to permanently alter the structure of the yeshivah world. The very fact that the proposed solutions are permanent rather than temporary demonstrates that the discussion is not only about the specific needs of the current war, but about a fundamental change—a change that people had been seeking even before the war.”
There are two glaring problems with his conclusion, which I
am sure is informed, at least in part, by his preexisting bias…
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