The haredi community is overtaken with excitement. In Bnei Brak, rabbinical council members have come together on a single stage. What the equal burden law afforded them was quite different than the experience of the past several years. Rabbis from all over joined hands, even allowing the Mizrahis from Shas to stand among them as equals. These rabbis have given the signal to launch a million-man march, as they call it, predictably scheduling it on the 7th day of the Hebrew month of Adar, which is the date when Moses was born and passed away. So, what's the purpose of all the hullabaloo? The haredim know the expression, "It won't happen." The government is never going to apply criminal sanctions against draft-dodging yeshiva students. The ultra-Orthodox community had a helpful (and surprising) teacher: Maj. (res.) Rabbi Uri Ariel. Ariel, who is housing minister, supports the bill. But he managed to soothe ultra-Orthodox nerves, promising them that the Israel Defense Forces would not pull even one yeshiva student away from the pages of the Gemara for the sake of state defense. Your average Israeli, on the other hand, is in turmoil, lost among the various clauses in the law drawn up by the enlistment reform committee, which is headed by Habayit Hayehudi MK Ayelet Shaked. As haredi rabbis prepare to launch a fiery demonstration against an issue they themselves have determined doesn't constitute a threat, the secular Left, which doesn't consider military conscription one of its top concerns, has decided that these enlistment reforms are nothing but deception in practice. Meretz MK Zehava Gal-On nicknamed the whole endeavor, "Isra-bluff." But if that's the case, then why aren't they grinding away here and now to write a law of true equity -- every 18-year-old to service? And what's happening in the hesder yeshivas? There, rabbis and educators exalt the importance of state defense, but they are not willing to send their sons off to serve the same amount of time as their contemporaries, rather just 17 months. Given the fact that hesder yeshivas consider themselves bastions of deep thinking, question-asking and discussion and debate, how is it that nobody stands up to ask: Isn't teaching Jewish youth to defend themselves a part of the holy Torah? But the seculars who have been attacking soldiers from the hesder yeshivas remain unwilling to contribute their part, giving up the other side of the equation -- Nahal Brigade service. Why is it OK for enlistment-age men to spend part of their military service working on kibbutzim but not studying in hesder yeshivas? Above it all, the ordinary citizen is amazed at the defense establishment's position. The spat between then-Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Ya'alon (now defense minister) and then-MK Yohanan Plesner (Kadima) -- who had headed one of the first committees to draft enlistment reform after the High Court struck down the Tal Law -- is still fresh in the public mind. Even if the defense minister has decided to back the new law, IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz politely took him aside to detail his dissatisfaction with each and every clause. While every political party wrapped the sheets around itself, the IDF was left out in the cold. Clearly, the only way to make sure-fire justice is to implement full conscription here and now. To reduce the prevailing discrimination, which hurts soldiers while benefitting yeshiva study halls, it was necessary to take a hard line with the haredim, much more so than the conciliatory compromise offered by the Shaked committee. But now it looks as though it's going to be quite difficult to pick apart the package that was so crudely assembled. Perhaps the bill is going to contribute to reducing inequality, and perhaps it truly amounts to an act of joint coalition-haredi legerdemain. To see what the law has in store, we are going to have to let it to hit the ground running, making sure to wait and take stock. Meanwhile, the rest of us will go on singing this chorus of contradictory dissatisfaction.
