The recommendations of the Peri Committee for reforming the inequality in the military draft are like Swiss cheese, largely composed of holes. One such hole is the recommendation that the year in which the new mechanism begins should be 2016. This is a black hole into which time itself disappears. To reach the haredi enlistment levels the committee has set for three years ahead, things must start rolling now. If we are to make the ultra-Orthodox realize that they must serve in the Israel Defense Forces or national service, we must act now. It is rather unfortunate that Defense Minister Moshe (Bogie) Ya'alon and Chief of General Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz are not fully embracing the new prospective recruits. This is like the ingathering of the exiles. This is a new opportunity. The proper atmosphere has emerged, one of immediacy. As the famous poet Hayim Nachman Bialik said, "At times of peril you don't pick and choose who is worthy of joining the cause." Nothing will get done in 2016 if we let things stall until then. The Peri Committee erred from the beginning by not exploring a mandatory service requirement for Arab youth, at least as volunteers in various public organizations. But it is not too late for a course correction. The committee's chairman, Science and Technology Minister Yaakov Peri, should be given more time to change this too. So what's holding him back? Yisrael Beytenu leader MK Avigdor Lieberman and Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon (Likud) are trying to have the Arab issue inextricably linked to the draft of ultra-Orthodox Jews. By doing that they are shirking their duty to draft the haredim. Fixing one form of injustice should not be contingent on fixing another. There are other holes in this cheese, especially when it comes to inaction. But the recent spat between Finance Minister Yair Lapid's party and the rest of the coalition revolves around whether haredim who do not comply with the new enlistment rules would be in violation of Israel's criminal code (it is embarrassing to watch Likud and Habayit Hayehudi trying to have it both ways). Ya'alon wanted to vest the defense minister with the authority to determine whether haredi draft dodging would be a criminal offense, but that is a problematic stipulation. When the time comes to form the next government several years from now, the haredi parties would make their participation in the coalition contingent on appointing a defense minister who would not criminalize such draft-dodging behavior, and such a coalition precondition would be perfectly legal. Israeli society has much to lose from the prospect of military police descending on Bnei Brak and Mea Shearim to round up haredi draft dodgers. This would inflict unprecedented damage; images of draft-dodgers being arrested would create a media frenzy and unleash haredi anti-Zionist sentiment in full force. The rabbis and their students would be filmed screaming the Yiddish word of distress, "Gevalt!" and quoting passages such as "Touch not mine anointed" (Psalms 105:15) and "Take counsel together, and it shall be brought to nought" (Isaiah 8:10). That would be a bad development. The criminalization of haredi draft-dodging must not have such drastic consequences. The more practical solution would be to impose financial penalties. Haredi youth have taken encouraging first steps toward embracing their duty to integrate into Israeli society and have begun to move away from their complete dependency on the yeshivot as a means of putting food on the table. Precisely because of these baby steps, there is no need to use the courts and prisons to facilitate their enlistment. The right approach would be to deny yeshivot automatic funding. Only once a yeshiva proves that enough of its graduates have undergone the enlistment process (according to set criteria and quotas) would the money be transferred. This would be the exact opposite of the sanctions legislators have proposed, under which yeshivot would be partially denied funding only after they had already been given the money. The draft-dodgers should not be denied government services either, be it in the National Insurance Institute or in the healthcare system. But, on the flip side, the government has no obligation to issue a driver's license to those who are engaged in criminal behavior such as draft-dodging. If the government is intent on punishing draft dodgers, there are many tools at its disposal. But is the government serious about all this? I don't know. The jury is still out on that.
