A Knesset member is engaged in a public dispute with the Israel Defense Force over what he sees as an inordinate number of exemptions from military service.
Laborite Raanan Cohen said the official figures of the IDF’s manpower branch show that 23 percent of military-aged youth were not drafted in 1988, and that number could reach 25 percent in 1989.
Cohen charged that the trend was a “dangerous process which will increase the social polarization in Israel,” where military service has always been regarded as the great social, ethnic and educational leveller.
But an IDF spokesman said the figures cited by Cohen were misleading.
According to the spokesman, exemptions from military service were given to 14.5 percent of military aged men and 31.1 percent of women last year.
He said Cohen’s higher rate was achieved in part by averaging the number of male and female exemptions.
Among the men, the spokesman said, 5 percent were ultra-Orthodox who were exempted to study at yeshivas.
Two percent were exempted for sociological reasons, mainly for poor reading and writing skills, and 7 percent were rejected for medical reasons.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
