Israel desperately needs more US weaponry

Someone explain why after Bibi tells us to get "f-cked" and insists he's going ahead with the Rafah invasion we'd provide them military hardware?

BTW approx 27% of Israelis eligible for the military draft are exempt because they are orthodox Jews. This group is coincidentally the most right-wing and votes the hawkish coalition into power.

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant isn't that bothered by the ultra-Orthodox dodging the draft. But with the government failing to set clear objectives for the Gaza war, his only alternative is to try to engineer the coalition's downfall

Anshel Pfeffer, Haaretz Media

Mar 25, 2024

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant at defense headquarters in Tel Aviv last month.

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant flew to Washington with one main mission – to try to hasten the supply of U.S.-made munitions that Israeli forces urgently need to continue the war against Hamas in Gaza and prepare for an escalation with Hezbollah in the north. Gallant's American interlocutors will ask some tough questions about Israel's planned operation in Rafah, not to mention the urgent steps needed to alleviate the hunger in Gaza and deploy a force that's neither the Israeli army nor Hamas for taking over the Strip.

With such a packed and combustive agenda, it's not entirely clear why Gallant made a point of announcing that he refuses to sponsor the bill exempting ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students from the draft – legislation the cabinet is expected to approve this week. In all his years as a general in the Israel Defense Forces, Gallant never bothered with these matters, nor in the decade or so since he entered politics. He now has a war on his hands.

It would have made more sense for him just to kick the can down the road and go along with the filing of the bill, which is unlikely ever to pass, to the Knesset. As it is, the Supreme Court – sitting as the High Court of Justice – is highly unlikely to rule that the bill conforms with the justices' standard of equality, so the legislation will be sent back to the legislature for yet another revision.

On the other hand, even if no law is passed by the court's end-of-month deadline, the yeshiva students are no longer exempt from the draft, and the government funding for their institutions is cut, the IDF's personnel headache won't be over. No one in the army has any real plan to force tens of thousands of young ultra-Orthodox, or Haredi, men into uniform and then onto the battlefield in the coming months or years. Israel has a compulsory draft, but it can only work with a consensus. The IDF can't and won't press-gang an entire community.

Gallant knows that failing to pass the exemption bill won't help him fill the IDF's ranks in time for this war, or this decade. And it won't provide more than a small and very temporary boost to the morale of reservists who only a few weeks ago returned home after four months of service during a war – and with a call-up order for the spring or summer already landing in the mailbox.

The difficult dilemma they face as they're called on once again to leave their families and jeopardize their jobs, businesses or studies won't be any easier just because the Haredi exemption bill didn't pass. Gallant should know this as well.