Haredi enlistment begins in 6 weeks

‘Equal share of burden’ committee has 1st meeting. ‘IDF’s needs are our first priority,’ Science Minister Yaakov Perry says.

Attila Somfalvi

 

 

The Knesset Committee for Promoting Equal Share of the Burden, headed by Science Minister Yaakov Perry (Yesh Atid), convened for the first time Sunday. Representatives of the IDF and the Civil Service Administration attended the meeting and stressed they were prepared to intake haredi enlistees.

At the end of the meeting, Perry said: “In six weeks we will have a historic law – the process is sensitive, but the IDF’s needs are our first priority.”

The committee’s meeting took place only a few hours before the beginning of Memorial Day, and while leading the meeting, Minister Perry stressed the symbolic importance of the coincidence.

He was followed by Brigadier-General Gadi Agmon, head of planning in the IDF’s Personnel Directorate, who presented before the committee the up-to-date situation of haredi enlistment.

According to him, the IDF is ready to take in additional haredi forces in light of “the Army’s growing needs.”

He nonetheless noted that the IDF’s working premise was that such a process will take place in gradually, making sure the troops were designated to special positions that damage neither their way of life nor the IDF’s social fabric.

Head of the Civil Service Administration, Shar-Gerby Shalom, presented civil service enlistment rates, adding that the number of haredim joining National Service has grown since the end of the Tal Law.

 

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