Israeli draft dodgers: beware Facebook

November 25, 2010 - 3:26 PM by · 1 Comment
Filed under: Israeliness, News 

Not dodging the draft (photo: Noa Cafri)

The All Facebook blog this week reported that the Israeli army is now monitoring the Facebook profiles of young female citizens in order to catch those who have falsely declared themselves “religious.” Such a declaration results in an exemption from the draft, usually to perform national service.

According to the article, Brid-Gen Amir Rogovsky says the IDF has already found 1,000 Israeli women in violation of the law and brought them back to serve. The women cited by Rogovsky, I must admit, were not particularly clever.

One uploaded a photo in which she was holding a menu from a non-kosher restaurant. Another logged onto Facebook on Shabbat. And, of course there were various poses posted of would-be draft dodgers in revealing clothing, not in keeping with a formal statement of a “religious” lifestyle.

The phenomenon of checking Facebook to determine what you’re getting into is not limited to the Israeli army. Employers now regularly scope out the social media presence of potential employees. A shot of a candidate for vice president of business development swigging from a keg in a strip club might sink a promising career.

The issue of faking religiosity is one that has recently come up in our household. A family friend who is not religious is planning to make her declaration…then skip out of the country entirely, avoiding even volunteer work. Needless to say, my army son and pre-army daughter do not approve.

While it might sound boring to have the job of reading Facebook profiles all day long, the IDF has some more proactive tricks in place. They occasionally create Facebook “events” that take place on Friday nights. If a woman being tracked marks that she will be “attending,” she’ll be getting an invitation of a very different kind.

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Would-be women of the IDF busted shirking and snogging

March 20, 2009 - 10:54 AM by · 1 Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, Religion, War 

Religious teen women of IsraelThe way the Israeli army interfaces with religion is not so straightforward, which makes sense in a land where the separation between synagogue and state is still being sorted out. The IDF’s Rabbinate came under scrutiny this winter for attempting to boost soldiers’ morale on shaky theological grounds.

And the Rabbinate is notorious for being stingy when it comes to handing out shaving exemption papers for soldiers looking to be able to wear beards based on their interpretation of Biblical commandments, sometimes telling soldiers that they’re “not religious enough” to qualify for the exemption. But if it’s a rabbi’s goal to foster observance, he ought to embrace the individual’s interests, regardless of that individual’s flaws or hypocrisies.

In a society where we are constantly being pigeonholed due to what we’re wearing on our heads and elsewhere on our bodies, I don’t know about you, but my inclination is to say, “Please don’t put me in a box. I’m a real person, not a tidy category.”

Of course, embracing the religious grey area gets trickier when we’re talking about exemption from serving in the army altogether. Ditching the draft is relatively common among Israel’s Orthodox, for better or for worse, and the mechanisms for obtaining exemptions on religious grounds are relatively straightforward, making pleading religious a tempting option even for those who might not necessarily truly have theological qualms with the experience of being a soldier.

After years of turning a blind eye, more or less, to this phenomenon, the IDF is getting smart and trying to crack down on young women who “lie” and plead religious. Sure, it’s possible that a young woman who is too observant to serve, whatever that means, might experience a lapse in faith, but in general, if the army’s detectives catch you making out with someone, you should probably suit up.

“We need those girls, Lt. Col. Gil Ben Shaoul, deputy commander of Israel’s military recruitment center,” told The Associated Press.

The Israel Defense Forces says the surveillance program began last year and has caught 520 young women, many who admitted they did not deserve the religious exemption and signed up for military service.

….Catching the draft-dodgers is fairly straightforward: It takes one weekend, said Ben Shaoul. The young women are usually caught driving on Saturday, drinking or smoking.

Many who attempt to shirk the draft justify doing so on the grounds that women aren’t given “real” opportunities in the IDF.

“I served for two years doing nothing. All the girls do nothing,” said Shiran Cohen, 24, a university student. She said she was assigned to check on ammunition stockpiles during her service, but was frequently sidelined by men in her unit.

Although being a woman in the army can’t be easy, this excuse simply doesn’t hold water. I have fond memories of my days serving in the IDF’s Shiryon (armored corps) unit, where everything I learned about tanks was taught to me by women.

On the first day of tank training, the training officers took me and my fellow conscripts out to the open field and gave us a powerful demonstration of tank maneuvering and weaponry. The audience loved it. When the demo was over, the tanks pulled around and parked by the bleachers where we sat. The hatches opened, and out came four women from each vehicle. Surprise surprise. The bleachers shook with hooting, extra applause and jumping up and down as a special reaction for the ladies. It was a bit embarrassing, and it might serve to highlight how rough it must be to get respect as a woman soldier, but the point is that the opportunities are there for those who are motivated to go after them.

Image of Israeli modern Orthodox teenage women courtesy sethfrantzman from Flickr under a Creative Commons license.

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