Bloomberg: The Israeli army faces a recruitment crisis | Politics

Bloomberg said that the Israeli army is suffering from a shortage of soldiers and that the reserve forces in this army are suffering from exhaustion in light of the ongoing war on the Gaza Strip.

The American agency added, in a report, that about 350 thousand of those who joined the reserve forces left behind their wives, children, jobs and studies, in order to help the army in its military campaign on Gaza, or in confronting the missiles launched by Hezbollah from Lebanon.

The agency explained, in a report by its correspondent, Alissa Odenheimer, that the weight of the tasks placed on their shoulders reveals the extent of Israel’s struggle to strengthen the ranks of the armed forces, while it seeks to prevent the shortage of manpower from harming the economy. In addition, there is growing discontent inside Israel due to the refusal of the Haredi Jewish community to respond to the authorities’ calls for them to join the military service.

The Israeli army has about 170,000 regular soldiers out of a total population of 10 million, which makes it a large army when compared to the population, says Bloomberg, who adds that it is still a very small force compared to the size of the current threats it must confront, according to her.

The American agency pointed out that this became clear on October 7, when Hamas fighters breached the border with the Gaza Strip and launched a deadly attack on Israel, which has since been fighting a protracted war on multiple fronts after nearly a year.

The slogan of a “small and smart” army, which the Israeli army once boasted about due to its preference for high technology over manpower, appears to have become “outdated” today, according to the report.

The shortage of soldiers has prompted Israeli authorities to focus their attention on ultra-Orthodox Jews, who make up about 13 percent of the population exempt from military service.

In June, the Israeli Supreme Court revoked the long-standing exemption enjoyed by that group, hoping that would help resolve the dilemma.

“We need to recruit at least some of these, because the number of soldiers who can bear the burden is very small,” the report quoted Yagil Henkin, a military historian and researcher at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, as saying.

The slogan of a “small and smart” army, which the Israeli army once boasted about due to its preference for high technology over manpower, seems to have become “outdated” today.

Hundreds of protesters have been gathering outside army offices, sometimes clashing with police to prevent extremist Jews from entering and joining the ranks. “This is something we will resist, and we will bring the country to a standstill,” one protester, Yitzhak Deri, told Bloomberg. “The extremists should not be allowed to join the army because it is a secular army and they are heretics.”

Bloomberg saw this as a moral issue that sparked protests within the occupying state. It pointed out that efforts by the United States, Qatar and Egypt to persuade the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Hamas leadership to agree to a ceasefire have stalled for months.

The agency’s correspondent, Odenheimer, went on to say that employers in Israel and reserve soldiers themselves are feeling the strain, to the point that companies are forced to reduce the number of their employees. This has caused economic growth last year to decline to 2%, half the rate that the Finance Ministry had expected before the war broke out, with an expected slowdown in the growth rate to 1.1% in the current year, 2024.