Last update - 00:00 02/08/2007
IDF unable to call up hesder yeshiva soldiers quickly in time of war
By Amos Harel
After the Second Lebanon War, the Israel Defense Forces took steps that were intended to make it easier and quicker to call up soldiers studying in hesder yeshivas, but they may have backfired.
The IDF changed its policy on students at hesder yeshivas, which combine military service with religious study, but combat soldiers there are concerned that the army will not call them up in an emergency situation, just as a substantial proportion of the hesder combat soldiers in the religious study phase of their service were not called up during last summer's war.
"The new method is even worse than the old one," said Avraham Baron, former secretary of the Hesder Yeshiva Association. "If another war breaks out, it won't be possible to put the hesder combat soldiers into operation at all."
Hesder soldiers, many of whom serve in combat units, are on active duty for the first 16 months of the four-and-a-half-year program, and then study in yeshiva for the remainder of the program.
According to the new system, hesder combat soldiers are placed in the hesder track when they are inducted into the IDF and, instead of being assigned to reserve units at the end of their active duty, they are placed in the reserves only after they finish their three years of study.
The changes mean that, unlike in the past, hesder soldiers who have already been placed in the reserves won't be called up for emergency duty before other reservists.
The new method "will allow for a rapid and concentrated call-up of hesder soldiers during a time of emergency," the IDF spokesman said. "This is a lesson from the war. The new situation brings matters to their proper order."
The IDF had previously considered forming military companies made up of hesder combat soldiers, which would remain for three years within the brigades in which they had served. However, this idea was never implemented.
Baron said the combat soldiers placed in the hesder track, as per the changes, have not been integrated into IDF companies or appointed commanders, have not undergone training and have not received weapons or other military equipment.
"If war breaks out, is someone in the army going to have time to worry about all of them?" he asked. "Instead of calling them up first, as an available and skilled force, they'll call them up last. We're talking about some 1,500 combat soldiers whose service the army is effectively giving up on."