Worse than draft dodging

MK Eitan Cabel has proposed a bill that would take away the right to vote from anyone who evaded army service. Such a proposal, which the Israel Defense Forces backs, proves the need to remain on constant alert against unreasonable legislation, especially when it is proposed by well-meaning people. Cabel's bill may pass, and if it does not, maybe it will sometime in the future. If it does not target evaders, maybe it will target Arabs, or non-Jews, or women refusing to have children, or anyone whom an MK decides does not sufficiently contribute to society.

Proposals to revoke the right to vote have been raised in the past and have been directed against Arabs. This time the effort is aimed at draft dodgers, whom Major General Elazar Stern described as "anyone who is not conscripted and who is recognized by those close to him as someone who should be drafted." But Stern has no one to blame but himself, and the IDF's inefficient conscription mechanism is finding it difficult to enforce the mandatory conscription law. A draft evader is someone the army exempted from service for some reason. The responsibility for conscription cannot be passed from the army to the people.

The penalties proposed for draft evasion are revoking driver's licenses and not issuing licenses for work in medicine and psychology. And one can never know if MKs' imaginations will lead them to revoke health-service benefits or stipends for the elderly. The fact the Knesset is willing to harm citizens' basic rights is a greater cause for concern than the phenomenon of draft evasion by individuals.

In Israel, revoking the right to vote as punishment is not even applied against murderers, rapists and spies spending a lifetime in prison - so important does Israeli democracy consider this civil right. The right to vote is also granted to those who do not even live in Israel, do not pay taxes here, and whose children are not drafted - hundreds of thousands of Jews who became citizens under the Law of Return and then retired to their homes in Brooklyn or Argentina. Planeloads of voters arrive here on the eve of elections. As such, the proposal to remove the right to vote from those who actually live here, but whose behavior is considered unpatriotic, is strange.

The proposed descriptions for the word "evader" are more than anything reminiscent of those given to the term "anti-American" during the McCarthy era in the United States. After all, it is the army that determines who is an evader by dismissing that person from conscription, so all it has to do to stop the evasion is to make its criteria stricter.

Once the state exempted Arabs and the ultra-Orthodox from military service, shortened the duration of service for hesder yeshiva students, and offered an "incompatible" category for others, it is hard to comprehend who exactly are the draft evaders.

The proposed legislation should be tossed in the trash because it is shameful, and the law on mandatory conscription should be exercised with greater efficiency. The motivation to serve in the army is not gained by punishing, but though promises for those willing to contribute more and by ending the discrimination favoring the Haredim.