270 trainees of the year of service frameworks, 480 trainees in pre-military preparatory schools and 250 students in the Hesder Yeshiva are expected to advance their recruitment to this coming March, according to data from the Social Security Division of the IDF presented at the hearing of the Knesset’s State Audit Committee yesterday (Monday).
Udi Dror, head of the division for unique routes in the division, explained that the decision on the names of the recruits is up to the bodies, based on recruitment data according to internal criteria, in addition to two criteria that the division set: non-recruitment of evacuated trainees and dispersion among the various sending bodies.
Dalia Yanko, head of the division: “The war mobilized larger forces than us, the priorities are slightly changed. We created an outline that tried to hurt as little as possible, and to fill the ranks.”
At the cabinet meeting on Sunday, a decision was made to budget the pre-military preparatory schools in relation to the number of trainees to be recruited. The preparatory school budget comes from the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Settlement and National Missions.
The government justified the decision in the 2008 law that regulates the budgeting of preparatory schools according to their monthly report on the number of trainees. The purpose of the decision is to budget the preparatory schools without reporting the number of trainees that will be recruited, and it includes the time until the recruitment and the end of the activity year.
Professional officials and members of the Knesset expressed objections to the early recruitment of trainees in the debate. Amir Rimon, director of a national social training center in the Department of Society and Youth, claimed that the director was not involved in the decision or the determination of the criteria: “The volunteers of the service year in the youth villages are an integral part of the team, and they are significant in the meeting with the trainees. Now with the recruitment of many staff members, they have increased in level It is their responsibility and they are adults. We are afraid that early recruitment will harm the social fabric. We are afraid that this will not only harm the villages, but also the volunteers and the commune. We see a loss of trust in the enterprise called a year of service among all 12-year-olds as well.
“Inequality hurts the entire Israeli society. The budget will hurt social services, and there is a double cut here. In the discussion that took place in the youth committee, the Ministry of Defense and the IDF admitted that sending the orders was a mistake. I tried to understand what the policy was, and the IDF replied that many of the settlement groups were mobilized again by order. There is a flawed perception here of standing behind a policy without a policy.”
MK Gilad Karib (Labor): “One of the biggest tragedies that happened here is the tension between frameworks that serve the great idea of learning and volunteering. My claim is towards the IDF and the Ministry of Defense, they have not yet provided us with data regarding the number of candidates for service who are eligible for deferred service in a variety of settings, what is the number of years of deferred service. There are many candidates who are already benefiting from a third year of deferred service. The religious that his enlistment was brought forward in the year of his first postponement of service.”
The chairman of the committee, MK Miki Levy (Yesh Atid): “The Year of Service initiative is one of the most worthy voluntary initiatives that the State of Israel has grown since its establishment. It is an educational volunteer initiative that allows, on the one hand, satisfaction, meaning and a coming-of-age experience for youth who have graduated from high school and are before Recruiting them, and on the other hand, contributing in a variety of fields, mostly in education and agriculture, working with vulnerable populations and more.”
