The New Divide

Bezalel Smotrich promises that we will yet miss reserve duty. Because after the wife nags about taking out the trash and washing dishes, and after the Religious Zionism party performs a miracle and reduces reserve duty days to thirty per year, the manly reservists will yet miss black coffee in a finjan and patting each other on the back, instead of washing dishes and changing diapers.

Let us set aside the overt chauvinism. Let us also set aside the lack of explanation from Religious Zionism as to how exactly they intend to reduce reserve duty days, and let us ignore for a moment the fact that even thirty days a year is not a small amount, even compared to what was here before the war. This half-joking reference indicates a perception of the issue as a kind of curiosity. However, this attitude toward a curiosity is a disease that characterizes quite a few parties in Israel, and it crosses blocs and camps: we heard it not only from the right-wing and ultra-Orthodox coalition, but also in statements about populism from Yair Golan, or in opinion columns explaining why drafting the ultra-Orthodox is a fiction and that they are actually just being harassed.

Some of these criticisms rely on a deep perception of efficiency and free-market economics, from which the call for a transition to a professional army and the fear of wasting resources are derived. Some rely on contempt for "militarism" or fear of integrating non-liberal groups into the security apparatus. However, this is a fundamental error. Not only because a professional army simply does not meet Israel's security challenges, but because, unlike most market mechanisms where the state does not need to intervene, the army is not supposed to operate according to economic efficiency metrics, and the fear that it might grow too large leads to a reality where it is too small.

It seems that many politicians do not understand the tectonic shift that has occurred here. October 7 and the intense war, which exacted such a heavy blood price and social price, changed not only the behavior of Israelis, but their DNA. They exposed a deep and dominant component that sat at the base of Israeli identity: the ethos of commitment and service to the state. An ethos that has been eroded over the last fifty years in favor of political power balances. The war reminded Israelis that despite the sneers from the left about militarism and from the right about cooperation with the left, this state was established, and perhaps will also fall, on the question of service and commitment.

After three years, this gene was activated. What was the divide between "Jews" and "Israelis" in the last three decades will be the divide between those who serve and those who do not in the coming years. Not because of a brilliant election slogan or a successful campaign, but because of the realization that about half of first-grade children are ultra-Orthodox or Arab, following years of sacrifice for the homeland and due to a deep love by large parts of this people for the Zionist project. This is already a finished fact on the ground. The question is which politicians will know how to translate this understanding not into more candy distribution for reservists and not into flirting with Shas and United Torah Judaism, but into deep structural change around the question of who bears the burden and who does not. This change has already occurred in Israeli society, and soon it will also trickle down into politics. The only question is who will wake up to it too late.