Israel confronts flagging interest in military service

While the military says it still fills its combat unit quotas today, officials say they don't have enough soldiers for support units and administrative jobs.

"Right now we have a problem because we lack soldiers," said Brig. Gen. Amir Rogovski, head of personnel planning in the IDF's manpower branch. "When you see the forecast for 2020, it's going to be worse.''

But one 22-year-old soldier, identified only as D, says the motivation to serve in combat is still strong. "People want to be fighters because that's what society values," said D, who lives in the Jewish settlement of Ma'aleh Adumim outside Jerusalem and will complete his three-year service on Sunday.

He said he most valued the personal enrichment. "I was drafted as a child with a head of a kid, and now I feel different, if it's the music I listen to, if it's in my behavior, even if in the clothing that I wear," said D, who served in the elite Golani infantry brigade.

The IDF does not make public the size of its force. But according to Tel Aviv University's Institute for National Security Studies, an independent research institution, Israel maintains a standing army of 176,500 soldiers and another 445,000 reservists. The Jerusalem Post reported in May that the military faced a shortage of 10,000 soldiers. Israel has a total population of about 7.6 million, of which about 5.7 million are Jewish Israelis and 1.5 million are Arab Israelis, according to Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics. Arab Israelis are not drafted, and very few volunteer.

Public relations push

With peaceful relations between Israel and former foes such as Egypt and Jordan, some Israelis have questioned the need for maintaining so many combat troops.

In recent years, Israelis successfully pushed to shorten the length of reserve duty. But periodic efforts to make service in the IDF voluntary have gone nowhere. Military officials say that, given today's low motivation levels, they would be unable to recruit enough volunteers to meet their needs.

"You ask me, 'Why do you have to convince or promote the service when you have a compulsory service?' " Rogovski said during an interview at the IDF induction center in Tel Hashomer. "If we don't explain every day the importance of serving the country and the importance of being in the military service, we won't fill the numbers and the quality needs for the next decade."

Most Jewish men in the country are required to serve three years and most Jewish women two, and the military historically had little direct contact with future soldiers before their induction.

But, faced with projected shortages, the IDF is making an unprecedented investment in public relations. Next year it will introduce several "Mobile Draft Offices," to be dispatched to some 700 schools a year to generate enthusiasm for military service among Israeli teenagers. The IDF is also belatedly embracing SMS, or text messaging, as well as online chats and other technological means employed for years by militaries around the world to interact with youth before they are drafted.

Casualties less accepted

The IDF remains by far the most trusted public institution in Israel - although a survey last year by the Israel Democracy Institute, an independent research center in Jerusalem, found a small five-year decline in the country's faith in the military, from 86 percent in 2004 to 79 percent in 2009. And the draft is still a core rite of passage in mainstream Israeli society, with acceptance into an elite unit generating the kind of pride an American family feels when a child gets in to Harvard.

But these days, according to Dan Sagir, a former military correspondent for the newspaper Haaretz, some wealthy Tel Aviv families are hiring Arabic tutors to boost their children's chances of being drafted into intelligence units rather than risk ending up with dangerous combat assignments.