The period of service needs to be the same for everyone, men and women, religious or secular, Jewish or Arab. No exceptions, no differences, just equal service.

How dare you, thats equality and sounds like democracy.These are foreign values not prized by our feeble law makers.

'What's worse, A liar or a crazy man?' Is that ant way to address the Right Honorable Member for Bayit HaYehudi? The Knesset is modelled on the Mother of Parliaments in Westminster, but seems to have lost of bit of the polite formality. The role of President Peres is based on the role of H M The Queen, except that he forgets he isn't allowed to keep publicly contradicting his Government! We need a revision course in principles of parliamentary democracy. The Knesset could also learn from Britain how not to offend publicly the USA, the closest ally to UK and Israel.

...ass.

...but some are more equal than others.

Where is the equality here? It seems like special treatment for some. Does this mean if I wear bizarre clothes I can suddenly shorten my time in the service? HMMMM maybe we can all become Haredim (at least for 17 months...

The only people who want "equal service" are jobniks. Get rid of the deadweight, wimps, losers, complainers and whiners. Draft only the real men who have what it takes to be an IDF combat soldier and give them good equipment and good training.

How many of these "Real men" are there? Are you one of them? How exactly does fighting wars for corrupt politician's make you a "Real man?"

Those people you call "jobniks" also serve a purpose. An army cannot be made up of combat soldiers alone. You will not have combat soldiers doing the repairs and maintenance for the reserve unit storage centers, nor will you have combat soldiers loading the trucks that supply them with food, clothing, ammunition, etc. That would be a colossal waste of manpower. Modern armies need between 50k and 70k "jobniks" to field 10,000 fighting soldiers. The logistics "train" of a division is that long, whether you like it or not-- and I speak as a combat soldier who saw the logistics train break down in 1982 and left us almost starving 50 kilometers deep in Lebanon. Okay, you don't like jobniks... I'm sure they don't like you, either, given your comments here. You'll whine plenty if there are no jobniks to supply you with hot food, clean clothes, ammunition and the tools to do your job.

Time for the IDF to stop cutting its budgets and start cutting its fat in terms of jobnicks that do nothing, the roles that are invented in the army to satisfy numbers etc. Use the money that is saved into training a more professional army of better equipped combat soldiers who will serve with pride and love for their country and send the ungrateful and non-contributing kids to work on thier own accord

Time for the IDF to stop cutting its budgets and start cutting its fat in terms of jobnicks that do nothing, the roles that are invented in the army to satisfy numbers etc. Use the money that is saved into training a more professional army of better equipped combat soldiers who will serve with pride and love for their country and send the ungrateful and non-contributing kids to work on thier own accord

It seems you don't understand that there is no greater privilege for a Jew that serving in the IDF in any capacity. #10 Come to any combat reserves unit and you will see there are enough real men in Israel. Students and people with real jobs, many volunteering to serve well past the age of 40, ready to leave their job and family to serve for weeks at a time under difficult conditions. #11 you misunderstand. I don't dislike jobniks, I like anyone who does their job well, but you will see that the ones who bleat about "equality" are the slackers and whiners. No one calls logistic train (tomech lechima) or non-combat technical functions jobniks. Jobniks for example are the 18 year olds drafted for two years to chew gum 4 hours a day in the kirya, fifth rate musicians and Galei Zahal. I'll bet the IDF can draft a third of the number of jobniks and then keep only the good ones for four years at a real salary. Haredim or Leftists think IDF is a burden? Don't serve, we don't need you dirtying the uniform.

We don't need jobniks like Lapid who was a journalist in the military, nor do we need an entertainment corps for wannabe stars. We need support personnel to support combat operations. We need intelligence. We even need cooks and cleaning personnel. But their is plenty of jobs that exist so the rich Tel Aviv Jews like Lapid can pretend to serve when they in fact do nothing for the state. The combat units and the casualties today are dominated by the hesder units. The army probably should just exempt all secular Jews from any combat related jobs.