contain women and the IDF tried to force that in their haredi units. The IDF is playing politics and instead of making effective cohesive haredi units they create a failure situation and blame the religious Jews. Haredi Jews would gladly defend Israel and they would gladly stay away from secular commanders that think its fun to put them in situations they find unacceptable.

ultra-Orthodox in mind, which is precisely what the army is doing now that Major-Genral Stern's point of view (forcing everyone into a single mold) has been ignored. And the new Haredi units are quite successful in their purpose, people are highly motivated to keep serving... maybe the army will learn from that.

The assertion that there are two types of people in Israel is false. There are those who are not haredi, and of these close to 50% get exemptions or deferments in some sectors of the country. There are Arabs, who although being citizens are excluded from the IDF--which is clearcut discrimination against those who must serve. There are national-religious girls who can do Sherut Leumi (national service) instead of the army. If the IDF so desired, they could make brigades suitable for same and thousands of haredim might enlist. But, for ideological reasons and maybe even to enable promiscuity, they prefer to keep things the way they are, apparently.

The are units such as the Nachal Charedi and IAF program that have no woman. I believe many would refuse, and would rather sit in jail than serve their country.

You don't live here - you can't vote here and you don't have children, religious or otherwise in the army. Butt out.

Not enough is done to promote civilian service. Most haredi will not want to serve in the military but we can force them to do a serious civilian service and there should be no get out clauses of any kind for anybody. They can do alot of useful work especially helping out Homefront. They can be drafted to hand out gas masks etc during wartime or renovate the countries bomb shelters many of which are still not fit for use. Work in places like Sderot help fix the place up. We can also apply civilian service to arabs. Nobody is asking them to go and fight against fellow arabs we are asking them to do a service to the state they enjoy citizenship of. Civilian service must be real and useful work not a gimik. Every year thousands of foreigners come to Israel to do voulenteer work in Israel, if there are jobs that foreigners can do for a few weeks or months then I am sure there are plenty of jobs we can find for haredi and arabs.

Hesder yeshivot combine army and yeshiva. Some do three years army and 2 years yeshiva (some choose 3). And, others do 14 months of army and 3 1/2 years of yeshiva. Also, many go to one-year mechinot (essentially yeshiva with a different name) before going to the army. Those who combine army and yeshiva are among the very most deeply connected to Torah and the Jewish people. http://www.ypt.co.il/eng http://www.maalegilboa.org/ensite/