Here is an unpopular opinion: the newly approved bill seeking to subsidize majority of the tuition for veteran IDF soldiers is ridiculous.
There has never been a point in connecting between military service and welfare. Are ex-combatants the only ones who can’t pay their academic tuition? What about paraplegics, Arabs and ultra-Orthodox? What about men and women who gave years of their lives to the military, but have not served in combat roles? Do they not deserve financial support?
The bill is most likely the government's way of encouraging young people, who only want to serve in cyber units to secure their future, to enlist in combat roles. And while it is an important and worthy goal - especially in a country such as ours - it needs to be done correctly.
One possibility is to increase the meager monthly salaries of the same combat troops. Another is to give them a generous financial grant upon discharge as a thank you for their service, which will help them further down the line in their civilian life in general.
But tuition fee funding? Just for them? Why?
This unholy matrimony between military service and welfare benefits has been part of the Israeli zeitgeist for years. Once it was called “veterans' allowance” - given between 1970-1996 to the families of people who served in the IDF, and according to each respective family’s size.
The veterans' allowance program had dominated the state’s grant system for 26 years before being scrapped. In truth, though, it was used as a tool to discriminate against Arabs and exclude them from welfare grants, since they do not serve in the IDF (same as the ultra-Orthodox, but they were provided with benefits of their own).
In 1996, the veterans' allowance program program was finally scrapped. The Knesset back then was convinced that the criterion for state support should only be one's level of need.
The latest veteran scholarship bill does nothing but send us backwards in time to the years of unbridled discrimination.
Already today discharged IDF soldiers are the only ones who have their bachelor's degrees subsidized by the government to some degree, so preferential treatment in Israel’s higher education field is nothing new.
However, it is precisely those sectors of the population which do not normally serve in the military, i.e. the ultra-Orthodox and the Arabs, who need education subsidies the most.
These sectors need a higher education in order to improve their socio-economic status and integrate into the workforce.
This bill, therefore, will likely serve only to increase the already-large social gaps plaguing the Israeli society.
Amnon Levy is an Israeli journalist and TV presenter on Channel 13