Graduation ceremony of IAF fighter pilots
Photo: Herzl Yoseph
Sharp rise in number of IDF officers, pilots from Tel Aviv
Graduation charts of IDF's officers, fighter pilot courses go some way toward repudiating culture capital's blasé image
Sometimes Tel Avivians are thought of as lazy, jaded and tending to shun the more demanding tasks at hand during their IDF
service. However, statistics tell a different story. Among the graduates of an officers course completed last week were 19 residents of Israel's own city that never sleeps, a 4.7% of the total number.
Over the last years Tel Aviv natives were relatively few and far in between in such demanding IDF training programs as the flying school and the course that sees soldiers become officers. But among the graduates of this year's officers course Tel Aviv was the city with the second highest representation after Jerusalem with 31 graduates.
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Among the five Tel Aviv residents who graduated the prestigious fighter pilots course, three were born in the city, and the other two moved there in later life.
The Tel Aviv Municipality told Yedioth Ahronoth they were proud with the stigma-shattering trend, adding they know of a number of high schools in the city that have implemented special programs aimed at boosting the motivation of their students to enlist to elite IDF units.
"Tel Avivians are no draft dodgers," a municipality spokesperson further added.
Another city prominent for the number of graduates of officers' courses is Modi'in, which tops the charts for reservist enlistment. Thirteen newly promoted IDF officers are from the town, nine of whom are graduates of the Maccabim-Reut high school, regarded as a veritable conveyer belt for future pilots and officers.
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