“We are sinking,” Ariel Seri-Levy said on Facebook in a message shared thousands of times on social networks.
He has been called four times since the October 7 attack and denounces those who want Israel to “remain in Lebanon and Gaza.”
“We must end this war because we no longer have soldiers,” he said. He still believes in the importance of serving his country but believes that “the concessions have become too important”.
Another reservist, father of two children, who asked to remain anonymous told AFP “that in addition to physical fatigue and moral exhaustion, I added the fact of having lost my job”.
Interest
Many independents have gone out of business because of the war, even though the state provides a minimum pension for reservists.
“The collective is always above the individual but the price is too high for my family,” he concludes, specifying that he has spent almost six months in Gaza for the past 12 months.
The conscription of ultra-Orthodox Jews, who are partly exempt from military service, is at the heart of public debate.
They represent about 14% of Israel’s Jewish population, according to the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI), or nearly 1.3 million people.
About 66,000 military-age men benefit from the exemption because they devote themselves to the study of Judaism’s sacred texts, according to the army under a rule established when Israel was founded in 1948.
But in June, the Supreme Court ordered the conscription of yeshivot (Talmudic school) students, ruling that the government did not have the right to exempt them “in the absence of an adequate legal framework”.
Ultra-Orthodox political parties, key members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition, have demanded from the government a law making this exemption permanent before the crucial vote on the state budget at the end of the year.
The leader of the Shass (ultra-Orthodox Sephardic) party Arié Déry said in an interview that he hoped to “resolve the problem of calls” from the army for yechivot students.
The director Hagaï Luber, whose son Yeonatan fell in combat in the Gaza Strip, responded to him in an open letter.
“What’s the problem?”
“The problem is my dear son Yeonatan who died in Gaza 10 months ago, my wonderful son Itamar who is currently fighting in Gaza, my devoted son Elad, who will soon enter Gaza (…) the problem is is no longer able to sleep for fear of another announcement, like a black cloud floating above us,” he writes.
Another open letter, signed by more than 2,000 wives of reservists from the Zionist-religious movement which reconciles religious life and participation in the army, asks “to lighten the weight of those who serve”.
“There is no opposition between Torah study and military service, the two go together,” academic Tehila Elitzour, wife and mother of reservists, told the daily Yediot Aharonot.
Six men exempt from the reserves but who had volunteered died in combat between October 22 and 28, including a father of ten children.
Tensions in the Middle East: nearly 100 dead in Israeli strike in northern Gaza Strip
For David Zenou, a 52-year-old rabbi who has been in uniform for more than 250 days this year, including several weeks in Lebanon as a fighter, “it is a merit to serve my country and as long as I can do it, I will continue “.
