Israel’s multi-front war has not only exhausted its enemy. It has not only cost the lives of thousands of civilians in Gaza and Lebanon. It also continues to exact a price on its own people.
There is a growing sense of war weariness in Israel. The recent ceasefire with Lebanon will come as a relief to many. Not least for Noam Glukhovsky – an IDF reservist who has served as a medic on the front lines for much of the past year.
We spoke to Noam, 33, in Tel Aviv before the ceasefire was announced. ‘We cannot continue to fight this war much longer. We just don’t have the manpower to continue without a clear end date and goal,” he said.
As an IDF reservist, Noam would normally expect a few weeks of military service per year. But in the past year he has spent 250 days in uniform. The war, he said, had torn him away from the life he knew. His plans to become a doctor have also been postponed by a year.
When we met, Noam was trying to catch up on his studies, but also waiting to see if he would be called up again. His mood was defiant.
“I can’t put my life on hold anymore,” he said. Unless there was a dramatic change in the direction of the war, he said he would not return to his unit. He had had enough.
The IDF already acknowledges that fewer reserves are now reporting for duty. After the Hamas attacks on October 7 last year, which killed about 1,200 people, more than 300,000 reservists responded. The turnout exceeded 100%. Now it is only 85%. Noam estimates that the response rate in his unit is even lower, with about 60% of those called up now reporting for duty.
Brigadier General Ariel Heimann says the IDF’s dependence on reserves will become more challenging the longer the war drags on [BBC]
Reserves and conscripts are the lifeblood of the IDF. Brigadier General Ariel Heimann – also a reservist and former chief reserve officer – says Israel is too small a country to have a large, expensive, professional, regular army. Without reservists, he says, the IDF could not fight or survive.
According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the IDF has 170,000 active-duty personnel, including conscripts, and 465,000 reserves.
Brigadier General Heimann admits that the IDF’s dependence on reserves will become more challenging the longer the war continues. He compared the IDF to a feather; if it is stretched too far it will break. At the moment he says things aren’t too bad.
But in a sign of the tension, the IDF wants to extend mandatory military service for male conscripts from 32 to 36 months.
The fact that the burden of service delivery is not shared by everyone has also fueled a sense of resentment. One group has been exempt from military service for decades: thousands of charedi, or ultra-Orthodox, Jews. They believe that the lives of their young men should be devoted to religious studies and not to military service.
The issue has already divided Israel’s coalition government. But after the attorney general’s intervention, call-up papers are sent to 7,000 charedi Jewish men. They have responded with angry protests. But Brigadier General Heimann, like ousted former Defense Secretary Yoav Gallant, says they have a “moral obligation to serve.”
Shelly’s company struggles to fill the gaps left by employees drafted into military service [BBC]
Not only is a personal sacrifice required, but also an economic sacrifice.
The Bank of Israel said in May that the cost of the war to Israel could reach $70 billion (£55 billion) by the end of next year, an estimate made before the land invasion of Lebanon. Small businesses are among the hardest hit.
Shelly Lotan’s food tech start-up is one of many fighting for survival. Shelly’s already had to move its business out of northern Israel to avoid Hezbollah’s rockets. Two of her seven employees have been called up for military service.
On the morning we meet, at her home in Tel Aviv, Shelly has just received more bad news. She has received a text message from one of her employees whose military service is being extended.
“I just can’t express how crucial it is that another employee has been missing for a month,” says Shelly.
“I can’t even hire someone else or fix this hole.”
Shelly’s also had to juggle family life with three young children. Her husband, also a reservist, has been away from home for a long time.
A ceasefire in Lebanon could ease some of the pressure. But there is still fighting in Gaza. Shelly Lotan fears for the future without a clear strategy from the Israeli government to end the conflict.
“I think the war should have been over by now,” she says.
