And he also added about our enemies: The Bank of Israel published today (Thursday) an opinion on the draft law being formulated by the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, in which it expressed its opposition to the wording of the law, which it claims includes sanctions that have little impact on ultra-Orthodox draftees.
""The bill is flawed. The recruitment targets it sets are low and the economic incentives for recruitment included in it are of low effectiveness," the opinion written by the bank states.
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The bank stated that "it is important to amend the wording of the law in a way that will meet the needs of the army and to that end, establish effective positive and negative incentives.".
The bank warned that passing the law in its current form "may not lead to a significant change in the scope of conscription, thus preserving the personal and economic burden resulting from the army's extensive use of reservists.".
They reasoned that this "has significant macroeconomic costs that will be reflected in the continued damage to the functioning of the labor market, loss of income from the economy, and extensive budgetary costs, alongside loss of tax revenue.".
According to Bank of Israel researchers, "The economic cost of conscripting a young Haredi for compulsory service is very low, because in most cases, conscription does not replace participation in the labor market. In addition, conscription itself may increase the incentive for young Haredi to join the labor market at a young age due to the elimination of the obligation to be registered as students in a yeshiva as a condition for receiving an exemption from conscription. Accordingly, conscripting a young Haredi for 32 months of service could, on average, even achieve a capitalized economic benefit estimated at 22,000 shekels per month of service on average, if as a result, the scope of employment of the young Haredi who enlists is comparable to that of a non-Haredi Jew.".
The researchers in the Bank of Israel's research division draw the following conclusion: "This means that any addition to the regular army of 20,000 conscripts from among the ultra-Orthodox men (consistent with an annual recruitment of 7,500 ultra-Orthodox men for 32 months), in a way that allows for savings in reservists, will reduce the annual economic cost over time by at least 9 billion shekels (0.4 percent of GDP). In the case where employment among the ultra-Orthodox increases significantly following the recruitment, the additional income over time reaches up to 14 billion shekels per year (0.7 percent of annual GDP).".
The director of the Bank of Israel's research division, Dr. Adi Brander, commented on the opinion published in an interview on the B network and said: "Every young Haredi man who is drafted instead of a reservist will save the economy 38,000 shekels per month. According to potential recruitment cycles, this amounts to 3 to 12 billion shekels per year.".
