Brig. Gen. Shay Tayeb, a senior official in the IDF’s Personnel Directorate, presented data on measures against army deserters and draft dodgers at a meeting of the Knesset’s IDF Manpower Committee on Wednesday. “In the first nine months of the war,, we did not carry out enforcement operations against deserters,” he said, adding that the 340 deserters arrested at Ben Gurion Airport were from all sectors, not just the Chareidi sector. Committee chairman Elazar Stern (Yesh Atid) asked: “What tools do you need to obtain thousands of new recruits? There are arrests and travel bans and driver’s license bans—the tools you aren’t using.” Tayeb replied: “These tools and the sanctions you mentioned are not enforceable. Most of the draft dodgers in the IDF today are not Chareidi.” MKs from the opposition slammed Tayeb’s remark, saying “that’s a sentence you were better off not saying.” But Tayeb repeated his words: “Most of the draft dodgers today are not Chareidi. The numbers are now rising because the legal arrangement has been canceled.” Tayeb continued by saying that “the sanctions that exist today, except for arrests, are minimal,” adding that he thinks the state needs to refuse services, such as driver’s licenses, to draft dodgers in order to increase the number of recruits. (YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)