Israel Cannot Pay Its Way Out of the Reserve Crisis

Financial incentives may ease the burden of reserve duty, but they cannot replace a shared sense of responsibility.

A few days ago, Yinon Magal published a post that quickly went viral: “Good morning, Yinon. This morning we received another reserve duty grant, and on Sunday another 5,800 shekels will come in. The total grants I received for 210 days of reserve duty in a combat unit amounted to around 70,000 shekels. Add to that the Fighter credit card we received, with another 12,000 shekels for restaurants and hotel vacations. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich deserves a good word.” Magal later admitted he had been paid by Smotrich for the post.

The controversy surrounding the post is not merely about sponsored content. It reflects a broader mindset: the belief that Israel’s reserve duty crisis can be managed through money, benefits, and political campaigns.

I write this from personal experience. I served more than 400 days on the Lebanese front as a combat soldier in the Paratroopers Brigade, including during the ground operations in Lebanon. I saw firsthand what prolonged exhaustion does to people. The grants helped soften the economic blow, but no credit card restored the months people lost, the families they were separated from, or the businesses that collapsed. Most importantly, the benefits did not solve the central problem: a severe manpower shortage.

Those who serve deserve fair compensation. The problem begins when compensation becomes the primary tool through which the state manages the shortage. In practice, Israel is increasingly trying to solve the reserve crisis through the logic of supply and demand: as the need for reservists grows, the state raises the price by offering grants, benefits, and compensation packages in order to persuade the same small group of people to continue showing up.

But a citizen army cannot survive according to the logic of supply and demand alone. Israel’s “people’s army” model was built on the assumption that military service is a shared civic responsibility carried by the broadest possible segment of society. Financial compensation may encourage people to continue serving, but it cannot replace the sense that the burden is being shared fairly.

We entered this war with a reserve force already too small for the operational demands, and the situation has only worsened since. The pressure, exhaustion, and economic toll have pushed more and more reservists to their limit. Recent reports suggest that the number of reserve duty days has already significantly exceeded the government’s original targets, while many reservists have served far beyond the annual reserve duty expectations that once defined the system.

Israel cannot financially incentivize its way into sustaining a citizen army.

Faced with the growing shortage, the state has largely responded by increasing grants, expanding benefits, and investing in campaigns designed to reassure the public that the situation remains manageable. The inevitable result is that the same shrinking group of people continues to carry a disproportionate share of the burden. One only needs to look at the dozens of Facebook and WhatsApp groups titled “Reservists Needed” to understand the scale of the crisis: posts desperately looking for drivers, combat soldiers, operations personnel, cooks, and armorers – anyone who is still available.

Gradually and quietly, Israel’s “people’s army” model is changing. From a framework based on broad collective responsibility, it is becoming a system that increasingly depends on those who continue showing up. The result is becoming difficult to ignore: the state continues expanding military commitments while large parts of society remain outside military service altogether.

And this inevitably brings us to the issue of ultra-Orthodox enlistment. The public frustration surrounding the issue is understandable. It is difficult to repeatedly demand additional rounds of reserve duty from the same people while large segments of society do not participate in military service at all. Yet the more this issue becomes a permanent political slogan, the less likely a real solution becomes.

Direct dialogue with ultra-Orthodox leadership, despite its political and public cost, is not necessarily weakness or surrender. It is recognition that the current model cannot survive without significantly expanding the pool of people who serve. This is an uncomfortable conversation, but it is far more necessary than another campaign designed to convince the public that everything is under control.

The real question Israel must ask is not how much money should be paid to the next reservist, but what kind of social contract the country wishes to preserve. Money can compensate for lost income; it cannot replace a sense of shared responsibility.

A citizen army does not collapse in a single moment. It erodes gradually, until service becomes the responsibility of the few still willing to carry everyone else.