Dropouting (encyclopedic entry)

Originally posted at 19/3/2007

Dropouting is a process or set of processes through which young people who the IDF does not want are released from the military system.
The dropouting has been accompanied over the years by the giving of a stigma to the dropouts that cthem to be deprived at the civil level, such as in the labor market and in the field of higher studies, and at the same time and as a result of general exclusion in society, which often made the dropout from the army a first step in the process of general dropout from society. In this way, Dropouting served as a "see and fear" political tool for forming the tribe around the goals of political-security hegemony in a country that uses the military as a crystallizing myth while sacrificing the dropouts (among other population groups) as a scapegoat, while trying to get rid of "unwanted" that they are ineffective for achieving the state goals in the Middle East, or that their very existence threatens the dominant Zionist narrative.

The dropouts, those that go through the dropouting process, are divided into two general categories:

Voluntary (active) or seemingly voluntary dropouts: The dropouts cooperate with their dropouting process and are even interested in it, when more than once they are actually manipulated into it through the feeling given to them that things are done of their choice. This category can include quite a few of those who are commonly called dodgers or abstainers or refusers.

Involuntary droputs: Dropouts that do not cooperate with their droputouting process, some cannot be recruited due to poor health, some have been dropouted for bureaucratic reasons such as manpower surplus, or belonging to unwanted groups (such as "low Quality groups") or minorities undesirable, unacceptable political positions at a given time, or a complex or unusual personal character for which the military is afraid to take responsibility.
It is also possible that dropouting is done as a punishment or revenge, as a "see and fear" against those who did not show sufficient motivation in the recruitment process. It is known that people have droppedout, at least in the past, also on a homosexual background.

Dropouting in Israel is done in a number of ways. The common way is through  "profile 21" that is divided into "mental" and "physical" (although among its recipients may be those who are healthy in body and mind, but the IDF bureaucratic approach presses to classify their cases as types of illness), and this may itself be used by the military as a political tool For the sake of 'see and fear', or it is done by not sending recruitment orders (to the Arabs).
There are also dropoutings through exemption for reasons of religious recognition for women (Jews only), exemption for reasons of "mismatch" (usually for people whom the army brings to prolonged incarceration through economic pressure on their families), exemption for a very small group for reasons of conscience, and the "arrangement" ("Hesder") of deferring service in exchange for a commitment to a life of abject poverty for ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students, Druze religious students and to a lesser extent – Jehovah's Witnesses.

Israeli society is dominated by a perception that sees military service as the only expression of loyalty to the state and a criterion for human quality and mental health, a perception that despite growing criticism, continues to be dictated to the Israeli public by senior politicians, officers and media people, the education system and other factors that serve the ruling power groups building the dropouting as a political tool for comprehensive social exclusion towards the "undesirable": groups (such as leftists), minorities (mostly Arabs) and individuals who did not conform to the "new Jewish" Zionist myth, and even today the establishment is not always interested in taking responsibility for them and helping them participate in the social discourse (such as the poor, the sick and those who have 'anomalies').
Various stigmas are implanted about the dropouts, which have caused them to carry with them everywhere the "Cain signal" of people who are considered or mentally immature, unable to take responsibility for or unfaithful to the state, or mentally unstable (if they have been dropouted on mental health clauses) or "damaged" / 'impaired' people (if they have been dropouded on physical health clauses). There is a tendency to call all dropouts or a high percentage of them "dodgers", which serves the purpose of the creators of the dropouting by hiding and encrypting their part in the process.

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