Sakal, with his sun-wrinkled face and sharp gaze, is a paragon of Israeli republican virtue–he’s a man who devoted his life to his country’s defense and now, in his old age, gives his people the benefit of his experience and wisdom from his perch as a research associate at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University.

The problem is that he acquired his wisdom decades ago and hasn’t bothered to update it. Sakal’s still caught in the “trust me” attitude all too common in the IDF, in which rank and battle scars are taken to be better indicators of reliability than empirical evidence.

The most valid point that Sakal made was that IDF manpower needs could almost certainly not be met by an all-volunteer policy. He simply declared this as a fact; other speakers at the conference backed it up with some data and comparative evidence from other countries. While, in conventional war, the IDF’s high-tech weapons enable it to fight with fewer troops than it once needed, most wars we are likely to fight in the coming decades will be unconventional ones. Furthermore, the Second Lebanon War of two summers ago disabused many top officers of the illusion that Israel’s borders could be defended largely from the air. In the end ground troops had to be sent in in large numbers to capture and hold territory.

But Sakal presented arguments against an all-volunteer force that were odd, to say the least. Presenting himself as an advocate of broader combat service for women, he maintained that few women would be motivated to serve in a volunteer force. He offered no evidence other than his own hunch on the matter. But Mady Wechsler Segal of the University of Maryland presented a comprehensive study of women in Western armies that showed that quite the opposite is true–in the U.S. and in European countries that have made the transition to volunteer forces, women serve in larger numbers and in increasingly serious and essential roles.

Another off-the-wall statement of Sakal’s was that the IDF’s elite units would not be able to fill their ranks if there were not draft. But these units are already manned by volunteers, and far more young men and women want to serve in them than the units can accept.

Sakal is nostalgic for the good old days when Israelis were ready to give their all and no one dared evade or squirm out of military service. I can get wistful about that, too–I’m hardly happy that a quarter of today’s young people don’t serve their country. But it’s crazy to pretend that we can change today’s culture by stricter enforcement of universal conscription against kids who would cause the IDF more trouble in uniform than out. While the IDF needs more soldiers than a volunteer system could provide, it doesn’t need nearly as many as strict enforcement would offer.

I can offer another reason for not abolishing the draft. Had I not been compelled to serve in the IDF, I’m sure I would have opted out–I was hardly eager to be a soldier. Under a draft, many kids go willingly, or with only a bit of a grumble, to the army. They understand that military service is a civic duty, but are not out to be heroes. This group would not sign up for a volunteer force. Ironically, a democracy needs just these kinds of soldiers–those who are not gung-ho, and who do not idealize the army as an institution.

Another speaker, Avi Kober, hit the nail on the head–the correct policy is selective mandatory conscription. In other words, a draft that allows a measure of leeway for those who firmly don’t want to be soldiers to opt out, and for the IDF to turn down those it does not want or need. The problem of fair distribution of the burdens and obligations of citizenship is not the army’s portfolio. That’s a social and political problem and there are  a variety of social and political policies that can address it. One of the most obvious ones would be a beefed-up system of non-military alternative service for those who don’t become soldiers. The politicians, not the generals, need to decide.

One of Israel’s least-known secrets is that it no longer has a people’s army. I don’t say best-kept secret because no one is trying to keep it a secret. It’s a secret simply because it so clashes with the country’s mythology, and with the image it projects, that many of its own citizens and boosters prefer not to think about it.

But the question of whether the process by which the Israel Defense Forces has become less and less broad-based and more and more professional should be encouraged or decried is the subject of lively debate in the academic community. Most of the speakers at today’s  conference on the subject sponsored by Bar-Ilan University’s Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies sought to dispel some of the more hoary parts of the myth and to suggest that the old model of an army in which everyone serves might not be the only or best option for Israel today.

Keep in mind-this myth-bashing and iconoclasm was sponsored by Bar-Ilan, probably the most conservative, patriotic academic redoubt in Israel. We’re not talking about a group of effete post-Zionists but rather about academics solidly in the political and cultural mainstream.

As the Center’s Stuart Cohen and Haifa University’s Gabi Ben-Dor noted, even in its heyday the IDF was not really a citizens’ army-simply because entire groups of Israeli citizens were exempted from service. These citizen non-soldiers included virtually all the country’s Muslim, Christian, and ultra-Orthodox Jewish population. Even in the 1950s through 1970s, when a very high proportion of the country’s Jewish men and women were conscripted, the fighting units were socially stratified. The pre-state Haganah and Palmach were effective fighting forces in part because they were lean and elitist; upon absorbing the population at large in the early days of the IDF, quality and military effectiveness quickly eroded. So the army created lean and elitist commando units to carry out the real fighting. The citizens’ army was thus socially stratified and many parts of it were not representative of the population.

Since the 1980s, however, even the Jewish population has served less and less. As Israeli society came to acknowledge and value its social and cultural diversity, as the economy improved, bringing new opportunities, and as the existential military threat lessened, the need to serve became less obvious. Increasingly, no stigma was attached to those who did not serve. Furthermore, the IDF’s increasing reliance on advanced weapons rendered the simple soldier with a rifle less valuable; capital investment became more important than labor. Facing budget cuts, the IDF preferred to invest in sophisticated materiel and in specialized and highly-trained personnel. It was no longer worthwhile for the army to invest resources in forcing the recalcitrant to serve.

The figures Cohen cited are not new. At present some 25 percent of military age cohorts in the Jewish population do not enlist. Some of those are ultra-Orthodox, others are physically unfit, but man are young people who simply don’t care to serve and arrange an exemption of one sort or another. Another 17 percent are discharged by the army well before completing half the required three years of service (for men). Less than half the women age cohorts serve in the military.

The effect is even more notable in the reserves, where only a small fraction of men perform significant duty in combat units. Every young Israeli knows that it’s easy to get out of both regular and reserve duty. This being the case, Cohen and many others think that Israel might consider ending the draft and creating an all-volunteer force.

Many Israelis, and admirers of Israel, decry this state of affairs and see it as a threat to Israeli society. Without military service to unite it, and without the kind of collective spirit that universal military service creates, the country cannot survive, they worry.

But Ronald Krebs of the University of Minnesota noted that the concept of the citizen-soldier is far from dead in the Unites States, which has had an all-volunteer army for much of its history, most recently since 1973.

Consider the other side of the coin: even in a culture which promotes self-fulfillment and the pursuit of wealth, the great majority of young Israelis are motivated to serve. In fact, IDF elite units have far more applicants than they can use and this same phenomenon usually extends to regular combat infantry units as well. Motivation remains high and Israeli society continues to accord respect and admiration to those who serve.

For political and cultural, as well as military reasons, it’s unlikely-and it would be incorrect-to adopt the American model of an all-volunteer army. The draft will remain in force. But neither Israeli society nor the IDF can or should revert to the values and realities of three decades ago. The IDF will remain a conscript army whose soldiers are citizens, but the people’s army will necessarily be a lot more flexible about service than it used to be.