Dear friends, have you gone mad? Have you lost your minds? Are you living in another country? On another planet?

Whoever's bright idea it was to draft the haredim is going to bring down a calamity on the state of Israel.

True, their draft-dodging is annoying. If you serve in the IDF, if you are asked to risk your life in Lebanon, if you have to abandon your family and your job every year to do your reserve duty stint -- how could you not get annoyed at the thought of thousands of these able-bodied young men who are sitting in the comfort of their homes? Especially when you see them raring for a fight on Bar-Ilan street, or climbing atop excavations in order to beat up the archeologists. What great fighting shape!

True, these shirkers are living at our expense. You, who faithfully fulfill your reserve duty every year, are supporting with your taxes an ever-growing camp of professional parasites.

True, this arrangement gives the rabbis total control over tens of thousands of those haredi youths, since only rabbis are authorized to confirm that their religious study is their occupation, and that they are therefore exempt from serving in the IDF and have the right to live at our expense.

True, this institutionalized evasion hurts the citizens' equality before the law. When the Supreme Court abstains from stating so explicitly, then, it, too, is shirking its duty.

True, there is no more popular subject in the country than the demand for their draft. (During my time as a Knesset member, after making several speeches on unpopular subjects, such as the rights of the Palestinians, which made me into an object of hate, I would sometimes feel the need to say something popular. I knew that if I were to bring up the demand for the draft of the Yeshiva students, I would gain general sympathy. It seems that Ehud Barak has come to the same conclusion.)

All of this is true and well known.

But this truth is dwarfed by the serious danger involved in implementing this demand. Those who demand an all-inclusive draft envision in their minds innocent Yeshiva youths, in the tradition of Bialik's "HaMatmid," haredim who are detached from worldly affairs. But Judaism has undergone a mutation in the last thirty years. (Check out Safi Rakhlevsky's book "The Messiah's Donkey.") The distinction between the religious nationalists and the haredim is rapidly disappearing. The nationalists are growing steadily more orthodox, and the orthodox are growing steadily more nationalistic. Both are now members of the extremist-messianic-nationalistic-religious cult, with the settler rabbis acting as their spearhead. This is a revolutionary movement, one which endangers not only our security and our chances for peace, but also our very system of democracy in Israel itself.

This cult is taking over the IDF in a pincer movement.

One pincer arm consists of the Hesder-Yeshivot, military units entirely under the authority of the rabbis. Add to these the armed settlements, which are, themselves, military units. (Irony of fate: Ben-Gurion dismantled the Palmach out of concern that it could become a left-wing party-controlled unit, and now the IDF has spawned much more dangerous party-driven units.)

The second pincer arm comes from within the general army. This is a result of some sort of natural selection. The more the army is put to use as an occupation police force against the Palestinians, and as a military guard to the settlements, the less it attracts secular and peace-loving youth to its long-term service, and the more it attracts religious-nationalist-extremists. Within the religious-nationalist movement, there is a clear and calculated design to take control of command ranks within the IDF.

The results are clearly visible -- literally speaking. In every gathering of the lower and middle ranks of the commissioned officers, the large number of kippah-wearers is already nearing the 50% mark. There are places where the distinctions between officers and settlers are completely obliterated. Effi Eytam, a new Major-General, the religious settler whose name was tied to some of the atrocities of the intifada, is a pioneer of this design at the highest level.

This is a very real danger, to the IDF in particular and to Israel's democracy in general. This danger will sharply increase with the addition of tens of thousands of haredi draftees (who would demand to serve in special units and in special camps, where female soldiers would not be allowed, but where they would have glatt-kosher kitchens, mikvas and synagogues). It goes without saying that at these units the rabbis would carry absolute authority, much like the "Political Commissars" of the Red Army. Is this what we want?

A portion of the Yeshiva students would undoubtedly "lose their way," as their rabbis fear, should they come at all in contact with secular soldiers. But the remainder would be assimilated among the messianic extremists, thus adding tremendous strength to the movement which is striving to take over the army from the inside.

God forbid!