As Israel’s military grapples with a severe manpower shortage estimated at 15,000 troops — a situation Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir has described as “dangerous for the future of the Jewish state” —
Israeli ultra-Orthodox parties continue to reject military service in favor of Torah study even as Israel’s military grapples with a severe manpower shortage estimated at 15,000 troops - a situation Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir has described as “dangerous for the future of the Jewish state”.
Former senior government official Shlomo Maoz has proposed recruiting 12,000 mercenary soldiers with generous pay packages to address the shortage.
Maoz presented the idea as a personal initiative inspired by Ukraine’s recruitment of 10,000 foreign fighters, however, he said the Israeli army has long relied on a similar force known as “lone soldiers,” currently numbering 7,365.
According to Maoz, 52 percent are soldiers from Jewish families living abroad, while the remaining 48 percent are effectively mercenaries “in every sense of the word.” They come from several countries, including 30 percent from the US, 12 percent from France and 7 percent from Ukraine, while the rest come from Spain, Italy, Germany, Canada and Britain.
These soldiers receive salaries equivalent to $4,000 a week and they currently serve through “secret” arrangements, he revealed.
His new proposal is aimed at bringing these arrangements into the open and formalize the system publicly through the creation of an “Israeli Foreign Legion” composed of four brigades operating under Israeli officers.
Speaking to Israel’s Maariv daily, Maoz stressed that the main problem with the proposal was moral rather than military, as it would mark Israel’s abandonment of the “people’s army” myth.
He described the Israeli military as historically built on the integration of Israelis from more than 100 cultural backgrounds — Ashkenazi and Mizrahi Jews, urban and rural communities, native-born Israelis and new immigrants, people from Europe and Western countries, as well as from Arab and Muslim states, alongside Jews, Muslims, Christians, Druze and Circassians — into what he called a cohesive force that overcame social divisions.
But Maoz argued that the benefits of recruiting mercenaries outweigh the symbolic costs.
He said the military faces an acute shortage, with even conservative estimates pointing to a need for 15,000 additional troops, including at least 9,000 combat soldiers, while religious Jews remain adamantly opposed to conscription.
At the same time, he said, the government is waging an ongoing war on seven fronts, pursuing further occupation and expansion, and establishing 134 new settlements and outposts that all require protection.
“To fill this need, solutions outside the box must be explored,” Maoz urged.
He added that hundreds of thousands of retired military officers from around the world, including fighters, snipers, tank operators, drone specialists and even pilots, could be recruited easily, particularly from Eastern European countries.
Maoz, an economist by background, said financing the project was one of its key challenges. He estimated each soldier would cost between $8,000 and $10,000 a month, with additional state expenses amounting to roughly half that figure.
He revealed that the total cost of a mercenary force would reach around $2.5 billion — a manageable amount given Israel’s foreign currency reserves of $236 billion, equivalent to about 38 percent of gross domestic product.
Pointing to the Ukrainian model, Maoz said around 600 mercenaries join Ukraine’s army every month, bringing the total number of foreign fighters there to 10,000 from 75 nationalities. Kyiv pays them an average of $4,000 per month.
Maoz added that Israel was particularly suited to integrating mercenaries because it has millions of citizens who speak foreign languages as their mother tongue, such as Russian, Slavic languages, English and Spanish.
