content: Can't speak for Israel, but the continental Europeans I've talked to about national service were pretty clear that it was a massive waste of time. I read an article about one guy who spent his service manning a phone which he found out (towards the end) wasn't plugged in. The one exception is Switzerland, where the army is actually structured around a civilian draft. But that's a rarity in the modern world. The predominant paradigm is the professional army, which doesn't have much use for bored draftees with no real interest and mouths to feed. They mostly go out of their way to ensure as many are exempt as possible, the remainder they put in some out of the way shed and forget about them for two years.