COLUMN ONE : The Israeli Military Mutates : As the Jewish state nears 50, its revered citizens army is changing both in reality and in the public mind. Its critics are bolder, the region is more peaceful and many young people are less inclined to serve.

When he was a boy, Danny Dromi shared the Israeli dream of joining his country’s strong Jewish army. He longed to become a fighter pilot like his father, who served during several of the country’s decisive wars.

Then Dromi turned 18. He had long hair and tattoos. He practiced guitar 16 hours a day and played in a rock band that hoped to hit it big.

After a few days of grueling army basic training, he got a psychiatrist to declare him unfit for obligatory military duty and dropped out of the army.

“I had direction. I had my music, my friends around that. I didn’t want to go,” he said.

The decision devastated his father, who retired from the air force as a colonel after 25 years and now serves as a government spokesman.

“It was a bitter blow,” said Uri Dromi. “When I went into the army at his age, everyone went. There was no question. I look at the army as a necessity. Our long war for independence is still going on. It took me some time to realize that times have changed.”

These are new times for Israel’s revered citizens army as the Jewish state nears its 50th anniversary amid relative peace and prosperity. Accords with Egypt and Jordan, even sporadic negotiations with Syria, mean that Israel no longer faces the prospect of a unified Arab assault. An interim agreement with the Palestine Liberation Organization is bringing an end to the 28-year occupation of the West Bank. Instead of confronting Palestinians, Israeli soldiers may be called upon to defend the accord with their former enemies against Jewish opposition.

The Israeli-Palestinian accord has also helped to break Israel’s economic isolation. And as Israelis grow wealthier, they are also more concerned with personal comforts and less willing to make endless sacrifices for the nation’s defense.

As a result of these changes, the army is encountering among some youths a new reluctance to put aside personal ambitions for their country’s collective good. The army also faces scrutiny by a more openly critical public and its first significant budget cuts by a more discerning government.

The army, in turn, is adapting, becoming a smaller, more high-tech military force.

The changes may seem minimal by some measures--the vast majority of men and women still fulfill their compulsory military service--but they reflect a major shift in thinking for a nation that has long regarded the army as the centerpiece of its society.

“Israel as a country is maturing,” said Reuven Gal, director of the Israeli Institute for Military Studies in Haifa. “The psychological makeup of the nation is changing. . . . Lots of things related to the army that were considered sacred cows for many years are not sacred cows any longer.”

The army earned its exalted position in Israel by winning multiple wars against more powerful Arab forces that were trying to destroy the Jewish state. Israel owed its life to the army, and, as long as the country was in a constant state of alert over its national security, the army’s behavior was largely beyond question.

Meantime, in a nation of immigrants from around the globe, the army became the great integrator, turning Jews from all social and cultural backgrounds into Hebrew-speaking Israelis united against a common enemy. The army also produced Israel’s heroes and its leaders. An illustrious military career became key to professional and even political success. The reverse was also true. Failure to serve in the army or poor performance meant a life of second-class jobs and social ostracism.

Danny Dromi discovered this was still largely the case when he shunned the army two years ago. His friends and family stood by him, and even his father decided that “what he needed was not a macho father telling him this is terrible, but some support.” But when Dromi went job hunting, he was rejected by almost 50 employers after admitting on application forms that he had not finished his service.

He finally landed work in a music store because of his guitar skills. But after seven months on the job, he reconsidered his decision.

“I realized I was trying to live like the Red Hot Chili Peppers [rock band] in Los Angeles. But here, that’s not possible. Every hour you have the beep beep beep [on the radio] announcing the news. You see the soldiers everywhere. There is danger, and everyone is tense.”

In the end, he determined that the costs of staying out of the army were too high. “I wasn’t going anywhere. I’m a musician, not a salesman. I decided to go back,” he said.

Since Dromi returned to serve in an army band, Parliament has passed a new law restricting use of personal military information in civilian life. As of July, a prospective employer may ask only if someone served in the army, but nothing about one’s military record.

Not a Status Symbol

“We couldn’t have done this five years ago,” said legislator Dedi Zucker, who wrote the law. “There are hundreds of reasons for not serving in the army, and in Israel this used to rate you on a status ladder. Only now, when the army has lost some of its position in society and become just another institution, is it possible not to treat army information as a status symbol.”

Israel still loves its soldiers, of course. People readily pick up soldiers hitchhiking on the highways and mourn the loss of each one who dies in combat. When six soldiers were killed in an ambush in southern Lebanon last month, the half-hour nightly newscast was devoted to them and their families.

And 86% of Israelis do fulfill their service of three years for men and 22 months for women. Elite combat units are easily filled by volunteers, an army spokesman said. The number of those who don’t report for service has risen only 1.5% in the last couple of years and includes Israeli Arabs and ultra-Orthodox Jews who may be excused.

At the Nachal Unit’s Base 80 in Pardes Hanna-Karkur recently, hundreds of young women in fatigues lined up beneath the eucalyptus trees to learn to march, handle an Uzi and take orders from their superiors, much as their parents and grandparents had done.

“The army is part of the people who live here, whether you want it or not,” said 2nd Lt. Ayelet Gonen, 19, one of the trainers. “If you don’t do it, you lose a lot of who you are supposed to be.”

But even here, among the 18-year-olds who tie back their hair under olive green caps and shed their earrings and other signs of individuality for boot camp, the change in attitude is noticeable.

“This generation is different from our parents’,” said Shiri Milo, 20, a second lieutenant in charge of logistics. “Our parents said, ‘We want to die for the country, and we will.’ People aren’t saying that now. They think more about themselves.”

In some cases, young Israelis also think more about the army--more critically. It is true that most Israelis were willing to fight and die in the country’s war for independence in 1948 and in its wars for survival in 1956, 1967 and 1973. But that began to change with Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in June, 1982, when dozens of Israeli soldiers refused to participate in a war they did not support.

Again, in the seven-year intifada--or Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation that began in 1987--many left-leaning soldiers refused to serve in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, where they thought Israel had no right to rule.

Now, some religious and right-wing Israelis are criticizing the government for using the army to remove Jewish settlers from West Bank lands they have illegally occupied to protest Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s 1993 peace accord with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

Many religious soldiers are torn between their commanders and some Orthodox rabbis who have told them to disobey orders if they are called on to evacuate West Bank military bases or Jewish settlements. In a letter to Rabin, 1,050 soldiers and officers in mandatory service and reserves said they would refuse orders to evacuate West Bank settlements.

Political columnist Yoel Marcus wrote in the daily newspaper Haaretz that life was much simpler for the Israeli soldier when “we knew clearly who was good and who was bad, who was for us and who was against us.”

“The army,” Marcus added, “finds itself in confrontation with the settlers, alongside its operations against [the Islamic extremist group] Hamas, and in cooperation with [Jordan’s] King Hussein. And our security services work together with Arafat, while his security services work to eliminate terrorism against Israel . . . and together they both cooperate with [Egyptian President Hosni] Mubarak.”

Along with their growing doubts about serving in the army--and increasing complaints about the burden of reserve duty of up to a month annually to age 45--Israelis are beginning to criticize the army for everything from training accidents to its behavior in war.

The army has long taught its rank and file to act with a “purity of arms,” which meant that Jewish soldiers were to be morally superior to their enemies and kill only when necessary. For years, it was accepted that that had been the case.

Record Is Questioned

But during the war in Lebanon and the intifada, citizens groups began to complain about Israeli human rights abuses. Now, the army’s early record has come into question over alleged war crimes dating to the Sinai Campaign in 1956 and the Mideast War in 1967.

Retired Gen. Arye Biro claimed in newspaper and television interviews this summer that he had ordered the killing of scores of Egyptian civilian prisoners of war during the Sinai Campaign. His unapologetic account was followed by public assertions that elite infantry troops also killed 300 Egyptian prisoners in the Sinai in 1967.

Egypt demanded that Israel put soldiers on trial for the killings. Israel responded that too much time has passed, but it effectively admitted that the crimes took place by offering to pay compensation to the families of the slain POWs. Egypt then dug up some mass graves that appeared to provide the proof.

The latest charges have prompted queries about conduct even from army devotees like Shiri Milo, who had happily followed her father into the ranks of the military.

“The first thing I did when I heard this was to ask my father if he did anything like this,” she said.

To many military and political observers, this questioning is healthy evidence of a more confident society. Since Israel no longer fears the Arab threat of being driven into the sea, the country no longer needs to define every challenge as a threat to national security.

Others, who believe that the country’s formidable military strength is the only reason their Arab neighbors signed peace agreements, fear this trend will weaken the army before Israel has finished making peace in the region.

“I am afraid there is a gap between the level of hope for peace and cruel reality,” said Avinoam Brug, a former army psychologist and now a director at the Gallup Institute in Tel Aviv. “Unfortunately, we will need the services of the [Israeli military] for a few good years.”

In fact, the army is adjusting to the new social and political realities by converting into a different kind of military force. It is evolving from a people’s army, built on universal, egalitarian service, into a more high-tech, professional army, said Stuart A. Cohen of the Besa Center for Strategic Studies at Bar Ilan University.

The military now worries more about low-intensity conflict--in the form of terrorism or long-distance missile attacks like those launched by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein during the 1991 Persian Gulf War--than it does about conventional warfare.

“To confront these threats, you need a different kind of force. You need very high-tech weapons, and it is far less labor-intensive,” Cohen said. “The same is true of counterinsurgency. The army needs far more specialized, small units. The army is now in a situation where it can be far more selective.”

The army can also afford to let more Israelis out of their compulsory service or to discharge them early. What it cannot afford in the face of a $170-million budget cut next year is some of the programs it has long maintained for Hebrew language training and other services to integrate new immigrants. The defense-related share of the government’s domestic budget has been reduced over the past decade from 25% to 13%, Cohen said.

The cuts urged by the Finance Ministry as part of an overall budget-tightening are further evidence that the army is no longer sacred. But the cuts have not been without controversy among other Cabinet ministers and military brass who argued they would hurt morale and damage the army’s credibility. Even dovish Environment Minister Yossi Sarid opposed the cuts, saying Israel was not yet in a position to afford a second-rate army.

No one is accusing the army of being second-rate. Observers are simply subjecting it to the same kind of scrutiny and criticism that other major Western armies face.

“In the short run, and from a narrow point of view, this hurts,” said Gal of the Israeli Institute for Military Studies. “It puts the army under the spotlight, and they don’t like it. It also limits the part of the army that is famous for its daring level of training. We cut our own branch if we are too cautious.

“But in the long run, if what we see is balanced relations between the armed forces and society, it is a shift in the right direction,” Gal added.

This evolving relationship is evident in Israeli pop culture, where a generation ago music stars almost always launched their careers in the military. In more recent years, the army has broadcast the songs of teen-age idol Aviv Gefen, who sings about his refusal to serve in the military.

In his tune “Last Night,” Gefen sings:

Last night, I was humiliated for the 100th time.

I was beaten up because I didn’t serve in the army.

And what’s a sensitive heart,

When compared to state security?

Danny Dromi dislikes Gefen’s advocacy of draft-dodging--something he sees as a personal decision.

Dromi is happy that he returned to finish his military duty, and happy too that the law has been changed to keep others who drop out from discrimination in the job market.

“These people deserve a chance,” Dromi said. “After all, this is the 1990s, not 1956.”

Times staff writer Mary Curtius contributed to this report.