Captain Renault’s famous statement sums up in one pithy saying all the hundreds of pages of verbiage of the Winograd report: the Israeli political leadership and the IDF command gambled with the lives of Israeli soldiers and citizens — and lost. Somehow both the political elite and the “man in the street” seem to be “shocked” at the findings.
According to Haaretz, the IDF has already learned the lessons of the war. Ehud Barak and Gabi Ashkenazi (the chief of staff) are in charge and they will “clean up” the mess. Lessons have been learned! Measures have been taken! The usual suspects have been rounded up! What a sad farce.
As is usually the case after a popular war goes awry and turns into a bloody disaster, people quickly forget how gung-ho they were at the beginning. They all claim in retrospect that they knew better. But I can honestly make that statement. For a sad trip down memory lane you can read the articles on this blog from that period, where essentially I pointed out the obvious point the commissioners made: Israel had many other options to pursue before rushing into war. Unfortunately, it gives me no pleasure at all to say “I told you so.” In fact it just angers and depresses me even more. So many people died, so much damage was caused, and for what?
Many peace activists are disturbed that the Winograd report doesn’t address the issue of Israel’s war crimes in Lebanon. Other people are disturbed that the Winograd report does not go into sufficient depth about the responsibility of the political echelon. But in my eyes the Winograd report is a farce because it doesn’t address the elephant in the room, the real cause of Israel’s failure in Lebanon – the deep seated corruption of the Israeli army. Until the Israeli people are ready to face that head on, the gambling will continue and the consequences to the lives and safety of Israel’s soldiers and citizens will continue to be disastrous.
I know that statement sounds strange. To understand it more clearly I urge you to read my FAQ one of the first things I wrote when I started this website. It’s quite a bit shorter than the Winograd report and quite a bit more honest as well. Since I turned out to be right on Lebanon, perhaps, dear reader you will be more willing to listen to what I have to say there.
Since I realize people are lazy, and many won’t read my FAQ, here is the Cliff Notes version:
Twenty years ago (hard to believe!) I was drafted into the Israeli army. I was brought up on the myth of the heroism and competence of this army and so I was actually proud to be a reservist. But I soon learned there are actually many parts to the army. Most of the army consists of “job-nickim” – people who are in the army but don’t do any fighting. For the most part, the “career army” – people who work for the army full time, are in this category, but many reservists are as well. A large part of the young mandatory draftees, 18-21 year olds required to serve, fall in this category as well. For the most part, those who serve in this capacity form a vast and uncaring bureaucracy, lazy and incompetent. Parts of this bureaucracy do have some pockets of excellence, particularly in the technology side and in intelligence work. But even there, times are not what they used to be.
A much smaller part of the army actually fights. These fighting units are comprised of reservists (like I was) and a portion of the mandatory recruits. The fighting units are at the mercy of the bureaucracy which determines how they are trained, what equipment they get, how they are deployed and overall how resources are allocated. And that last point is where the corruption begins.
The fact that the bureaucracy is lazy and incompetent wouldn’t be so bad in and of itself. People in the fighting units tend to be resourceful, take initiative and quickly learn to game the bureaucracy to a certain extent. But, and here is the big but: since most of the bureaucracy is the career army, the careerists have a big incentive to allocate resources to the bureaucracy as opposed to the fighting units.
We start with small things. The careerists get to eat five star meals in their kitchens. The fighting units in the field eat shit. The careerists get crisp uniforms and brand new guns and get to drive brand new jeeps and cars. The fighting soldiers get 20 year old equipment on the verge of falling apart. Uniforms for the fighting units (at least in my experience) are almost rags and are either way to big or way too small.
Then we move to the medium things. Take training. Since very little resources are allocated to the fighting units, there never is enough money for training so not much training takes place. What little training I had, was mostly a joke: conceived in an office somewhere in Tel Aviv by career officers who never fought in their lives and completely disconnected from the realities in the field. When they sent us out to patrol in civilian areas of the West Bank we got no special training at all.
Then there are the big things. Money may be allocated in some budget to buy new equipment for the fighting units. But a large portion is skimmed off by the contractor who handsomely rewards the purchasing officer for turning a blind eye. What little money that is left, ends up buying degraded, sub-standard or defective equipment. I remember one year we were all excited to hear we will be getting brand new patrol jeeps – the twenty year old ones we were using were a hazard to life and limb. Imagine our disappointment to find the “new equipment” was maybe ten years newer but not much more stable or safer.
Much of how fighting units are allocated is directly correlated on providing jobs for the career army. For years our reserve unit was deployed in the Jordan Valley. What we did was a complete and utter waste of time, and served no military or strategic purpose. The only reason we were there was to provide jobs for the vast number of careerists who worked in the army bases that supposedly “supported” us. They did an awful job in that support, but fought tooth and nail to make sure our tours of duty were not cut back. Even after the peace treaty with Jordan, when it was blatantly obvious that there was no reason for us to be there, there a was only a token change in our reserve time.
The career army is a golden ticket for those with the temperament to stick it out. You don’t have to work very hard. You get paid well and have great benefits. Everyone retires at the age of forty with vast sums of money as a retirement bonus and a pension for life. You can get jobs with the all the contractors whose pockets you padded over the years. Those in the upper echelons get senior positions in the lucrative military industries in Israel or work as big money arms dealers. To stick it out, however, means you have to be the kind of person who enjoys licking the ass of your immediate superior and who is willing to spend twenty years of your life doing absolutely nothing productive. You also have to be totally amoral and uncaring. In short, a person who puts money and power above everything else.
The biggest surprise to me was the absolute contempt the career army showed to the fighting units. I shouldn’t have been surprised. Only a contemptible person would be willing to make a career in such a corrupt and venal environment. Is it surprising that they would feel contempt for honorable people who sacrifice vasts amounts of their time in unpaid service and are willing to make the ultimate sacrifice?
And it shouldn’t have surprised me either how little the Israeli army cared about endangering the lives of Palestinian civilians. After all, they cared so little about endangering the lives of their own fighting soldiers many of whom are barely out of childhood. Why then should they care about some Arab child?
The members of the career army have a vested interest in keeping the army at the center of Israeli society. They have no interest in changing the status quo. Ehud Barak and Gabi Ashkenazi, who are supposed to clean up the mess, are an integral part of it all. Barak’s brother-in-law, close friend and business partner was the top commanding officer of the Jordan valley region when I did my reserve duty there and experienced the Israeli army’s corruption first hand. Barak is part of the problem, not the solution.
The solution will only come when the Israeli public wakes up and stops believing the lies they are being fed. Things will change when parents stop dutifully encouraging their sons and daughters to “do their duty” and serve in the army. These parents hope that “yhiye b’seder” – things will work out. They trust that the army to whom they give their most precious children, has the best interests of those children in mind. If there is one lesson that I hope and pray Israelis take away from the disaster of the second Lebanon war it is this: it won’t be b’seder! The army is not to be trusted. The lives of their children are being sacrificed to the lords of war and greed. It is time to say no more.
Tags: Feature, Israeli Army, Lebanon
