THE ISRAEL DEFENSE FORCES, 1996 Eviatar Ben-Tzedef (The following is adapted from an article in the July 1996 issue of the Israeli journal, Nativ. Ben-Tzedef was for many years editor of Maarachot, a military monthly.) "I hope the enemy does not know what I know about the French Officer Corps," Clemenceau is reported to have said. The following article deals with the Israeli Armys officer corps, but this time with the assumption that the enemy, alas, does know. Three months after their defeat in the Six Day War, Egypt and Syria began the War of Attrition, the first war in which the IDF was defeated by itself. The air force, which was unchallenged during the war, had its wings clipped by missiles. The army was mired in the Bar Lev line, prevented from effective countermoves. This was the first war the IDF hurried to finish without even getting back its captives in the framework of the ceasefire agreement. They were only returned after the Yom Kippur War. Those who did not understand the failure, like Minister of Defense Moshe Dayan, Chief of Staff Haim Bar Lev, and his general staff, continued to celebrate victory in illustrated albums of the 1967 war. The Yom Kippur War provided another missed opportunity to understand what was happening. Why has such failure been repeated again and again in an army that considered itself the best in the Middle East? The Americans who, at that time, were recovering from the defeat in Vietnam, lost no opportunity to study every detail of the Yom Kippur War. On the other hand, the IDF was satisfied with the announcement that it had won every war, and tossed into its archives the lessons of the war, which were paid for with vast amounts of blood. There they lie to this day. But how can officers whose military command preparation is deficient draw lessons from a military conflict? Instead of preparing experts to command, the IDF has chosen to train good fighting men. The result is that the officer courses of the IDF are equivalent only to advanced courses for battalion commanders in foreign armies. Its graduates understand little of military science. There is also a systemic error in selection of officer candidates. Those who are selected are chosen primarily for their physical stamina Ñ for being tough soldiers. But there is only a slight connection between this and what is required of officers in a modern army. The pattern of officer training in the IDF is almost the same as it was in the pre-state Haganah training camp, exposing a paradox. The IDF has become a professional army led by unprofessional officers. In the pre-state Haganah training courses of some 60 years ago, commanders were prepared for a militia, not as officers for a regular modern army. The IDF faces the 21st century with commanders who remind one of graduates of this training The ghost

of Haganah training still clanks its chains in the Israeli Army's general staff. In the IDF officer corps, there is little thinking about military systems and structures, less interest in military history, and even less attention to the military, scientific and technological problems of the future. A course which goes on for a mere, albeit exhausting half year turns out an officer, so-called, with much physical, but little intellectual preparation. For most of those who graduate, and certainly those who become officers in the reserves, this will be their only military preparation. Since the average soldier in the IDF has no real military schooling, when he faces a problem, he does not know how such, or similar problems, have been solved by commanders in past battles. The result of this deficiency is that the Israeli officer can only learn from his own experience. Furthermore the anti-intellectual atmosphere in the Army encourages an attachment to "approved solutions" whenever a disaster looms, instead of encouraging independent thinking. The failures on the Lebanese frontier as well as the large number of training accidents are tragic testimony to this. The average Israeli officer does not read foreign professional literature. Apparently he thinks that he does not need it. Hence he cannot update himself about military thinking in the wider world, which is published in dozens of professional journals in many languages. Indeed, in the reign of former Chief of Staff Ehud Barak, the IDF decided that the publication of specialized literature for its various military arms was a waste of time and money. An officers corps in a modern army requires professionalism. The IDF's policy of releasing its officers at a relatively young age, around 40, to keep the army young, is thus a stumbling block. Officers advance rapidly, before they have gained sufficient experience or learned enough. It is difficult to justify this policy in historical perspective, and even harder to see its logic today. Apart from the waste of human capital, this policy wastes money and time in the preparation of large numbers of replacement officers. Moreover, the young retirees of the IDF become a serious burden on the state budget because, to the end of their lives, they receive substantial pensions for doing nothing. The relatively lavish pay for permanent service people was intended to make the army competitive for the best talent. Instead, it undermined the army by creating a golden trap that made its officers reluctant to leave because most have neither abilities nor talents that would justify an equivalent salary outside it. The integration of the services, the wonders of which are on everyone's lips, is, alas, only lip service, for most of the infantry officers have not the slightest conception of tank warfare and vice versa. They certainly are in a dense fog concerning other professional areas such as communications, intelligence etc. In the U.S. army, in contrast, the typical path of advancement of a (Continued on p.5)

Outpost               - 4 -               September 1996