Tag Archives: Independence Day

The Israeli Army

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A few weeks ago I gave an interview to a French periodical concerning the state of Israeli Defence Forces (IDF). Today, 19 April 2018, being Israel’s 70th Independence Day, I thought this topic would be of interest to the readers of this blog.

 

Any comments welcome

 

Can you give us an overview of the actual situation of the Israeli armed forces?

One could argue that, taking a grand strategic perspective and starting with the establishment of the State of Israel seventy years ago, some things have not changed very much. First, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) remain the armed organization of a democratic country, one in which it is the politicians who decide and the military which obeys. Second, the objective of the IDF was and remains to defend the country, a outrance if necessary, against any military threats that may confront it. Third, Israel remains in a state of war with several other Middle countries; nor is there any way in the world it can bring the conflict to an end by defeating them and compelling them to make peace against their will. Fourth, the occupation of the West Bank and the Golan Heights notwithstanding, Israel remains a small country with very little strategic depth. Fifth, the lack of strategic depth implies a heavy reliance on intelligence to detect threats before they materialize. Sixth, and for the same reason, Israeli military doctrine remains basically offensive, with a strong emphasis on destroying the opposing armed forces.

How is composed the Israeli military apparatus?

The Israeli military still retains the basic structure it assumed in 1949-50. It is made up of 1. A standing army, consisting of officers, NCO’s, and conscripts, numbering about 176,000 men and women altogether; and 2. A considerably larger number of reservists, who bring the total to about 620,000. As these numbers show, the IDF places heavier reliance on reservists than most modern armed forces do. Many reservists, moreover, serve in their own units and are expected to go into battle almost immediately and not after a period of organization as is the case in most other countries.

In charge of the IDF is the chief of staff, a lieutenant general. Under him is the general staff, including the divisions of manpower, operations, intelligence, computers (C4I). technology/logistics, and planning. Like most modern armed forces, the IDF has ground forces, an air force and a navy. Each of these three has its own general staff. There are three territorial commands: north, south, and central. There is a home defense command as well as a long-range command intended for “deep” operations in the enemy’s rear. Just recently the establishment of yet another command, armed with surface to surface missiles and apparently meant to supplement the air force, on missions up to 300-500 kilometers deep into enemy territory, has been announced.

Can you explain in detail which are the weapons currently owned by Israel?

The IDF is one of the most modern forces in the world. The ground forces rely on heavy Israeli-designed and produced tanks (the Merkava), of which there have now been four successive generations). It also has modern, heavy, armored personnel carriers (produced, in Israel, on a Merkava hull and undercarriage) as well as various kinds of surfaces-to surface missiles, multiple-launch rockets, and artillery The infantry, including a paratroop brigade and special operations units, has modern personal arms (the Tavor assault rifle) as well as machine guns and various anti-tank missiles.

The air force is in charge of a number of earth-circling intelligence satellites. It also has a number of medium and intermediate range (1,500-5,000 kilometer) ballistic missiles capable of reaching well beyond the Middle East. Combat power in the air consists mainly of US-built F-15. F-16 and F-35 fighter-bombers. Other important weapon systems are attack helicopters, AWACS aircraft, and tankers. A very important element are anti-missile defenses, a field in which Israel is a world leader.

Traditionally the Navy has been the least important among the three services. However, the need for a second-strike nuclear force as well as the discovery of enormous reserves of gas under the Mediterranean, which need to be defended, has caused this situation to change. Currently the Navy has a number of corvettes armed with various surface-to-air and surface-to-surface missiles. These ships are sufficiently large to carry helicopters for over-the horizon work. Four more corvettes are on order in German shipyards. The Navy also has five submarines (with a sixth on the way) which, according to foreign sources, can launch sea-to-land cruise missiles over a range of up to a thousand miles or so. That, incidentally, should be enough to reach a target as far away as Tehran from positions opposite the Syrian coast.

About the nuclear: can you give us an overview of their allocations and actual potential?

These matters are secret. After all Israel has never openly admitted to having nuclear weapons in the first place. All one can say, on the basis of foreign sources which have long been discussing the issue at length, is as follows.

First, the number of warheads in Israel’s nuclear arsenal is probably in the low hundreds. Yields may vary between 20 kilotons, the equivalent of the device dropped on Nagasaki back in 1945, and a megaton. There have also been rumors about tactical nukes, but they have never been confirmed. Whether the larger warheads are fusion-based or simply boosted fission-ones is unknown.

Second, the delivery vehicles that can carry these weapons include fighter-bombers, various kinds of surface-to-surface missiles, and submarines. Between them, these weapons and these delivery vehicles should enable Israel to wipe any enemy in the Middle East and beyond off the map.

Third, absolutely nothing is known about the doctrine that governs the use of the weapons in question. In other words, about their strategic mission, the circumstances in which they may be used, the way in which they may be used, the targets against which they may be used, and so on.

About new generation weapons (drones, long range missiles), what is the situation? Are the Israeli armed forces still greater than its neighbors?
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Israel technology in all these fields is as good as any available in the world. The more so because it is assisted by joint programs not just with the US, the largest weapon-manufacturer of all, but with and several other advanced countries. Israeli computers, satellites, optical- and communications equipment, radars, and drones are excellent. However, there is no room for complacency. Israel’s enemies, including both state- and non-state ones, are doing their best to challenge its superiority. As they do so, some of them are supported by Russia. Which is why constant vigilance and innovation are required.

In its short history, the State of Israel often fought and won wars in which it was outnumbered and trapped: is this because of its only technological superiority or is there also a strategic and tactical factor? 

Starting in 1948 and ending with the 1973 war inclusive, the most important factor behind Israel’s victories has always been the quality of its troops. Both in terms of education—Israel, unlike its enemies, is not a third-world country but a first-world one with educational, technological and scientific facilities to match. And—which is more critical still—in terms of motivation and fighting morale.

After 1973, and especially the 1982 First Lebanon War, things began to change. Education, technical skills and scientific development continued to improve, turning this a nation of less than eight million people into a world center of military (and not just military) innovation. There are, however, some signs that, as some of its former enemies concluded peace with it and its own military superiority came to be taken for granted, motivation suffered. To this was added the need to combat terrorists in Gaza and the West Bank—the kind of operations that contribute nothing to overall fighting effectiveness and any even detract from it.

Can the logistic organization represent a decisive factor – militarily -?

Logistics, it has been said, is “that which, if you do not have enough of, the war will not be won as soon as.” As recently as the Second Lebanon War against Hezbollah in 2006, so heavy was expenditure of air-to-surface missiles and other precision-guided munitions that the IDF had to apply for US aid even as hostilities were going on. This situation which has its origins in budget constraints, may well recur.

Furthermore, in all its wars from 1948 on the IDF has enjoyed near-absolute command of the air. As a result, it was able to attack enemy lines of supply whereas the enemy was unable to do the same. The buildup of reliable and accurate surface-to-surface missiles in the hands of Hezbollah, Syria and Iran may very well change this situation, causing supply bases and ammunition dumps, as well as communications-junctions and even convoys on the move to come under attack. This scenario, which is not at all imaginary, is currently giving the General Staff a lot of headaches.  

We know that the intelligence is the decisive element to ensure strength to Israeli Armed Forces: can you explain what is this strength?

Israeli technological, tactical and operational intelligence has always been very good. Two factors help account for this fact. First, there exists in Israel a large community of first-class experts (known as Mizrahanim, “Easterners” who know the countries of the Middle East, their language, culture, traditions, history, and so forth as well as anyone does. Many members of this community spend their periods of reserve duty with the IDF intelligence apparatus.

Second, modern intelligence rests on electronics, especially various kinds of sensors and computers. As the famous Unit 8200 shows, these are fields where nobody excels the IDF. Nobody.

That said, it is important to add that Israeli top-level strategic and political intelligence is nowhere as good as it is on the lower levels. Starting at least as early as 1955, and reaching all the way to the present, IDF intelligence has often failed to predict some of the most important events. That included the 1967 war, the 1973 War, the 1987 Palestinian Uprising, the 1991 Gulf War, the “Arab Spring,” and the outbreak of the 2011 Syrian Civil War.

Compared to its actual friends, which are its strengths and weaknesses from a military point of view?

As I said, strengths include a well-educated and highly skilled society, excellent technology, and vast experience in fighting various enemies (though some of that experience is now dated). The chief weaknesses remain the country’s relatively small size and lack of strategic depth—Iran, for example, is eighty times as large as Israel. Perhaps most important of all, there is reason to think that motivation, though much higher than in the NATO countries, is no longer what it used to be.

If the situation between Israel and Iran (or Hezbollah in Lebanon) comes to a showdown, which could be the reactions of some States as Turkey, Syria, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt or USA?

Hard to say. Iran will use Syria as a forward base for fighting Israel. Assuming the regime stays, Saudi Arabia will probably retain its ties with Israel, at least unofficially. Ditto Egypt. Turkey will probably not engage in a shooting war with Israel, but it will support an anti-Israeli coalition in other ways while at the same time fighting the Syrians (and the Kurds). Russia will try to support Hezbollah and Syria, but without becoming deeply involved. The US on its part will support Israel and Hezbollah, but without directly taking on the Russians.

There seems to be a fear about a large scale conflict; militarily, what do you think that Israel could put in place?

With its vital infrastructure—power plants, fuel depots, factories, and the like—exposed to precision-guided missiles launched by Hezbolla Syria and possibly Iran, Israel will find itself in a difficult situation. As well as doing its best to protect these assets by means of its highly-developed surface-to air missile system, it will mount air- and missile attacks on enemy air defenses, missile launching sites, and infrastructure targets (one Israeli officer has recently warned that, should Hezbollah get involve in a war with Israel, the latter would bomb Lebanon back into the Stone Age). One can also expect Israeli commando raids against military targets which, for one reason or another, cannot be tackled by airpower on its own.

All in all, not a pleasant prospect.

Guest Article: Israel – The Price of Independence

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Dr. Eitan Shamir*

On May 2nd of this year, Israel will be celebrating its 69th Independence Day. As always, the cheerful opening celebrations on the evening of May 1st will begin within hours of the memorial ceremonies for the fallen soldiers carried out that very morning, during Memorial Day. On Memorial Day, the nation is sunk in grief, remembering some 23,500 fallen members of the Israeli security forces and 5,150 civilians who lost their lives to ensure Israel’s national survival, freedom and prosperity.

As always, the ceremonies will include a reading of a poem by Natan Alterman (1910-1970), one of Israel’s best known poets. Its title, “The Silver Platter,” is attributed to Israel’s first president, Chaim Weizmann. Just two weeks after the UN decision, on November 29th, 1947, to partition British Mandatory Palestine, and amidst the rapidly escalating Arab attacks on the Jewish community, he declared that “the state will not be handed out to the Jewish People on a silver platter.” Thus foreseeing the great sacrifice in lives that the community in question would have to make in its pursuit of statehood. Four days later, on 19th December 1947, Alterman published the poem. As the years passed, it gained status as a national canon epitomizing the sacrifice the nation has asked from its members:

 

And the land shall again be peaceful, the red eye in the sky

Slowly dimming over smoking frontiers,

And the nation will rise, heart torn but still breathing,

To accept this miracle, this one and only miracle…

A ceremony it will prepare, standing before the crescent moon,

Facing them dressed in joy and terror.

And then towards them will walk a young woman and man

Slowly marching toward the congregated nation.

Dressed in dirt and battle-gear and heavy shoes

They will ascend the path, treading quietly.

They will not have changed their garb nor wiped their brow,

Nor cleaned any trace of their days in labor and nights in battle.

Exhausted, but never resting,

Still in the dew of Hebrew youth…

Silently the two will approach and then stand perfectly still
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Revealing no sign whether alive or shot.

And then the nation shall ask, tearful and amazed,

“Who are you?” And the two quietly will answer:

“We are the silver platter

On which you have received the Jewish State”.

Having spoken they will fall at the nation’s feet, covered in shadows,

And the rest will be recounted in the chronicles of Israel.

 

Each year, shortly after the sun sets, Memorial Day comes to an end, giving way to Independence Day and causing the country’s mood to shifts all at once. Hundreds of thousands of people join public celebrations complete with fireworks, food stands, music and dancing. A stronger contrast than the one between those two days would be hard to imagine.

This phenomenon of a sudden switch of national mood, from one extreme human emotion to its complete opposite, might seem peculiar, and a stranger might not appreciate it. Indeed, each year there are Israelis, especially among the families of the fallen, who argue that the abrupt extreme change in mood is abnormal and that more space should exist between these two days, allowing for a more gradual transition between the emotions they represent.    

However, Israel’s founding fathers created these two days as inseparable twins for a good reason. They wanted to make sure the nation remembers that its freedom was acquired and is being maintained at a dire cost; that before the nation begins to celebrate it must pause to pay tribute to the Silver Platter. One cannot be without the other.

Since Alterman wrote his poem in 1947, the State of Israel has gone through profound changes. One such change is Israel becoming a technology powerhouse. If, in the past, Israel’s main export product used to consist of oranges, then today it is high technology: a wide variety of software- and hardware related products. Included among these products are “apples.” Though not the kind one can eat, but rather the new model iPhone 8 that has been mostly developed in Israel.

These technological developments have affected not just the methods by which Israel wages its wars but also the way the Israeli public perceives the wars in question. In the past when a reference was made to Israel’s qualitative edge, what was meant was the quality of its field commanders and combat training; today it means Israel’s technological advantage. Technology is expected to deliver a solution for every security challenge, from rockets to tunnels.

This expectation leads to a perception that wars have become – or should become – a “clean business.” The heroes of our era, argue certain self-proclaimed pundits, are the men and women behind the keyboard or joystick. In other words, “cyber warriors.” These new military professions “should be elevated” above all the rest, they argue, as they represent the future. The prestige and status society reserved for its combat soldiers, those who operate in the line of fire, killing and risking being killed, should be shared with these new cyber warriors. The IDF prestigious definition of “combat soldier,” they continue to argue, should include soldiers who operate systems that can definitely shoot, even though their operators are located in secure places, very far from harm’s way.  

While cyberwar and technology are indeed important, even crucial, this entails a grave danger as the new ethos could affect young recruits who are led to believe that self-sacrifice is not needed on today’s battlefield. If, in the past, the best and brightest felt that their first calling was a combat unit, this is slowly changing. Sadly, as the recent wars in Gaza, Iraq & Syria remind us, war is still very much a bloody affair of soldiers “running around with rifles shooting each other” as one observer commented. I often show my students a scene from Spielberg’s “Band of Brothers” in which a company of American paratroopers fight house to house to recover a small village in Normandy France, 1944. There are always a few students who approach me after class and say, “this is exactly what we experienced in Gaza and Lebanon”.

Blood is the currency of war, said Clausewitz. Vast technological change notwithstanding, for those who engage the enemy at the front little has changed. Unfortunately, on its 69th birthday, while Israel celebrates its many astonishing achievements, it is still embattled, and will continue to face war and bloodshed for the foreseeable future. The struggle and the sacrifices necessary to uphold the state have not ended, and before we celebrate, let us not forget the Silver Platter that enabled us to do so.

 

* Dr. Eitan Shamir is a Senior Research Fellow with the Begin Sadat Center for Strategic Studies (BESA Center) Bar Ilan University. He is author of Transforming Command (2011) and Insurgencies and Counterinsurgencies (2017) with Beatrice Heuser.

Happy Birthday, Israel

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polls_israel_flag_5311_565914_poll_xlargeBack in 2010, in my book The Land of Blood and Honey, I argued that Israel was the greatest political success story of the entire twentieth century. Today, on my country’s 67th birthday, I want to bring that story up to date. Most of the figures are taken from a recent posting by Dr. Adam Reuter, chairman of Reuter Meydan Investment House and CEO of Financial Immunities Ltd. The starting line is 1984; 1984 being the year in which the country, embroiled in Operation peace for Galilee (the First Lebanon War) and with a 450% inflation rate, was on the brink of bankruptcy.

As always, success had many fathers. The then minister of finance, Yitzhak Modai (1926-98), took the credit for himself. Nonsense, says then Prime Minister Shimon Peres. He, Modai, did not even know what was going on. Surely some credit must also be given to the extra $ 1.5 billion (coming on top of the annual $ 3 billion) in American aid. Be this as it may, Israel’s economic heart, which since the October 1973 War had been all but paralyzed, started beating again. Follow some of the results.

In 1984 the country had 4.1 million inhabitants. By now the figure is 8.2 million, a 100 percent increase. Following the post-2008 economic recession as well as new anti-Semitism in many countries, immigration has been picking up. Moreover, compared to other OECD countries Israel’s population is very young, a fact that has important implications for the continuation of growth. Yet the tremendous demographic increase has not prevented the number of rooms per person from growing from 0.92 to 1.26, a 37 percent increase. The number of vehicles per capita has more than doubled, with results that can be seen on every road and street every day. GDP, calculated in dollar terms, has increased ninefold. Per capita GDP has increased 414 percent, foreign currency reserves 2,866 percent. The national debt has gone down from 280 percent of GDP to just 66 percent.

Whatever one thinks of the Second Lebanon War nine years ago, since then the border with Lebanon has been almost completely quiet. Whatever one thinks of Operation Protective Edge nine months ago, since then the border with Gaza has been almost completely quiet as well. That, plus the collapse of Syria and Egypt, helps explain why Defense, which used to take up 20 percent of GDP, has gone down to no much more than 5 percent. Taxation, which took up 45 percent of GDP, went down to 32 percent. American aid went down from 10 percent of GDP in 1984 to just 1 percent today. Exports, measured in dollar terms, went up 860 percent.

Back in 1984 Israel had zero—zero—indigenous supplies of energy and water. By now, thanks to the discovery of vast gas fields on one hand and the construction of the world’s largest complex of desalination plants on the other, both are available in very large quantities and can be increased almost at will. As a result of all this, even the Economist, the smart-Alec British magazine which back in 2008 honored Israel’s 60s birthday with a cover story about “the dysfunctional Jewish state,” has been forced to admit that, since the country joined OECD five years ago, it has done better than most of its fellow-members in that august organization.

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“Israel has a disproportionate amount of brains and energy,” said Warren Buffet (who, putting his pocket where his mouth was, by spent some $ 2 billion buying some Israeli companies). In the UN’s Human Development Index it is rated nineteenth. The Wall Street Journal has rated Tel Aviv third in the world in high-tech, behind Austin and San Francisco but ahead of New York, Stockholm, London, Singapore, and others. In terms of innovation, Israel heads a list of 148 countries. In terms of entrepreneurship it comes second. 300 leading international companies, including Facebook, Microsoft, IBM, Google, Apple, HP, Cisco, Motorola, Philipps, and Siemens either already have R&D centers in Israel or are building them now. During the first decade of the twenty-first century Israel also led the world in terms of the number of Nobel-Prize winners per capita.

Nor is it just a question of economic and technological development. Israel is the only country in the world that has more trees now than it did a century ago (living in Mevasseret Zion west of Jerusalem, and having in my possession photographs of the area taken by the German Air Force during World War I, I can testify to that fact). The number of museums per capita is the highest in the world.  So is the number of published scientific articles. The same applies to the share of R&D in GDP as well as the proportion of high-tech workers in the labor force. The bad reputation of Israeli drivers notwithstanding, the number of those killed in traffic accidents per 100,000 of the population is much lower than in most other countries.

Finally, polls show that, in terms of happiness Israel ranks sixth among OECD countries and eleventh among 146 countries world-wide. All this has been achieved in spite of the country’s small size; in spite of its location in the Middle East, not exactly the most peaceful or most benevolent part of the world; in spite of continuing security problems more dangerous and more persistent than those affecting any other developed country; and without for one moment surrendering the most precious possessions of all: such as democracy, human rights (for the non-Palestinian population, at any rate) and an independent judiciary.

To be sure, there are problems. There are several hundreds of thousands illegal immigrants (although, since the completion of a security fence between the Negev and the Sinai Peninsula, the number of new ones coming in has dropped to practically zero). The gap between rich and poor has been growing, as has the number of the working poor. Some communities, particularly the ultra-orthodox and the Arabs, are lagging behind in terms of socio-economic development (although, in both cases, change has finally got under way). There is still no peace with most of the neighboring countries. However, with the exception of the last-named two, all these are problems of a developed country, not of a developing one such as Israel used to be a few decades ago.

Unfortunately, one field in which no progress whatsoever has been made is the question of the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem included. I do not want to enter into the question as to whose fault this is, Israel or the Palestinians. As the saying goes, one needs two to tango—a point of view, incidentally, that many Israeli Arabs also share. In the eyes of many both in Israel and abroad, the occupation is the most important problem that has to be solved one way or another. Personally I agree that such is indeed the case. Let us hope that, when I write another column on my country a year from now, there will finally be some good news in that department too.