Good intentions don't win wars
Against the backdrop of an uncertain strategic reality (the crisis with Iran, the fluid situation regarding negotiations with the Palestinians and the civil war in Syria), the defense establishment informed the Knesset last November that the Israel Defense Forces only had enough money for training until this May. At the time, the Finance Ministry said the issue would be readdressed in May. But May has come and the Finance Ministry is being evasive.
The IDF fired around 1,000 employees and career personnel. It shuttered six divisions and two squadrons, and it is set to carry out another 2,000 layoffs. This has all been very painful, but social activists remain silent when it comes to defense establishment employees. This is a shame. If the laid off had been infiltrators from Eritrea, these "activists" would have raised a ruckus.
What a mistake it is for the government to turn the IDF into a beggar at the door.
This is not to say that the defense establishment is immune to criticism. Criticism is necessary and there are things to criticize. But everything is out in the open. Even Finance Minister Yair Lapid admitted at a ministerial meeting that there is no need for a law ensuring transparency of military expenditures, as they are already transparent. The Finance Ministry no longer has a comfortable horse on which to ride. The Finance Ministry agreed on budgets with all other ministries, but left national security for last. So it has enlisted the media and launched a campaign of delegitimization against the IDF. The extreme Left is celebrating. The order of priorities must change. The defense budget should be discussed first, before the budgets of all the other ministries. We must first protect life before we can raise its quality.
Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon and IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, who took part in the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee meeting on Tuesday, are abiding by the rule that their words and actions are equal. They warned the committee about reservist training, as this is something the committee can affect. The rest -- i.e. payments to disabled veterans or a contract to buy bread from a Beersheba bakery -- is inflexible.
The Finance Ministry did not believe Ya'alon and Gantz would dare to speak up. Defense ministers and IDF chiefs of staff have made threats in the past, but went back on them at the last minute in exchange for various inducements. Now, this is happening.
Ya'alon and Gantz know my opinion, which is that they must not make a poor deal with the Finance Ministry. The deal should be multi-leveled: a insulting payment to finish out the current year, but also a return to the Brodet committee's outline. The security of the Jewish people in their land will be realized (even in increments) if the IDF operates under a multi-year plan. They committee outlines a decade, but this was cancelled within a year due to shortsightedness and impatience.
It is worth putting the stability of the government in question over this issue. Not over the amount, but over the multi-year plan. There is no middling enterprise in Israel (even a bankrupt one) that does not operate under a multi-year plan. Except for the IDF. The Brodet committee made its recommendations, and then-IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi did not like them, but agreed to a multi-year commitment. However, this is now lying in fractured ruins.
As someone who observed the Second Lebanon War, spending long days in places such as Kiryat Shmona, Zarit, Shtula, Nahariya and Avivim, as well as the IDF Northern Command inside Mount Canaan in Safed, I saw up close what happens when a well-intentioned, but untrained, army goes into action. Never again.
טעינו? נתקן! אם מצאתם טעות בכתבה, נשמח שתשתפו אותנו