With many greetings,

First of all, I would like to apologize to those present that I cannot glorify this place with the splendor of my military rank and that I am neither a General nor a Lieutenant General. On December 2 of 1998, the Cabinet convened for the first time to discuss the basic question, “Does the Security Zone in Lebanon indeed protect the settlements in the North?”

At this session, the Chief of the General Staff (CGS) appeared and presented the unanimous position of the General Staff that a unilateral withdrawal from the Lebanon would create an unreasonable danger to the settlements of the North. Let me emphasize that this was the opinion of thirty generals without any dissent!

Perhaps some of the generals thought otherwise. Yet could it be that because of their anxieties – over status, prospects for promotion and perhaps even a future in politics – they did not dare to express their opinions before the Minister of Defense at that time, even at the cost of a war which they saw as not necessary? The Minister was known for his determined opposition to a withdrawal from the Lebanon.-

If it was like that, then the generals did not ascend to the level of national responsibility that is required of them and we cannot sleep soundly at night. If the position of the General Staff was indeed “unanimous”, we should be worried many times over by the creativity and the productivity of the thought processes of that General Staff, and we certainly cannot sleep soundly..

There is also the possibility that the CGS viewed opposing ideas as irrelevant and perhaps even as illegitimate, so that he authorized himself to speak in the name of the entire General Staff. If so, then once again we cannot sleep well at night. At this point, permit me to point out that I do not hold the CGS responsible for every foolish action of some sentry at the gates to a military compound. However, the CGS must surely respect the same norms that he applies to a sentry.

For example, about a month ago the mission of the undercover Duvdevan (Cherry) unit to capture wanted terrorists in hostile territory failed. The CGS took pains to expose the commander and officers of the unit to blunt and searing criticism in front of the Israeli public. Everybody heard about the unit’s esprit de corps, where the commander went wrong and where the sniper made an error. Everybody also heard about the steps that the CGS has taken against those responsible. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are a large formation of units that face complicated problems and carry out numerous operations. Within this framework, the attack of the Duvdevan unit, that to our sorrow failed and left three soldiers dead, was just a local episode, one of thousands. .

Yet no one has ever bothered to examine or investigate in any way the Lebanese war, even though it took an incalculably heavier toll, caused major harm to the civilian population of the north and is seen more clearly as superfluous from day to day. Since the above-mentioned session of the Cabinet, this same CGS became active in a struggle to try to dissuade the political leaders from deciding on a unilateral withdrawal from the Lebanon. Several times, he openly criticized the tabled proposal to withdraw.

In the months before the withdrawal, our newspapers were full of information about an airlift from Iran that is rushing weapons to the Hixbollah, including missiles that can reach Haifa and perhaps even Herzliah near Tel Aviv. After a withdrawal, it was claimed, terror attacks would pursue us into Israeli territory. Most of these news items, by the way, were not true. The press did not invent them; they were leaked out to the press by someone in the IDF. The CGS, who is responsible for the IDF, owes us an explanation, exactly as in the case of the Duvdevan fiasco, and perhaps even much more so. I demand this from the CGS, not so much to settle past accounts but rather to learn lessons for the future.

Concerning the research section of the Military Intelligence Branch (MIB), there is a relevant anecdote. There was once a French comedian who was always accurate in his weather forecasts. One day his colleagues asked him, “Jacques, how do you do it?” He replies, “I listen to the forecast on the radio and predict just the opposite.” During the past thirty years, the research section of the MIB has been wrong in all its strategic and geopolitical analyses, with one exception. It is clear that the problem is structural. We are talking about military people, who belong to the apparatus for activating the forces of the nation. They are educated never to risk dangers. For them, a probability means the probability to strike down an enemy. Are such people really capable to identify a probability correctly?

For the past twenty years, the chief of the MIB has come from a combat unit. His future role may be to command an arm of the ground forces. He may be promoted to the job of Deputy CGS or even be appointed as the next CGS. Can such a person confirm a reassuring evaluation of a situation which would hurt him in the future when he may require budgets that would be justified only by an imminent threat to our security? A national-oriented evaluation of a situation can not be done by the military, but rather by a civilian body, perhaps by the National Security Council, as is the custom in the well-organized Western nations. If this is not done, then we can expect a continuous self-induced trauma and catastrophes on the Lebanese pattern which may still occur in the future.

This leads me to my last subject, that is, the continuous drain of military personnel from the army to politics, before they have matured in politics and in civilian life. On one side is the military officer, who is concluding his tour of duty and already regards himself as a politician. He relates to politics accordingly and starts to voice his opinions on every subject. On the other side is the politician, who regards an officer who is concluding his tour of duty as a candidate for recruitment to his party and relates to him accordingly. If this phenomenon does not cease, we shall be eating bitter fruit indeed.

I thank you for your attention and wish you all a Happy New Year.

Danny Reshef.