As thousands of terrorists are due to be released to Judea and Samaria, IDF is readying to crack down on terror. For starters, it launched a major operation in Jenin on Tuesday.

By World Israel News Staff

The Israeli military is gearing up for “significant operations” in Judea and Samaria following a ceasefire with Hamas that will free thousands of Palestinian terrorists from prison and return them to the region.

For starters, it launched a major operation in Jenin on Tuesday.

“Along with the intense defense preparations in the Gaza Strip, we must be prepared for significant operations in Judea and Samaria in the coming days in order to preempt and catch the terrorists before they reach our civilians,” IDF Chief of Staff Herzi HaLevi said in remarks published by the military.

Halevi added that the IDF’s senior leadership must “formulate plans for the continuation of the fighting, both in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon.”

Nearly 2,000 terrorists are currently slated for release during the ceasefire, including some of the masterminds of the deadliest Palestinian terror attacks in Israeli history.

Mohammed Abu Warda, who is currently serving 48 life sentences for his involvement in a series of bus bombings during the Second Intifada, is expected to be released within the next month.

Zakaria Zubeidi, the commander of the Al Aqsa Marytrs’ Brigade in Jenin who successfully escaped Gilboa Prison in 20212, is also set to be freed.

Since October 7th, 2023, Israel has been fighting a war on multiple fronts, enduring attacks originating from Gaza, Judea and Samaria, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Yemen.

With a ceasefire appearing to hold in Gaza and Lebanon, Syria focused on its internal struggles, and the Iranian axis weakened, the IDF is likely shifting its focus to Judea and Samaria.

Iran has long worked to instigate violence and unrest within Judea and Samaria, with Tehran working to smuggle weapons to terrorists based in Palestinian Authority-controlled territory.

Although Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has referred to the Gaza ceasefire as a “temporary pause,” President Donald Trump has stressed that he expects a permanent end to the fighting.

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The situation endangers the IDF’s ability to conduct ongoing counterterrorism operations and needs to be corrected immediately, says Matan Englman.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

Israel’s state comptroller issued a report Sunday slamming the substandard conditions of army bases in Judea and Samaria, saying it endangers the IDF’s ability to conduct ongoing counterterrorism operations in the region.

During recent surprise inspections in a Jordan Valley base and one in central Samaria, Matan Englman talked to reservists, conscripts and officers and heard numerous complaints ranging from poor and even dangerous living conditions to a lack of military equipment, all of which affect the troops’ ability to function well in their combat duties.

“It is not possible to accept a reality where, in a temperature of over 40 degrees [centigrade] in the Jordan Valley, troops will not have basic drinking water that is not boiling and will have to make do with ineffective air conditioners, some of which are not repaired due to a lack of budget,” he wrote.

The soldiers in training also do not receive enough protein, he wrote, deeming their one portion of meat per day “insufficient” to retain their physical stamina. They complained of poor food hygiene as well, specifically noting kitchen staff working with dirty hands, leading to cases of diarrhea.

The state comptroller wrote that especially in food matters, there was a lack of preparation for the influx of extra battalions in the region who are participating in the IDF push to beat back the escalation of Palestinian terrorism in Operation Break the Wave.

Medical care is sorely lacking as well, the report said, with soldiers often waiting weeks to get to a doctor or dentist. A visit to a specialist that has already been pre-approved can take much longer, even “many months.”

Englman wrote that such treatment of combat units is “unacceptable” and demanded immediate action, especially considering that “the assumption should be that this is a rolling operation that may last a long time.”

In the Samarian base, the comptroller heard more complaints of a direct military nature. The troops are missing equipment they need, he wrote, while out of what they have, “a significant” number of army vehicles are broken down and many personal weapons need repair.

Even more seriously, perhaps, reservists of one battalion said they had been trained to fight Hezbollah in Lebanon, and they “fear that in the moment of truth, they will not be prepared” to do what they must against the Palestinian terrorists in Judea and Samaria.

In response, an IDF spokesperson said, “In the two bases that were visited, the deficiencies found do not harm the operational competence and readiness of the forces for combat. Some of the report’s findings were dealt with immediately after the visit, and the rest are being dealt with.

Other army sources blamed budgeting constraints for the lack of proper infrastructure, defended the food allocation by saying that the Jordan Valley troops “receive an additional two portions of meat per week,” and found no problem with the food hygiene on base, although the army “would keep a closer eye on the issue.”

Regarding the slow medical service, the army insisted that “the medical response in the IDF has improved in all formations in the last year.”

The reason some soldiers must wait for treatment, it added, is because “they are in the field and cannot go to a clinic,” but all company medics have been told that “medical treatment should also come at the expense of training time and shouldn’t be delayed.”

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The system will leverage big data and machine learning algorithms to determine the best possible placement for a recruit.

By Lauren Marcus, World Israel News

The IDF announced Wednesday that it will now use an AI-driven scoring system for new recruits, ending decades-old practices around determining where to place incoming soldiers that have long been criticized as inaccurate and even discriminatory.

In the current system, youth who are set to enlist in the coming months — typically students in their last year of high school — report to a local recruitment office before their enlistment date.

IDF staff interview the potential recruits, who are judged on three key aspects: how many years of education they possess, a personal interview, and a basic intelligence test. The results of those three elements are called a “Quality Group” score, called “Kaba” in Hebrew.

The training and roles that recruits receive are almost always exclusively based on their Kaba scores. Recruits with low scores are relegated to logistical, manual labor or administrative positions.

Critics have argued that this testing method is not expansive enough and does not accurately assess a recruit’s skills, abilities, and strengths. Some have said that it widens existing social gaps.

For example, a recruit born into poverty who did not finish twelve years of schooling because they dropped out to work and support their family will automatically be given a low Kaba score, even if they possess excellent leadership skills and are highly motivated.

A new immigrant to Israel without a strong grasp of the Hebrew language is also automatically given a low Kaba score, despite their foreign language skills which could prove useful in an intelligence unit.

According to the IDF statement, the system will be completely revamped with a scoring system that considers more factors than the current three parameters.

The system will leverage big data and machine learning algorithms to determine the best possible placement for a recruit, along with their potential to succeed in a given role.

Over the next few years, the IDF will roll out “advanced, fair and egalitarian scoring that will target the individual” and the “realization of personal potential” of each new recruit.

The new system will take into account recruits’ adaptability, resilience, leadership and management skills, and motivation.

Adding transparency to the process, recruits will be able to access and view their scores online, as well as appeal the results of the assessment.

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Israel’s Channel 20 took a look at the data on gun accidents in the IDF over the last two years.

By David Isaac, World Israel News

In 2020, there was a 58% rise in gun accidents in the IDF, or “accidental discharges” as they are called, reports Channel 20’s Hillel Bitton Rosen, who examined the data and revealed his findings on Monday.

There have been a number of high-profile accidents in recent years, in some cases with soldiers playing games with their weapons, leading to serious injury and death.

In one incident that made headlines in March 2018, a soldier in an elite unit pointed a loaded gun at his friend and accidentally killed him in a game. The soldier, who was part of the Duvdevan unit, told investigators, “We practiced drawing a gun in a room on-base, as is common in the unit. He’s my best friend and I didn’t know it was loaded.”

Most recently, on Feb. 23, an IDF soldier was shot in the head and killed by his company commander, who picked up a gun used in a training exercise to inspect it and accidentally fired a round.

Channel 20, after interviewing soldiers who had lost comrades to gun accidents, describes a situation where gun safety is not taken seriously. Soldiers spoke of an “an atmosphere of contempt. Gun safety has become a recommendation in the battalion. It was clear that a disaster would occur in the end.”

In June 2020, a senior IDF training officer hardly set a good example when he was shot and seriously wounded during an exercise after he walked into the line of fire.

The IDF disputes the allegation that gun protocols are ignored, noting it conducts investigations after every incident. Gun training was reportedly halted throughout the IDF as the February incident was investigated.

The IDF Spokesman’s Office said, ” In the IDF, there is a program to raise awareness, educational activities take place and many informational activities are carried out on the subject.”

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The soldier didn’t answer, but kept walking, at which point the suspects exited their car, approached him from behind and attempted to seize his weapon.

By JNS via Israel Hayom

An Israel Defense Forces soldier was attacked and had his weapon stolen by two assailants during a solo navigation exercise near Shfar’am in northern Israel.

At approximately 3:00 a.m. on Thursday morning, the soldier noticed a suspicious vehicle with two figures in it. The vehicle approached from behind him, following as he walked along a dirt path.

Coming to a halt near, the driver asked the soldier if he needed a ride. The soldier didn’t answer, but kept walking, at which point the suspects exited their car, approached him from behind and attempted to seize his weapon.

The soldier tried to fight them off in a scuffle that took approximately five minutes. During the fight, the soldier threw his magazine into the bushes at the side of the road.

After finally managing to steal his weapon, the suspects fled the scene in their vehicle. The soldier, who was lightly wounded, called his commanders, who came to his aid, notified the police and began searching the area.

The Military Police, Israel Police, Shin Bet and the soldier’s immediate commanders were investigating the incident.

IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi on Thursday said that the incident constituted the crossing of a red line.

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Boots. Check. Gun. Check. Makeup… check?

By David Isaac, World Israel News 

Call it the oddest job in the IDF. Or maybe it’s the spookiest.

The IDF recently released a video featuring a little-known task in the army – applying military makeup to simulate wounds during training exercises.

The goal is to train medics to prepare for battlefield conditions and correctly identify wounds when it’s time for the real thing.

Called the “Resilience Team,” the group of talented makeup artists helps train battalion aid stations on army bases from north to south.

While it paints holes in heads and burn marks on arms, the team doesn’t limit itself to makeup. It also provides lifelike battlefield conditions, including choking smoke and the rat-tat-tat of machine guns.

But it’s the makeup where the unit really excels. The wounds are so realistic that the IDF video comes with a warning that the video “includes images of open wounds that are created with makeup.”

The video opens with one of the team touching up a gaping bullet hole in the side of a soldier’s head. “Wait, let me add just a little more blood,” she says. It’s definitely not the sort of thing you’d hear at your neighborhood boutique.

Behind the fun of the makeup, if it can be called fun, lies the serious purpose of preparing medics for war.

IDF Corporal Eti Schzerbeck, who is in charge of the training, says that first come intensive lessons, sometimes one-on-one, to teach how to treat wartime injuries. Only afterwards does he bring in all the smoke, makeup and combat sounds for the full effect of entering into a scene one would find in the middle of a battle.

Another member of the team, Corporal Ron Taib, says it’s not about makeup, it’s about being responsible for students. “When I’m not applying makeup, I’m standing on the side, observing the medical team – are they correctly identifying the wound, what the wound requires,” she said.

Taib admitted that her friends and family know what she does in the army and sometimes take advantage of her skills to do their makeup. On Purim (an Israeli holiday similar to Halloween in that children, and often grownups, dress in costume), she’s fully booked, she says.

She said that once as a practical joke on her mother she applied makeup to her younger sister, making it look like she had a huge gash in her thigh. Resilience Team members have a strange sense of humor.

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A new pre-army seminary for religious women will offer computer degrees and a step into the IDF’s elite cyber units.

By Paul Shindman, World Israel News

Jewish studies in the morning and technological training in the afternoon.

A new pre-army seminary is preparing to accept the first students for a program combining Torah study and computing that will pave the way for religious Jewish women to do their national service in elite cyber technology units, Israel Hayom reported Wednesday.

Orthodox Jewish women generally don’t serve in the IDF due to their religious observance. However, religious women are in many cases strongly Zionistic. They often enroll in “national service,” helping in hospitals, disadvantaged communities and immigration centers. The new program will offer a path for them to make a more serious contribution.

Mabat, a midrasha, or women’s college, will offer study programs in Torah, halacha (Jewish law) and Jewish thought, with a parallel track leading to a bachelor’s degree in computer science or software engineering with a specialization in data science and cyber studies

Graduates will get a shot at joining either the classified technology units in the Shin Bet national security agency or the IDF’s cyber defense and technology units.

The women’s college is headed by several former senior IDF and General Security Service (Shin Bet) officers, including former IDF intelligence chief Brig. Gen. (res) Dudu Tzur and Arik Barbing, a former senior operative in the GSS who headed the agency’s cyber network.

“We encourage young women to connect the sacred with the secular. The combination of the two is our doctrine of redemption, it is the people of Israel with its land and soil – growing and flourishing,” said Maya Ohana Moreno, one of the program’s lecturers whose husband Emanuel Moreno fell in the 2006 Lebanon war and whose top secret work still requires his picture to remain classified.

The founders say that having top IDF and intelligence officers running the program will do wonders in helping the women gain admission to the prestigious units.

The students who are accepted to the seminary “will be able to choose between national or military service and will receive preparation, full support and accompaniment in the entrance exams for the technological units in the various security bodies,” the program prospectus said.

“The technological training at the midrasha will give them an advantage over other candidates and lead them to advanced and quality positions within the units.”

Lt. Col. (res) Rami Lieber, director of the Netivei Torah and Technology Association and one of the founders of the seminary, said seven years ago they established the “Pisgah” (summit) program to train young men and women in cyber, but “we realized that the canvas needs to be expanded” to include religious women.

“We let the spiritual and technological training build – and each one decides whether to go into national or military service,” Lieber told Israel Hayom.

There are other existing pre-army prep schools for religious women that prepare them to serve in different IDF branches with high standards. The Lapidot Mechina, for example, has a goal of having a third of its graduates complete officer training in the IDF. However, Mabat is expected to conduct strict screenings of candidates because of its stated goal to integrate the young women into elite technological units.

Although young women who commit to national service instead of the IDF only have one year obligatory service, the women’s college says that in practice there is no chance that they will not perform significant and long service, even more than two years in some cases.

“Data show that the girls who reach such positions remain at almost one hundred percent for a second year. In the army, they even continue for much longer service,” the school said.

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The IDF is investigating the incident. Details on what happened have not yet been released.

By World Israel News Staff

An IDF soldier was seriously injured on Wednesday by gunfire at a reconnaissance base in Israel’s south. The circumstances around the incident are not clear.

Military sources say the female soldier was discovered with several gunshot wounds and was evacuated to Soroka Hospital in Beer Sheba for treatment.

The IDF is investigating the incident.

In June, a senior IDF officer was shot and wounded in a training accident at the National Center for Ground Forces Training, also known as Tze’elim, in Israel’s south.

The officer in that case was leading the live-fire exercise when he stepped across the firing line and was shot in the stomach. His injuries were not life-threatening.

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During their studies, they analyze some 80 military battles from Israel and abroad in addition to 3,000 years’ worth of military history.

By Yaakov Lappin, BESA Center

Lt. Col (res.) Gideon Sharav, head of the Military Studies department at the IDF’s Tactical Command College (TCC) and today a civilian employee of the IDF, has been at the academy since the day of its founding 20 years ago. According to Sharav, the TCC represents “the most serious effort by the green IDF [the ground forces] to create a level of professional specialty.”

Unlike West Point, which receives cadets and turns them into officers, the TCC receives soldiers who are already officers at the rank of lieutenant. They come from all the ground forces—infantry, armored corps, engineering corps, and artillery corps.

They study for two years—the longest qualification program in the ground forces—during which they dive into military and leadership studies. They obtain a bachelor’s degree in economics, political science, education, media, or biology from the University of Haifa.

During their studies, they analyze some 80 military battles from Israel and abroad in addition to 3,000 years’ worth of military history. This includes recreating battles.

Exercises, lectures, and visits both within Israel and abroad teach the officers military lessons, said Sharav. He cited a trip to Vietnam that took place before the coronavirus pandemic during which the officers studied strategies and doctrines of the Vietnam War.

The officers go on to become company commanders—but only a third of the IDF’s company commanders are TCC graduates. This is probably because attending the academy means soldiers must sign up for at least four to five years of professional IDF service. That is a commitment not all officers who have already been serving for four to five years are prepared to make.

Nevertheless, noted Sharav, “the interesting figure is that half of the IDF’s battalion and brigade commanders [the command positions following company commander] are our graduates. One of the things that we manage to create is a military identity.”

After the Second Lebanon War of 2006, the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee examined officer training and called on the IDF to expand the number of officers who pass through the TCC.

“This has happened, but not sufficiently,” reported Sharav. “Company commanders today have much more on their shoulders compared to their counterparts from 30 years ago. They have many more capabilities; they must conduct multi-domain combat and activate firepower. The complexity that is required of them in Lebanon or Gaza, and the state of Israeli society, are not similar to what was in place 30 and 40 years ago.”

‘On-the-job training doesn’t cut it anymore’

Col. Shahar Back has been commander of the TCC for a year. He told this author about the relatively new IDF concept of going beyond the traditional model of on-the-job training for officers.

In the past, when security incidents and conflicts were frequent and wars occurred every decade, with significant military operations erupting every three to four years, on-the-job training was “very substantial,” said Back, since “commanders experienced combat conditions. They experienced real developments in command and in combat.”

Fortunately, clashes have grown farther apart, and the IDF has not been involved in a major armed conflict since 2014. In this new situation, “on-the-job training doesn’t cut it anymore.”

This led the IDF to reach the same conclusion as did the US military: that alongside technological training and upgrades and multi-domain combat, it is the intellectual quality of officers that provides a true advantage in combat. “We are working on creating that level of intellectually high-quality officers,” said Back.

The Israeli navy and air force have their own well-established officer courses, but the ground forces’ only equivalent is the TCC. “It really crystallizes the organizational identity. Our graduates stay in the system for longer,” said Back.

Every year, the TCC graduates about 60 company commanders who go on to form the professional core of the IDF ground forces as they gradually move up the ranks and become battalion and brigade commanders.

The number of TCC graduates at the higher command levels means “these officers stay longer than those who didn’t pass through the TCC. It means they are more committed, that they have a sense of mission that is totally different,” Back added.

Following the 2014 conflict with Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, eight out of the 10 ground forces company commanders who received citations were TCC graduates, a further indication of the academy’s influence.

The TCC’s activities include building mental resilience and teaching leadership, command-and-control abilities, and in-depth combat doctrines.

Cadets take an annual test after their first year in which they summarize their own progress. Some note major failures they experienced during their training—a natural part of the course—and describe how they are able to analyze those setbacks to see where and why they failed and to learn from their mistakes.

“We have to create these failures in a controlled manner in order to study and learn from them, professionally, in an in-depth manner,” said Back. “The TCC is very personal. It’s about fostering maturity and identity. Building character is what we offer here. The difference between how cadets enter and leave our gates is the cardinal thing here; their development is highly accelerated. What matters is not the difficulty but the difference in how one enters and leaves. Personal experiences are very empowering.”

As part of their leadership training, the officers study time management, written expression, and crisis and conflict management. Officers are placed in situations of simulated conflict among personnel in which there are no good or bad decisions, only “least worst” decisions.

“This is very personal, and the officers use these simulations to get better at decision-making under pressure and uncomfortable conditions. This is based on the understanding that when they find themselves in tough situations in the field, they will say, ‘Wait a second! I remember what this feels like, when the ground seems to be vanishing under my feet. I remember what it feels like to have unresolved tension—the feeling that whatever decision I take will be imperfect. I’ve been in this situation, I know the order of action, I know how to analyze this,” said Back.

Building a professional backbone

The TCC encourages commanders to develop their own individual command styles and mental strengths. Within two years, officers learn how to develop their own singular approaches.

“Instead of doing this trial and error on people, which includes acute errors, they’ve already practiced this, and they arrive at their command positions as experienced commanders without [making] mistakes that can cost lives or lead to failures of real-life processes,” said Back.

Officers enter the TCC at age 22 or 23 and form groups of 15, with each group receiving instruction from a battalion commander. Such intimate training has “hugely significant value,” said Back. “This can’t be mass-replicated.”

”In the end,” he said, “we have the 72-year-old IDF narrative that says that on-the-job field training is what is important, which is great, but what happens when friction stops? The tools we provide will serve these officers for many years.”

The TCC cooperates closely with West Point, and the two academies have exchanged delegations every year except for 2020 (due to coronavirus limitations). “We also exchange ideas and have a mutual patent-exchange program,” said Back. “The IDF is building its professional backbone here.”

Yaakov Lappin is a Research Associate at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies and a military and strategic affairs correspondent. He conducts research and analysis for defense think tanks and is the military correspondent for JNS. His book The Virtual Caliphate explores the online jihadist presence.

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Over the 20 years since the IDF’s withdrawal from Lebanon, Hezbollah has formulated an approach to warfare that reflects its awareness of the fact that the speed of the IDF’s offensive maneuver is the key to its operational advantage.

By Maj. Gen. (res.) Gershon Hacohen, BESA Center

The IDF’s large-scale exercise at the end of October marked a milestone in its preparedness for war. The exercise was also meant to serve as an experiment for the new operational concept that is forming in the IDF to deal with the changes taking place in the war arena.

The changes afoot in the military have prompted criticism for years by experts in twentieth century warfare who see them as an abandonment of the fundamental classical conventions of military doctrine.

The critics view the approaches developing in the IDF as suffering from an “undue influence of postmodern thought.”

Such claims do not, however, deny that substantial changes have been unfolding for three decades in terms of weaponry and methods of conducting war.

What has changed? Everyone expects that if a war breaks out, the IDF will again score a lightning victory as in the good old days of the Sinai Campaign and the Six-Day War. Yet something significant has changed since then. A briefing that Chief of Staff Moshe Dayan gave before the Sinai Campaign captures the change that has emerged since those days in the enemy’s modes of combat. Here is what Dayan said about the key to victory:

A rapid advance is of overriding importance for us because in that way we can make the most of our advantage over the Egyptian army. I am not talking about the advantage that each individual has over his Egyptian adversary, pilot against pilot, tank crew against tank crew — but about our entire army. The Egyptians operate schematically and their headquarters are located behind the lines, so that every change they have to make in deployment, such as creating a new defense line and shifting forces not according to the original plan, means they have to take out time for thinking, discussion, and decisions in the main headquarters. We, for our part, can operate with more flexibility and less military standardization…. That advantage, if we make the most of it, will allow us — once the war begins — to keep fighting the Egyptians before they can redeploy in keeping with the changes that have taken place at their front.

A reduced attack momentum

Hezbollah has grasped the logic Dayan presented and striven to subvert it. Over the 20 years since the IDF’s withdrawal from Lebanon, Hezbollah has formulated an approach to warfare that reflects its awareness of the fact that the speed of the IDF’s offensive maneuver is the key to its operational advantage.

True, the attempts to overcome the IDF’s superiority had already begun in the October 1973 War with the military logic of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, which resulted in the failure of the IDF’s counterattacks at the Suez Canal front on October 8 and 9. What Hezbollah has done is step up this approach to pose an unprecedented operational challenge to the IDF.

This challenge is based on three systemic efforts:

• Continuous and wide-scale rocket/missile fire against population centers and military targets across Israel.
• A dense defensive deployment aimed at exacting a high price from attacking IDF forces to the point of casting the whole purpose of the ground offensive into doubt.
• The third effort, which had not yet come to fruition by the outbreak of the Lebanon war in the summer of 2006, aims at a wide-scale attack by commando forces on communities and IDF positions in Israeli territory all along the front.

In this way, Hezbollah has successfully thwarted Dayan’s operational concept. With its continuous defensive deployment along the mountain roads and in the villages, Hezbollah reduced the momentum of the IDF offensive. At the same time, by using a decentralized command and control system that affords functional independence to the subsectors during combat, the organization came up with a solution to the problem of isolation and disruption of its main command posts.

Taken together, these three efforts challenge the IDF’s traditional capabilities to the point of strategic confusion about the purpose of its activity and the casting of doubt on the relevance of the ground offensive. That doubt is reflected, among other things, in the realization that even if an IDF ground offensive reaches Beirut, victory will not be ensured because Hezbollah’s contingents in the subsectors through which the maneuvering forces will pass will probably keep fighting even under siege conditions.

Removing the threat in its entirety would require a large order of battle and considerable time. Meanwhile, Hezbollah’s precision rocket/missile fire would likely continue, paralyzing the Israeli home front, including fire from positions in northern Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq. The terms for opening ceasefire talks may well humiliate Israel and cast it in the role of the defeated side.

The IDF General Staff does not deny the challenge, and Chief of Staff Lieut. Gen. Aviv Kochavi is working hard to conceptualize the problem and present it in its full implications. Kochavi is demanding an innovative breakthrough in the IDF’s operational approach.

Out of perplexity, creativity

The state of being in a quandary has always been an engine of creativity. Were it not for a water shortage, Israeli agriculture would not have given birth to the drip-irrigation method. In facing Hezbollah, whose war-fighting approach centers on its adversary’s difficulty in advancing through hilly and populated areas, the IDF needs to come up with an innovative breakthrough.

As the General Staff has realized, that entails making the most of Israel’s special technological advantage alongside a sophisticated integration of its aerial, maritime, and ground forces.

During the first decades of statehood, special creativity in combat methods was not required of IDF commanders. In those years, the Arab armies operated according to a British or Soviet doctrine in a format that had been devised after WWII. In fighting armies that functioned within this framework, basic classical conventions applied. Indeed, the fighting in the 1967 Six-Day War looked essentially like a further round of the battles of WWII.

The combat methods Hezbollah has adopted since then — with considerable success — call for an innovative adjustment by the IDF. Given the unprecedented nature of the threat the organization now poses, IDF commanders cannot look to other armies for a tried-and-true solution. If the IDF keeps operating according to the conventions of the last century it could find itself defeated.

Moshe Dayan saw the Israeli commander as responsible for the momentum of the IDF’s maneuvers. “I can point on the map to the Suez Canal,” he said, “and tell the commander: this is your objective, this is the route you will take, do not contact me for help during the operation, what we can allocate to you I have already received and there is no more… you have to reach Suez in 48 hours.”

That is exactly what has changed. Given the enemy’s new ability to disrupt the advance of IDF forces, what the division headquarters and territorial command require today are new capabilities to safeguard and support advancing forces with the close assistance of intelligence and of fire. Advanced technology means a groundbreaking answer to these demands can be provided. That is why innovation is an operational necessity for the IDF and the imperative of the moment.

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Report to Knesset shows exemptions to mandatory service on the rise, especially due to mental health exemptions.

By Paul Shindman, World Israel News

A report presented to the Knesset shows that one-third of Israeli youth are avoiding compulsory military service, Israel Hayom reported Thursday.

Data presented in the report showed the number of prospective recruits getting exemptions is on the rise, with most receiving a deferral on mental health grounds.

According to the report, one out of every eight potential recruits this year received an exemption from compulsory military service, above and beyond the 16% the draftable population that get exemptions because they are ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students. Of those who do put on a uniform, 11% do not complete their service and are discharged early, the report said.

Knesset member Ofer Shelah of the opposition Yesh Atid party who chairs the Knesset State Control Committee said the numbers are “nothing less than horrifying.”

“The army of the people is collapsing before our eyes,” said Shelah, an IDF veteran who served as a company commander in the Paratroopers Brigade and lost an eye in combat in the 1983 Lebanon War.

“The numbers of exemptions on mental health grounds is approaching the percentage of Haredim who don’t enlist because they are in yeshiva, and one-third of potential male recruits simply will not be serving in the military. Where is the government? Not doing a thing,” Shelah said.

The head of IDF personnel and planning, Brig. Gen. Amir Vadamni, testified before the committee that the increasing number of Haredi exemptions reflected the growing size of the ultra-Orthodox community in the general population, but said he was most worried by the number of exemptions issued for mental health problems.

Vadamni said there is a new industry of generating exemptions that has led to nine percent of new recruits getting mental health exemptions.

“Pay 1,500 shekels [$460] and you are released. There is growing social legitimacy to not serve, especially not in combat roles,” Vadamni said.

“The generation of recruits has changed its profile and there is high awareness of psychological evaluation that was not common in the past, but there is [also] social legitimacy for not serving in the IDF,” Vadamni told the committee. “The ethos of service is being eroded.”

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