In this supposedly democratic country the situation was routinely justified by referring to ha-medina be-matsor (the idea that the state was permanently under siege and could not afford to stoop to the kind of parliamentary controls that are common elsewhere). Israel’s Declaration of Independence, which contains ringing phrases about the equality of all citizens regardless of gender and religion, does not say a word about the freedom of information. Enforcing the public’s duty not to know is the job of the IDF officer in charge of military censorship. This institution was originally established by the British mandatory authorities under the Defense (Emergency) Regulations of 1945 with the intent of combating the unfolding terrorism of those years; once the state was founded Ben Gurion found them so to his taste that he left them unaltered and never got around to replacing them with a more democratic system. The censor exercises draconian power over content in the media, licenses newspapers, and fines and suspends newspapers if, in his view, they have violated secrecy. He does not have to explain the reasons for his decision; indeed one paragraph in the law obliges newspapers to publish free ads by the military censor denying or correcting information that the papers themselves published.22
From time to time the law savagely bares its fangs. In 1986 a technician named Mordechai Vanunu leaked nuclear secrets to a British newspaper. He was kidnapped by Mossad agents, brought home, put on trial behind closed doors, and sentenced to sixteen years’ solitary confinement (none of which prevented him from being put on the shortlist of candidates for the 1996 Nobel Prize). His case represents the best-known but by no means sole instance of this kind. Yet the veil of secrecy would never have stayed in place had not most of Israel’s media cooperated. From the early fifties on, Vaadat Ha-orchim, a forum of leaders in the print and broadcast media, would regularly meet to receive private briefings from top officials, from the prime minister down. In return they undertook not to inform their audiences, a unique arrangement that reflected the public consensus concerning the need for censorship and the goals it strives to achieve.23 Naturally the arrangement did not apply to foreign journalists who, in practice if not in theory, were nearly free to write and broadcast what they pleased; in the worst scenario they would lose their accreditation. Thus one of the censor’s main functions is to keep Israelis ignorant of what everybody else already knows. This practice applied to the numerous armed reconnaissances of the Sinai and West Bank during the fifties; the decision of the 1965 Arab summit at Rabat to consider the construction of a nuclear reactor at Dimona as a casus belli; the talks held with King Hussein of Jordan during the years after 1967;24 and, to this day, numerous incidents that take place in Lebanon and elsewhere.
Another factor that enabled the IDF to play a major (some would say excessive) role in national decisionmaking is its unified structure.25 In countries such as the United States, Britain, and Germany the ground forces and navy grew separately. Often each one had a centuries-old tradition behind it—thus not only creating problems coordination but enabling political masters to divide and rule. Not so in Israel, where the air force and navy originally formed an integral part of PALMACH and, through it, Hagana. While speaking for all three services, the IDF’s General Staff was also in charge of ground forces, which incidentally has meant that to date, ground officers only have held the position of chief of staff. The commanders of the air force and navy are responsible for looking after their services in peacetime and have considerable latitude in planning, force development, manpower organization, logistics, and intelligence. In wartime they command in accordance with the directives of the COS. They also participate in the meetings of the Plenary General Staff, where rank and status are no different from that of the front and division commanders. However, it has never been made clear whether they do so primarily as General Staff members or as representatives of their respective services.
As this structure indicates, and indeed as was the case during the War of Independence, the bulk of the IDF was formed by the ground forces, which were also regarded as the decisive arm—zroa ha-hachraa in Hebrew. They were divided into three regional commands—north, central, and south. In peacetime the commanding officers were responsible for their respective regions. In wartime they turned into operational commanders, taking charge of forces assigned them by the General Staff. As during 1948-1949 the largest permanent formation was the self-contained brigade, the idea being that divisions—let alone corps—were too cumbersome for a comparatively small army. At first there may have been some confusion as to exactly how these forces were to be used. As doctrine crystallized, however, from at least 1954 on they were systematically developed with an eye toward waging offensive or blitzkrieg-style warfare even though the means for doing so were at first primitive and inadequate.26
Given Israel’s small size—300 miles long, nowhere more than 80 miles wide—inevitably the air force was centralized, subject to a single command, and given control over “everything that flies,” including helicopters. Though much smaller than the ground forces, in terms of budget and owing to the high quality of its personnel the air force claimed priority, hence the considerable rivalry between the “greens” and the “blues” among the ground forces that has characterized the IDF during much of its history. Initially the air force was compelled to use whatever machines Hagana’s foreign agents could lay hands on. This included an incredible assortment of light aircraft (British Austers, American Piper Cubs and Harvards); fighters (German Messerschmidts, British Spitfires and Mosquitoes, American Mustangs), and transports (American-built Constellations, Dakotas, and Stratocruisers). Thanks especially to the U.S. arms embargo (enforced against Israel in 1948 due to political factors), many were purchased not at source but from scrap yards where they had been left at the end of World War II. For example, no fewer than 250 twin-engine Mosquitoes were cannibalized to put together an operational force of some twenty aircraft. In what was to become a grand old IDF tradition, others were modified to carry out missions for which they were never intended; the B-17s ended their days as naval patrol aircraft, a suitable role by virtue of their long ranges.
The paramount mission of the air force has always been to maintain air superiority within Israeli airspace; the importance of this task was made clear by the Egyptian bombing campaign of May 1948, and until the Gulf War of 1991, Israel has been almost completely successful in it. With this goal achieved, it was designed, as the German Luftwaffe had been,27 to dominate the battlefield. Early doctrinal statements still spoke of “strategic bombing,” but that mission was later dropped, and the IAF became an almost purely operational force meant to strike the enemy’s armed forces and lines of communication.28 Short distances and the nature of the terrain, much of which consists of desert and does not offer cover, favored these missions. After the early bombers were retired the result was a force that centered almost entirely on its squadrons of fighter-bombers plus maritime patrol, transport, and light aircraft for liaison, rescue, and other missions.
Once the War of Independence ended, foreign-born pilots who had flown for Israel went home, leaving the IAF desperately short of personnel. Aharon Remez, who had been a warrant officer in the Royal Air Force and gained considerable combat experience, was selected as its first commander. Evidently the General Staff felt it had no other qualified airmen,29 and hence his first replacement was a navy man (Shlomo Shamir, 1950), the second a ground man (Chayim Laskov, 1951). Nevertheless, it did not degenerate into a handmaiden of the ground forces.30 Instead it argued for a considerable degree of autonomy to conduct its own campaigns and allocated only a limited number of sorties to the ground commanders, who used them as they saw fit by way of their air liaison officers. On the whole, and as long as the opponent consisted of regular forces, these arrangements have worked admirably and enabled the IAF to play a major, even critical role in each of Israel’s major wars. (It should not be forgotten, however, that in 1973 on the southern front, air-to-ground coordination was initially almost absent and that IAF attacks on I
sraeli units—meaning friendly fire—took place in both the 1956 and 1982 campaigns.)
Though its organizational status was similar to that of the air force, the navy has never approached the latter’s size and importance; indeed air force officers on occasion argued that their aircraft could reach and fight enemy ships long before the navy could and that the navy should be abolished. That advice was not heeded, but the navy clearly was the smallest and least important of the three services. During the early fifties its main vessels were two or three World War II corvettes to which were added a number of equally antiquated torpedo boats and landing craft acquired secondhand. These small vessels scarcely gave Israel any considerable operational reach—neither then nor later could there be any question of a “blue water” navy. Worse, because the Suez Canal was closed to Israeli shipping the available forces had to be divided between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea (only light craft, transported overland, could be shifted from one theater to the next). Reflecting the Mediterranean’s greater importance, the main base was always at Haifa, to which the new port of Ashdod was added during the early sixties.
Since Israel is absolutely dependent on foreign trade, it is vulnerable to naval blockades of both the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. In practice, though, most of the wars that it has fought were so short and the condition of the Arab navies so deplorable that a serious attempt to cut its Mediterranean trade routes has never been made. Not so in the Red Sea, which was closed to Israeli shipping from 1949 to 1956 and again in 1967; however, in both cases geography dictated that the Straits of Tyran should be opened not by the navy but by the land forces following their campaigns in the Sinai. Accordingly, in peacetime the role of the Israeli navy has been limited to patrolling the coast, gathering intelligence of various kinds, shelling the coast (terrorist bases), and the like. In wartime it has fought a few engagements, first destroyer against destroyer and then—for the last time in 1973—missile boat against missile boat. On various occasions it has also supported the IDF by means of landing operations, albeit always on a small scale and never with more than mediocre success. Finally, on several occasions it sent submarines and frogmen to attack enemy ports, particularly in Egypt.
With a sensible doctrine and a unified organization thus in place, it was time to decide on the kind of armed forces that the state would maintain. On the one hand the new state found itself in extreme financial difficulty, made worse by the need to cater to a very large number of immigrants, who for the most part were penniless. On the other hand was the extreme demographic asymmetry between Israel and its Arab neighbors. Between them the two factors precluded any thought of a large, professional standing army. Not only was it too expensive; as Yadin pointed out there was no alternative to making full use of all available manpower. A Swiss-like militia system (in which practically all forces consist of citizens in arms) was apparently considered31 but rejected because it would provide neither adequate training for large-scale warfare nor forces to address current security problems (which the Swiss, of course, did not have).32 The solution ultimately adopted and incorporated into the Chok Sherut Bitachon (National Service Law) of 1949 was well suited to Israel’s needs.33 Contrary to what has sometimes been claimed it was also rather unoriginal, representing but a local variant of the model most advanced countries adopted after the Prussian victories of 1866-1871 and that, having served countries such as France and Germany and Italy during most of the years since, now reached the Middle East.
According to this model, the armed forces of the state comprise three parts, a triangle if you will. The first, core force is formed by a relatively small number of professionals, officers, and noncommissioned officers (NCOs) who plan, organize, administrate, train, and maintain the force during peacetime. Their units consist of conscripts, who are the second element of the triangle. Yeshive students aside, young men (including members of the Circessian and Druze minorities but excluding Arabs) are inducted at eighteen. They are put through a battery of physical and mental tests34 and made to serve two years; when the service period was later increased to two and a half years it was the longest of any country. For generations of Israelis, the day their child actually joins the army has become something of a transition point in life, one akin to but much more serious than American parents sending children off to college.
After basic training conscripts are sent to their units. They participate in advanced training courses and maneuvers and undertake such “current” security tasks as guard duty, border patrolling, combating infiltrators, and the like; together with the professionals they constitute the peacetime army. At the end of 1949 that army numbered almost 40,000 men and women;35 perhaps two-thirds were conscripts. One out of every twenty-five Israelis thus served in the army, a remarkably high proportion. For example, before World War II, Germany, the most militarized country in Europe, maintained only one citizen out of every one hundred in uniform; perhaps the only country that could stand comparison with Israel in this respect was Prussia under Frederick the Great.
When their period of service is over the conscripts are discharged into the reserves. Representing the third element of the triangle, the reserves constitute neither a separate organization (such as the British Territorials or the U.S. National Guard) nor a general pool of manpower; instead they are organized in companies, battalions, brigades, and, beginning in 1967, entire divisions. Regularly called up for refresher training, the younger classes (up to age thirty-nine) are considered first-line units, whereas the remainder are assigned to civil defense, garrison duty, and the like. Apart from a small core of professionals who carry out administrative functions and look after equipment in peacetime, officers also are reservists (through 1973 two out of seven division commanders). These skeleton units can and will be called up in an emergency. In that case they are taken to the YAMACHim (emergency depots), processed into the army, issued uniforms and arms, and dispatched to the front as soon as the situation requires and transportation permits.
As in other armed forces that adopted this model, the importance of the three components within each service varies. Professionals on long-term contracts are proportionally most numerous in the air force. Being Israel’s first line of defense it must be in a state of permanent, near-instant readiness; apart from this it also owns and operates more than its share of high technology, which requires a long time to study and master. Thus, in the air force, the simpler tasks are left to conscripts. Much the same applies to the navy. And though the navy and air force have reservists, including pilots called up in emergencies, the ground forces have the largest number of reservists, which indeed account for about three-quarters of wartime strength.
In theory this heavy dependence on reservists constitutes a weakness. In spite of regular refresher training (as many as thirty-five days per year and more for officers), mentally and especially physically the men can hardly be as well prepared as the conscripts. Moreover, since they serve only temporarily and maintain lives outside the military, exercising strict discipline can be a problem; indeed reserve units often assume a decidedly informal, unmilitary appearance. Yet for much of the IDF’s history things have tended to work the other way around. The reserve units experience little personnel turbulence, so the men who constitute them remain together for many years on end. Meeting regularly for maintenance, training, and operational service, they form extremely cohesive units—complete with all the shared worldview, bonhomie, and mutual aid that implies.36 For example, during the June 1967 war some of the personnel forming the armored ugda (division) in the center of Israel’s Egyptian front had served together for five or six years.37
In some of this the IDF, building itself almost from scratch, wittingly or unwittingly took other armed forces as its model. For example, in Germany before 1914 and again before 1939 the younger classes of reservists were also considered first-line troops (though they did not receive nearly as much refresher training); as such, they were committed to battle very soon after mobilization and depl
oyment. As in other countries, the system could operate only on the basis of a modern, integrated, countrywide network of transportation and telecommunications, which then as now constitutes one of Israel’s most important advantages over its larger and more populous, but economically less developed and technologically less sophisticated, Arab neighbors.38 The system did, however, include some elements that were almost entirely original. Perhaps foremost is the officer selection and training system.
The regular armed forces of most other countries—militia perpetua, as the seventeenth-century saying went—originated during times of absolute rule. Since they were intended for internal and external use—police forces in the modern sense developed after 1780 or so—the first concern of the rulers was to select officers in a way that ensured their loyalty. Even in the United States, never subject to absolute rule, this implied selecting officers mainly from the upper classes for specialized military academies; there, far from civilians and lesser ranks, officer candidates could be thoroughly imbued with the military spirit.39 Not so Hagana and especially PALMACH. Initially they took any person with military experience they could find. Later they selected junior commanders from among the rank and file. They trained these commanders as best they could, leaving practical experience to fill in the rest.
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