The IDF’s High-Tech Investments Paid Off, but They Came at a High Cost

I only reached the rank of lance corporal in the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire light infantry and my British army combat experience was limited to the trivial North Borneo campaign. In Israel I only had a local-defense Mauser 98 rifle in the finger of Galilee in 1967, was a mere passenger in a captured Soviet BTR armored personal carrier that crossed the Suez Canal in 1973, and in 1982 was a mere tourist with Generals Avigdor Ben-Gal and Yossi Ben-Hanan and Major Meir Dagan (the future head of the Mossad) in the 1982 jaunt to Byblos/Jbeil 40 kilometers north of Beirut and beyond to the Syrian line (Ben-Hanan was furious when I called it a raid). Thus I lack the credentials to contest Ran Baratz’s all-out condemnation of the past several IDF chiefs of staff. I want only to note that instead of the usual accusation that these generals have tried to refight the last war, Baratz condemns them for wanting to fight a future post-modern war.

Nor do I have any documents to disprove his contentions, having gathered none in my three visits to Israel since October 7, during which I only chit-chatted with staff officers and saw only one very minor combat action involving just three M109 self-propelled howitzers supporting infantry combat—as well as a single F-16 strike, and that too only coincidentally.

But of course I do know that the IDF entered the war with fewer reserve brigades than in the past, and too few for concurrent all-out action in both Gaza and Lebanon, because the generals he mentions failed to resist the force reductions by threatening to resign in public protest, let alone actually resigning. But I do challenge the accusation that they failed to resign because they were hypnotized by postmodern fantasies as Ran Baratz would have it. There was another motive: they wanted to acquire some other capabilities for the IDF.