Last update - 00:00 13/07/2007
What a difference a year makes - or not
By Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff
1. The army
On the first anniversary of the failed war in Lebanon, the chiefs of staff kept their silence. Dan Halutz, who led the Israel Defense Forces in the war and bears the primary responsibility for its outcome, continues to reject politely any requests for an interview. He is apparently waiting for the final report of the Winograd Committee, which is investigating the war, or maybe he is saving his full account for a book he intends to write.
However, Halutz's predecessor, Moshe Ya'alon, was heard loud and clear last week in a fierce personal attack on Halutz. As is his wont, Ya'alon chose a somewhat esoteric platform (a religious school in a settlement) to speak his piece, and failed to mention his connection to the IDF's situation when the war erupted. Gabi Ashkenazi, the present chief of staff, is apparently the quietest commander the army has ever had. Five full months have passed since he took over, and he has yet to utter a single word to the media: There has been no holiday interview, no talk program, only one-sentence responses to chance microphones and many speeches at memorial events and army ceremonies.
Sent into the breach this week was the deputy chief of staff, Major General Moshe Kaplinsky, who did not manage to save the campaign when he was appointed "the chief of staff's representative in the Northern Command" during the last week of the war. Kaplinsky, as usual, did excellent media work. In a briefing to journalists, he listed at length the many positive actions taken by the IDF in order to repair the flaws that were revealed in the war; he sent an embrace to the bereaved families, the wounded and the abducted; and he even admitted errors ("We made mistakes. Me, too"). But most important was the commitment. "I promise you that today's IDF is a different army," the deputy chief of staff stated. This is the main information line being promoted by the army, both to the Israeli public and to the enemy, in recent months: The lessons have been learned. We are working like crazy to correct things. We do not make light of the threats against us. Next time we will not be caught unprepared.
Indeed, the army is investing a tremendous effort in putting its house in order. Concrete activity has replaced the feverish spate of investigations that were undertaken in the waning period of Halutz's term: training, procurement, construction of fortifications and upgrading of the emergency depots. But alongside the images of the infantrymen and the tanks crisscrossing the Golan Heights (the photos and video images from there are seen too frequently, if the idea is truly to prevent a war with Syria), questions arise which are not yet receiving an adequate reply from the IDF. Isn't the army liable to slide into a situation similar to the one that marked the years after the 1973 Yom Kippur War - involving an excessive waste of resources due to the fear
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