The IDF / Attacking the army on every front

The prime minister and defense minister, whose coalition was evidently saved last night, will do well to send bouquets this morning to the offices of two Israel Defense Forces officers, one in the career army and the other in the reserves. Colonel Orna David is the chief military defender; Major (Res.) Yossi Benkel is among the defender's office top brass (and is also Major General Udi Adam's lawyer). These two people, completely unknown to the general public, had an immense influence on the wording of the Winograd Commission's final report. It was they who hobnailed the commission, by means of a petition to the High Court of Justice, to its commitment to refrain from reaching personal conclusions or recommendations against the war's leaders.

David and Benkel sought to protect the senior officers, wherein they also saved the politicians. The commission kept its word. It withholds all personal criticism. As an indirect result of this, most of the final report's weight, perhaps more than is justified, is placed on the army's failed functioning during the war. The political echelon benefits from the doubt. The war, which the commission, pace Ehud Olmert's efforts, refuses to designate a success, was a fatal combination between a failed decision-making system at the top and catastrophic functioning of IDF ground units. If the interim report focused on slinging personal criticism at the leading triumvirate (Olmert, wartime defense minister Amir Peretz and then-IDF chief of staff Dan Halutz), this time the critique remains at the "systemic" level.

And herein lies a yawning difference: the IDF, for which the report reserves even harsher language than the General Staff's pessimistic assessments earlier this week, took a beating from Winograd and is expected to take the criticism seriously.

The politicians, it may safely be presumed, will rush to file the report in the nearest drawer. This is no false slander. That is precisely what happened to the interim report's "systemic" recommendations regarding the political echelon. Ask Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, who headed the committee Olmert speedily appointed to implement the interim report. Shahak recommended; nothing happened.

Before the press conference, there was concern in Olmert's office that Winograd would talk a hard line after taking a delicate one in writing. In practice the opposite occurred. The judge found major failings, but such as these appeared in the interim report as well. His verbal phrasing was pretty milquetoast and hardly mentioned the prime minister.

The report attacks the army on almost every front. Only the air force comes out with just a scratch, even a pat on the back. The General Staff, Northern Command, Navy, three of four division commanders who fought (the most defamed of all, Gal Hirsh, winds up getting some praise) - come under heavy fire. It is hard to understand, based on the commission's words, why the previous navy chief was not removed and why two of the division commanders got senior posts. But the army, in most cases, is presented almost as a single entity. Who, for example, is responsible for the dithering of the ground offensive for four weeks, the General Staff or Northern Command? For the IDF this is a critical question. The commission does not tarry to determine, aside from an unsubtle hint that Halutz could have ousted Major General Adam in mid-campaign.

Large chunks of the report look like an inventory of IDF sins, which does not differ much from reporters' findings regarding the war. Winograd makes one important observation about the future, in warning against the IDF's tendency to make radical changes that largely spell a return to old principles, without adapting them to the anticipated threats. But the commission does not clarify how this warning accords with its (justified) criticism of the army's breakdown in values.