We need heroes

Of the traditional Jewish holidays, the Zionist Movement preferred those revolving around heroism and nature. It could identify with them, give them national and historic interpretations instead of religious ones and call them, like Hanukkah for instance, the Holiday of Heroism (rather than purifying the Temple or the miracle of the pot of oil).

A cultural and ideological system ("No miracle happened here") encouraged the writing of treatises and songs, which provided the content for public rituals centering on the ethos of the new, farming, fighting Jew. "For in every generation a hero will arise," sings every child in Israel.

Our generation, which is still forced to live by the sword, also needs heroes to write songs and legends about. But songs of heroism, and there were heroes in the last war, are no longer being written - perhaps due in part to the conduct of many of the senior commanders. Even a hero of conscience did not rise among them to say: We are not a generation of heroes - the division commanders, who could not, with more than a dozen brigades, overcome an enemy with hundreds of soldiers; Air Force officers who did not train the force to strike at short-term rocket launchers; Northern Command officers and the General Staff, who ordered erroneous, sometimes absurd, moves.

The results are evident everywhere: in the fatalities, in the civilian population that was abandoned to Katyusha rockets and lost confidence in the commanders, the Israel Defense Forces and other state institutions. But the effect of the IDF's failings against the enemy is especially grave - the enemy has lost its fear of Israel, and its motivation for war has increased. This is the war that the officers are warning of and predicting for the summer. The "savior of the nation" will not be rising from our generation of commanders.

Leave the IDF alone, say voices among the public. The criticism is undermining the commanders' self-confidence and damaging national security. The enemy detects the weaknesses and intends to take advantage of them. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke of the melancholy that has gripped Israel and the imminent demise of the Zionist entity. The IDF commanders have accumulated the experience; let them now rehabilitate the army and prepare it for war. They are not evading criticism. Never, except perhaps after the Yom Kippur War, did the IDF hold such a comprehensive inquiry. Finally, the crushing argument: "We have no other army."

Indeed, if those who lost in battle and not only deny it, but also refuse to draw conclusions continue to command the army - we don't and won't have another army, and the most professional and sincere inquiries will do no good. Leadership in battle cannot be learned from inquiries or in brigade commanders' courses. You cannot acquire courage in the division commanders' course. Those who issued contradictory and confused orders will not behave differently, even if they are told, and they have been told, this is what the inquiries have found.

But we do have another army. The one that reports en masse, including those who were exempted, to the reserve units. The one whose battalion and company commanders contribute dozens, some of them hundreds, of reserve duty days a year. Its recruits compete for a place in combat units and fight the battles of routine security operations, which enable our life's routine.

This army has a shortage - not a complete lack - of heroes. It needs senior commanders who set a personal example and can stop the negative processes, such as denying the war's real consequences - a denial that trickles down from the top command and corrupts the army.

To give the army a shot of encouragement most of the General Staff must resign. Had they done so immediately after the fighting, they would have preserved their honor as human beings. Today even that is gone.

The military and political leadership did not realize that we were at war in Lebanon, not in a payback operation. Thus, they brought the next overall war, perhaps a war of survival, years closer. In this war, like in the era of the Maccabean forces, we will need both among the minor soldiers and senior commanders real heroes, the torch carriers - not those who deny reality and cling to power.