UPDATES
6:00 am Israel time, Monday, February 16 2015
28 Days Until The Election
***Following the activation of a security alarm, a major search for Hezbollah terrorists infiltrating from Lebanon has been taking place during the night and early this morning between Kfar Yuval and Metulla.
***More than 1000 Hezbollah “soldiers” are now fighting on the southern Golan Heights in Syria as Iran has moved to completely take over the area between Quneitra and Dara’a. Yesterday, there were reports that Iranian Revolutionary Guards executed 10 Syrian soldiers for deserting their posts in the ongoing battle with “rebel” groups.
Remember that the Iranians and Hezbollah are supposedly allied with Assad’s Syrian forces, but it looks increasingly like they are carving out territory for themselves.
***The Egyptian government has responded to the beheadings of the 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians by IS in Libya two days ago by closing its borders with Libya and apparently by carrying out airstrikes against IS in Libya.
***In election news, Channel 2 news is reporting that the Herzog/Livni party is corruptly spending millions of shekels on family members and friends of those running on the election list by hiring them on grossly inflated salaries. Apparently, the Party is already 7 million shekels over what was supposed to be their total campaign budget of 25 million shekels–and the campaign has another month to go.
And this is the group that claims it is supposedly going to bring financial stability to Israel and help the downtrodden?
***Rain continues falling in Israel. If you can believe this, Haifa (561 ml) is already at 104% of the annual average, Tel Aviv (525 ml) 90% of average, Jerusalem (458 ml) 85% of average, and Beersheva (148 ml) 76% of average. A new winter storm is predicted to hit the country on Wednesday with snow possible in Jerusalem on Thursday. It is raining right now here in Ashdod.
TODAY’S BLOG:
- Maj. Gen Gadi Eizenkot takes command of the IDF today. Can he clean up Benny Gantz’s mess and restore offensive aggressiveness to IDF ground forces? Or will he be a clone of Gantz?
Today, the tenure of IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz will come to an end, and the term of Gadi Eizenkot will begin.
As all regular readers of israelstreet know, your humble servant will not be sorry to see Gantz leave. From the first moment that he took over the Chief of Staff position, your humble servant has described Gantz as a “passive do-nothing” military leader.
And indeed that is precisely what Gantz’s legacy will be.
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At no time was this passivity more in evidence than in the Hamas war last summer. Instead of hitting hard and quickly, Gantz’s IDF hit hard and slowly, dragging out what should have been a week-long war into a 51 day saga.
But more than this, IDF soldiers were killed while being hung out to dry in staging areas and by being sent into hot zones in unarmored vehicles. The IDF seemed particularly incapable of dealing with the Hamas tunnel network–which remains largely in place waiting for the next war.
By the end of the war, we had the disgusting spectacle of Gantz being afraid to go to the front for fear of missiles, and at the same time making his infamous “anemones” speech in which he encouraged residents of the South to return home–only to have them hit by more missiles and mortars when they did.
The State Auditor’s report released a few months ago about the current state of the IDF is damning. Israel’s vaunted miluim (reservists) are in an advanced state of deterioration because of lack of training and resources. Israel’s vaunted technological edge has become virtually nonexistent because of the failure of the IDF to purchase Armored Personnel Carriers with heavy armor and tanks equipped with the Trophy protection system.
In essence, the IDF under Gantz has lapsed into an underprepared and underarmed military force.
What is more, reflecting Gantz’s passivity, the IDF has lost all pretense of deterrence through offensive attack. Gantz created an IDF that prefers to be reactive instead of proactive. As one of Gantz’s critics said the other day, “the ground forces have atrophied and lost their offensive ethos.”
Gantz has achieved this atrophy by his promotions of people who share his reactive philosophy. Dangerously, we now have an officer corps infected with the same virus as Gantz.
There is some hope that Eizenkot will begin to turn things around in the IDF. Let us sincerely hope so.
A student from Malawi, who had worked with an Israeli health volunteer in his country battling AIDS, came up to us as we walked down the street in the UC-Davis Picnic Day Parade and wanted to carry the Israeli flag.