Half the country screams at draft dodgers. The other half dodges the draft. Naturally, Arabs are not fond of serving in the Israeli army; it’s not even about it being a Jewish army, but the primitive people's dislike for any kind of organization. Palestinian Arabs revolted against Ibrahim Pasha in early nineteenth century over the conscription. Conscripting them, however, is the best way to crush their opposition to Israeli regime; as a bonus for Jews, Israeli Arabs should be forced to fight their Palestinian brethren. Leftists imagine Israeli Arabs loyal to the state & fine, let us see their loyalty. As a minimum, let Arabs dig trenches along Israel's border with Egypt. Or keep march them from Galilee to Eilat and back. Whatever.

Haredi Jews, derogatively called ultra-Orthodox, are a similar matter. They exploit the original agreement with Ben Gurion which is now irrelevant. Ben Gurion lifted draft requirement for just 400 students of yeshivas; now all haredim are students. Their religious justification, that studying the Torah takes priority over other societal obligations is nonsense: most are not full-time students and anyway can disrupt their studies for two or three years for the army service. Besides, Jewish society just doesn't need so many rabbis. Hillel and Maimonides somehow managed to work, and certainly modern haredim can follow in their steps. The dodging is also immoral, as haredim enjoy the armed protection of the very Israelis they consider sub-Jews. And haredim do need the protection: the first modern pogroms in Palestine started in nineteenth century, well before the advent of Zionism. If they don't need the protection - go settle in Hebron or Schem under Abbas' jurisdiction.

But draft dodging raises a deeper problem. Theoretically, I won't blame the parents who cut their child's finger to prevent him from joining the IDF. What's the point of army service today? For the past twenty-five years, Israel uses her soldiers as small coins to pay the world media. Israeli soldiers are sent into the unnecessarily dangerous urban battles instead of leveling the enemy towns from the air; in WWII, urban battle in Krakow was the lone exception. Israeli soldiers fight strategically useless battles, such as in the Second Lebanon war' last days. Israeli soldiers engage strictly for the PR effect, as in the targeted assassinations and arrests in the enemy territory. Israeli soldiers conduct senseless missions, as the perpetual incursions into Gaza. Israeli soldiers are used against their own people, evicting teenagers from ramshackle "illegal outpost" houses. Israeli soldiers are made the cannon fodder, brainless pawns, and traitors. I can understand the parents who hate sending their children to such an army; of course, most draft dodgers won't go to any Israeli army.

Wasting, losing Jewish lives is the depth of immorality. Our morality doesn't extend to saving Amalek's life. A Jew who died in vain is the national shame and tragedy. But few Jewish soldiers died after the 1973 for the higher end of national wellbeing; most died for no good reason. Arguably, the 1973 war was for no good reason, too, but because Golda Meir's government failed to preempt or employ nuclear weapons.

I'm a liberal. Not a libertarian or socialist, but the liberal with deep respect for Jewish life as long as that life vaguely conforms to Jewish values. I would never accept Jews dying for political ends. For values, yes. For national survival and even welfare, yes. But not for the state's needs. I would even accept Jews living as an autonomous community under Muslim rule in Judea, if that saves Jewish lives. Israel that relinquishes to Arabs Jerusalem and the Temple Mount, Judea and Samaria, Hebron and Schem, and accepts 40% non-Jewish population, does not need statehood. Such Israel can as well accept dhimmi autonomy, relinquish sovereignty, and let the Jews live everywhere, even in the currently dreaded occupied territories of Judea and Samaria. The socialist atheist State of Israel is worse for Jews than a decent autonomy. We could pull that out a century ago, and Muslims would have welcomed us. Unfortunately, this way is closed for the foreseeable future. More soldiers are killed in retreat than in attack, and Muslims would slaughter the Jews if we abandon our military posture now. Too much hatred has accumulated to allow our Arab enemies the upper hand.

Should we possibly save Jewish lives by abandoning Israel and moving into the Diaspora? That would save lives, but extinguish Jewish lives through assimilation. Dying Jewish is a preferable option to peacefully marrying a Gentile.

In the framework of Jewish values, there is no alternative to the very strong army. In any other framework, I won't care about Jews.

Toward the end of WWII, Russian Army raped just about every woman in Germany. I’ve never had a problem with that. The wholesale rape was not a military measure by any standard; it didn’t serve to crush the German will to fight which was already at the low point by then. The rape was not an expression of Russian barbarity: female populations of Soviet-occupied Eastern Europe were largely spared. The rape was an act of vengeance, and I wholeheartedly approve of vengeance.

Societies punish criminals vengefully. In terms of prevention, it would suffice to ban, say, corruptioners from their jobs, but societies sentence them to prison. Relatives of the victims of violence long for revenge rather than mere prevention. Hebrews were commanded to exterminate Amalekites for the offenses of their ancestors. Vengeance is not nice, but it restores righteousness.

Defenders of the US nuclear attack on Japan bring up the necessity of crushing Japan’s will to fight to the last man. Nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki didn’t achieve that end. After the first town was annihilated in nuclear attack, Japan did not react at all. The losses were actually much smaller than in Tokyo’s fire-bombing, and consisted largely of civilians – not a matter of the imperial army’s concern. Still, the US dropped the second nuclear bomb. The role of nukes in the capitulation is still a matter of historical debate in Japan, but most historians agree that exhaustion and the American promise of retaining the monarchy were the critical factors behind capitulation. Nuclear attacks on Japanese cities were a viable, but unnecessary military action. They were a legitimate act of revenge. Such was also the fire-bombing of Dresden – the answer to German attacks on Coventry.

Without vengeance, wars would become a limited liability affair. Aggressor can torture the victim’s civilian population, but the victim – once it gains the upper hand – ostensibly shouldn’t reciprocate. Such an arrangement, if ever implemented, would provoke the aggressors’ brutality: in the best case, they quash the resistance, while in the worst case, their civilians still won’t be harmed.

Fortunately, vengeance prevails in wars.

The Kassam rocket fire on Sderot offers a twofold lesson about Gush Katif. If Sderot is indefensible against the rocket fire, Gush Katif was even more so. PIJ launches missiles on Sderot over the heads of IDF troops who guard Israeli border with Gaza. PIJ and other guerrillas could shell Gush Katif, located in the midst of Arabs, much easier. Sharon correctly reasoned that Israel couldn’t guard Gazans forever and decided to evacuate Gush Katif. The problem of defending Gush Katif was solved, but the conflict followed the evacuating Jews and zeroed in on Sderot.

Gush Katif was evacuated because it was encircled. But in wars, breaking out of encirclement is a tactical maneuver followed by strategic offense. More soldiers are killed during retreat than in sensible offense. Hamas continued to pound retreating Israelis with rockets.

Gush Katif was indeed indefensible, but so is Sderot. Tel Aviv is indefensible against mid-range Syrian missiles, and falls within the range of Kassam rockets if Palestinian state is created in the Road Map borders. Passive defense never worked. The Romans stormed a walled Jerusalem, and Arabs attack Israel, walled by the separation barrier. Western world imagines borders inviolable, but Palestinian guerrillas have no respect for Israeli borders and shell the Jewish nation retreating from Gush Katif.

Ashkelon, Sderot, and Gush Katif can be defended. Any land Israel chooses to take from Arabs is defensible – by normal methods, common in military practice. Are we at war with Arabs? Even Tel Aviv court recently recognized that when sentencing an Israeli Arab terrorist Ashraf Keisi for “abetting an enemy during a war.” The problem of Kassam fire can be solved by creating a no-man’s land sufficiently wide that Palestinian rockets cannot cross it. If the rocket’s range increases, so will the no-pass zone – until the Palestinians find themselves in Egypt. Israel knows hundreds of buildings used by Hamas, PIJ, Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, Dughmushes, and scores of other guerrillas. There are plenty of good targets for defense of Sderot.

Jews are not encircled, but strategically placed for attack. As an American saying goes, there is no encirclement, but there are times when you can shoot in any direction.

American $20 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the sheikhdoms represent a meeting point between corporate greed of military-industrial complex and yet mistaken approach to the Iranian nuclear crisis. Faced with a similar crisis in Cuba, Kennedy started mobilization of the US army even at risk of confronting the Soviets. Bush, already entangled in Iraq and Afghanistan debacles, seeks palliative measures. His newest idea is bankrupting Iran through the arms race. He therefore offers top-of-the-line weapons to Iran’s neighbors. Iran, however, doesn’t fear Saudis or Egyptians. Egypt has no quarrel with Iran whatsoever, and Saudis – Iran knows that – are impotent cowards unable to fight a sandbag, let alone the Shiite empire. American weapons sales reassure Saudis and Egypt, remind them once again that America for some odd reason stands behind them, and they need not fear Iran. But not fearing Iran, they would not oppose its nuclear program. Nor did they oppose it, anyway. Saudis and Egyptians publicly upheld Iran’s right to nuclear technology. Egypt took the Iranian crisis for an opportunity to reinvigorate its own nuclear program and Saudi Arabia reportedly follows the suit. The military power will increase Saudi Arabia’s credentials of Islamist flagship.
America and Russia collectively arm every single enemy of Israel who was silenced with a kickback of $600 million increase in the US military aid. Wait, we don’t need that aid which amounts to 16% of Israel’s defense budget. Rather, we expect our friends not to arm our sworn enemies like Saudi Arabia and Egypt and refrain from spiraling the arms race in our backyard.

Israel cannot sustain arms race with Muslims because dictatorships can funnel larger chunks of their budget into defense spending than a welfare democracy. So far, Israel spends a larger part of her GDP on defense than her enemies, but collectively they spend much more than Israel. Much of Israel’s defense budget is wasted on conscripts while Saudis spend mostly on weapons. Iran and Syria buy relatively cheap Russian weapons and procure considerable stocks while spending less than Israel in the dollar terms. Saudi Arabia financed Pakistani nuclear program, and now receives the nuclear technology feedback. Pakistan reportedly keeps a number of nuclear warheads in Saudi Arabia. After Iran, Egypt, Libya, and Saudi Arabia go nuclear, Israel’s nuclear deterrent will deter no more. Israel will hope for conventional wars where all sides refrain from using nuclear weapons first, but Muslims are irrational. Devoid of the nuclear edge and unable to keep up the arms race, Israel will succumb to Muslim demands. Arabs won’t immediately push the Jews into the sea but rather use them as bargaining chips in dealings with America. Muslim tolerance to a nominally Jewish state is a currency on par with dollar. Unable and unwilling to persevere as a Jewish state, Israel will continue as Middle Eastern democracy, a sort of Mali. Leftists will convince the population that it is okay to abandon Jerusalem to Arabs and forget about Judea. Arabs will have no problem tolerating dhimmi Jews on the Palestinian beach strip and in the Negev desert. Under the cover of ethnic-blind democracy, Israel will allow free migration of Arabs, and Jews will become a minority living in ghettos.

South Africans dealt with their leftists before starting to deal with the Blacks. Israel didn’t eliminate Jewish leftists and will return to dhimmitude rather than instituting soft apartheid on the current South African model.

The IDF’s lamentations about a shortage of funds and recruits highlight the gross mismanagement in the Israeli army. Originally a lean, daring, highly professional army, today’s IDF combines the worst traits of the American and the Russian militaries: it demands expensive cannons and cheap cannon fodder. Politicized, bureaucratized, and addicted to hyper-expensive, untested American military toys, the IDF seeks to overcome institutional disadvantages with mass and money.

The 1982 and to a larger extent the 2006 Lebanon war marked a shift in the balance of will. Up until then, the Arabs fought grudgingly and the Jews – vehemently. Now the Arabs are ideologically charged while peace propaganda and constant concessions to the Arab enemy have made the Jews reluctant to fight. Still, the conscription figures are remarkably good: the number of outright refuseniks is negligible and only 7% skip the army for medical reasons, many of them legitimately. The society’s morale is so low that 4% of the conscription-age youth are convicted criminals, but there is no problem of draft dodging in Israel.

Most students of religious schools refuse to serve in the IDF. Though anti-Zionist propaganda by ultra-Orthodox rabbis play a major role in their refusal, the IDF alienates religious students by requiring them to serve in mixed secular-religious units. Mixed units do not allow for a religious way of life. The IDF can easily bring yeshiva students into the army by creating strictly religious units without a hint of secularization; that would alleviate the rabbis’ major objection to conscription. Instead, the IDF introduces secular peacenik brainwashing detestable to the normal, let alone to religious, Jews. Add the un-Jewish atmosphere of intimidation of young draftees by their ostensible comrades from rough neighborhoods, and it is a wonder why so few Jews refuse induction.

The IDF spends the available human resources inefficiently. Girls are rarely given meaningful support jobs, let alone combat roles. Arabs can be conscripted for secondary support roles and construction work; let them prove their loyalty to the Jewish state. Reservists receive next to no training during their periodic muster. The available troops waste time in camps instead of using the readily available training grounds in Gaza.

It is impossible to devise an intensive training program 1.5-3 years long. The IDF removes young Jews from studies and productive work, but fails to fill their schedule. The cost of the army draft to Israeli society is incalculable. The draft robs the Israeli economy of people in their most creative age and impedes their propensity for university studies. The IDF has to decrease the infantry draft period to six months at most; an intensive half-year training is more than enough to acquire the necessary skills. Yeshiva students will easier accept a short draft than a years-long service which takes them away from studies.

Snobbish procurement officials prefer US-made gadgets to Israeli weapons. Israel canceled many promising developments and competitive production lines in favor of the American imports. For a mere $2 billion a year in subsidies, Israel re-oriented her military procurement toward America. Worse still, Israel adopted the US model of waging wars: namely, technical abundance. Since WWI, America has conducted its wars with a massive advantage in material supply; Germany, Japan, or Vietnam could not compete with the supply chain of the American military-industrial complex. Israel uncritically accepted the model of ultra-rich America. Though the exact figures of Israel’s military expenditures are unknown, they can be safely estimated at two to three times the official figure of $17 billion if accounting for GDP losses from conscription and other indirect costs. Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz similarly estimated the US costs of the Iraqi war at least three times higher than direct budgetary expenditures. For a trillion dollars, every insurgent in Iraq would commit suicide and spare America the war effort. Jews also spend their military budget meaninglessly.

The Navy is great for boosting the egos of the General Staff, but lacks practical application in Israeli wars. Large tank corps were great thirty years ago, but advances in anti-tank rockets have made them too vulnerable, even allowing for the excellent Trophy active defense system. Top-of-the-line US planes in the IAF service lack viable opponents; cheaper Russian or Israeli Kfir planes would do the job as well. In the new wars, enemies will not attack Israel with immense infantry forces because they would fear amassing such forces at the border with Israel. Rather, they will launch hundreds of missiles on Israel simultaneously.

Israel won all her major wars through smartness and advantage in mobile warfare, but there is only so much mobility can do against numbers. The numerically superior Russians defeated the strategically brilliant Germans in WWII. The Arabs vastly outnumber Israel in terms of infantry and armaments. When Islamists come to power in Pakistan, they will further equalize the Arab-Israeli balance of power by providing the Arabs with a nuclear shield. Israel cannot hope to win wars forever, but has to switch to deterring the Arabs. The only credible deterrent is nuclear, and it has nothing to do with conscription.

America lost many lives on Iwo Jima, but ultimately the war with Japan was decided by nuclear weapons. Israel has no option to prevent large wars with Arabs other than announcing the defensive strategy of total nuclear destruction.

In the liberal, effete world murder becomes increasingly unfashionable. People afraid of violence refuse to launch it against enemies. Personal fear leads to a policy of timidity. Cowardice is rationalized by liberalism and non-violence. In the public perception, soldiers descend from being the guardians of freedom to becoming the bottom of society. Like janitors, they deal with necessary but despicable things – and are despised. Politicians pay respect to the military-industrial complex and lavish praises on the army but detest the individual soldiers as oppressors and murderers. Children of political bosses often avoid military service not because of its dangers – they are usually allocated safe positions – but because they detest the lowly job of killing enemies. Ostensibly smart people deal with enemies, do business with them, and sign peace accords. It’s the stupid people who fight. Thus the government doesn’t value soldiers’ lives but readily sacrifices them to score well with the media. The more soldiers die in urban fights with guerrillas, the more humane the government is considered.

It would be all too human to fight the humane government.

Israeli prime ministers typically come from the military establishment. That helps a lot during military crises, but distorts Israeli politics. The mindsets of army commanders and politicians are drastically different: short, daring actions versus prolonged, patient, indecisive intriguing. Rabin, Barak, and Sharon tried to achieve peace in one step. Yitzhak Shamir, used to patient guerrilla war rather than large-scale military operations, acted patiently in politics. Netanyahu, a business consultant, tried to rule the country according to university textbooks: liberalizing economy, not denunciating Oslo accords. Olmert, with lawyer background, enjoys maneuvering rather than forcing through a solution. He will not push for evacuation of settlements or press Israeli public to abandon the Golan Heights. Olmert is the safest prime minister for Israel now.

The age of generals-cum-prime ministers draws to the end. Israel’s leftist policies devastated the army. Breaking legs of Palestinian children during Intifada, evicting crying Jews from Gush Katif, and bombing Lebanese villages cannot leave military morale intact. Scores of career officers want to demobilize. The army perceives itself disgusted by civilians. While that’s generally not the case, the signs are there: children of politicians and “elite” generally shrink from combat troops and often avoid conscription altogether. Leftist media consistently pictures IDF soldiers as murderers of Palestinians and the guards of murderous Jewish settlers. IDF takes lands, but the government gives them back to enemies. Israel sends her army to purposeless, half-hearted wars. Israeli government risks Jewish soldiers in urban combat to look good with human rights groups. Israeli army conducts essentially police operations in the West Bank and Gaza. Soldiers stand idly while Syria builds up its forces, Iran enriches uranium, Hezbollah stocks bunkers, and the Palestinians shell Sderot. The government forgets that soldiers want to kill, preferably in clear-cut situations. Burdening them with political and human rights constraints, allowing incursions rather than wars, demanding arrests rather than killing demoralizes the army. The IDF cannot pay competitive salaries to technological personnel, and loses professionals to corporate market. Instead of loudly decrying the problem, the IDF human resources staff the army with less competent personnel.

The embattled Jewish state entered the era of professional politicians. When lawyers control the army, our victories are no longer assured.

An Israeli Air Force jet blew up a car in Gaza. The car happened to be carrying Kassam missiles. That was a typical operation by Shabak. The Israeli security service maintains an enormous network of agents in Gaza, and supplies targeting information to the IDF.

In Lebanon, Israel lacked equally vast numbers of informants and had to rely on brute firepower. Air strikes against cars in Gaza are very expensive, but the massive use of jets against guerrillas a la Lebanon-2006 proved altogether non-feasible in economic and political terms.

America tries to fight insurgents with a regular army in Iraq. That’s like hitting a moth with a sledgehammer. A sledgehammer is only good to demolish the moth’s house. America, however, has positive, if exceedingly immoral, experience from the war in Afghanistan against the Russians. There, the United States fostered anti-Russian insurgency – to the great detriment of the locals.

Whether in Iraq or in Gaza, there are two roads to victory: through utter destruction or by fighting the guerillas at the micro-level. There are two modes of micro-level fighting: have the police intelligence pinpoint the targets for conventional forces, or prompt the locals to wage your war for you themselves. The latter option is cheaper and bleeds the target society. A protracted civil war will force many Arabs out of Gaza. No Arab country would finance such a war, but Israel can.

The Palestinians will always have enough weapons for terrorist warfare. They have no shortage of machine guns to shoot at Jews. Arming one Palestinian faction against another won’t harm Israel. Years ago, Israel nurtured Hamas to oppose Arafat. Indecision has made that policy – as many other policies – counter-productive. Israel strengthened Hamas without bleeding the PLO. The proper approach is to give money and arms specifically for fighting. No bodies – no money. We pay for the Hamas body count. Don’t allow Fatah to grow strong on Israeli aid; money or weapons must be spent as received. Perhaps Fatah won’t agree to such an escalation. In that case, foster another group. Israeli aid will make any Arab group strong.

Get the Palestinians to fight the war for Israel.

It is irrelevant whether the response is proportional or not. Response must suffice to extinguish the offence. In personal relations, proportional response, an eye for an eye, works perfectly. Each person has limited number of eyes, and cares a lot about the likely proportional response. Not so between states. Ideological leaders care about their high goals, not the cannon fodder’s eyes; proportional response doesn’t end ideological conflicts. Leaders care about the supply of cannon fodder. That supply could be extinguished by ending the fodder itself or the popular will to supply it. Both ways, supportive masses should be killed – and killed a lot – to end the flow of recruits to insurgents. Incidentally, that means highly disproportional response.

Israeli rulers dwell in security. Other Jews guard them and their families. Astonishingly, the Israeli ruling clique has extended the same kind of immunity to their Arab colleagues. Hamas kidnapped an Israeli soldier and shelled Israeli towns. The Israeli government responded by killing Palestinian civilians and low-to-mid-level Hamas members. Many Hamas leaders openly live in Gaza. Why not kill them first, starting with the Hamas spokesmen?

Israel got a lesson when Hezbollah retaliated for the killing of Musawi, its previous leader, by bombing Jewish civilian targets abroad with significant casualties. The killing of Musawi was futile, because his successor Nasrallah proved no better for Israel. It is better to proclaim immunity for the top leader and target other top members of militant groups. The leader will be secure and everyone else endangered, and that will discredit him considerably.

The proper way to get the missing soldier back and to stop the shelling is well known: take hostages. Young Israel successfully did that on several occasions, even hijacked an enemy’s civil airliner. Round up the entire Palestinian parliament and the ministers, and let them wait in an Israeli jail until the soldier is returned.