army

Erez Zuckerman resigned reportedly amid the failures in Lebanon war. Zuckerman headed Navy Commandos and Golani.

Israel launched Ofek 7 spy satellite which will take pictures of Iranian and Syrian military installation every 1.5 hour. Ofek 7 ground image resolution is better than 20 inches.

Outgoing leftist Deputy Defense Minister Sneh claims the IDF programs related to the Iranian nuclear threat are annually underfunded by hundreds of millions of shekels. Sneh implied that intelligence and operation plans necessary to attack the Iranian nuclear facilities are lacking.
What do we pay the IDF for if it cannot bomb a reactor?

11 killed, 109 interrogated in Gaza, no arrests in Nablus. Fatah guerrillas engaged the IDF in firefight in Nablus. Elsewhere in the West Bank, the IDF helped Fatah by arresting 13 Hamas and PIJ members.
IDF desecrated 3 mosques in Al-Khalil searching for Arab terrorists.

Olmert responds by cutting the budget merely by 3%. The IDF, as always, complains of insufficient financing. Where is the lean army which has won all Israeli wars?

IDF decried Israeli government approach of containing Hamas instead of assaulting the group which has 13,000 fighters, hundreds of whom underwent military training in Iran.

Military budget is increased by mere $750 million annually ostensibly to correct the Lebanon war’s problems. Money, however, doesn’t correct the lack of strategy and leadership.
Arab military purchases dwarf the IDF’s budget. US sells $20 billion worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Kuwait, and UAE in a single deal. US alleviated Israeli concerns over strengthening her enemies by increasing military aid to Israel from $2.4 to 3 billion annually.
With Russia arming Iran and Syria, and the US arming the rest of Arabs, the IDF’s prospects are increasingly gloomy.

IDF pushes for legal repressions against draft-dodgers. The draft dodgers in question are religious Jews who refuse to serve in decidedly secular IDF environment and be showered with peace propaganda – though most would gladly serve in religious units which the IDF refuses to expand.
Israeli Arabs do not serve in the IDF or in alternative civil service like Jewish leftists and pederasts. Israeli Arabs, however, live in tax-free environment, are virtually exempt from obtaining building permits, and will now receive free university tuition on par with Jewish combat soldiers.

12 IDF soldiers refused to evict two Jewish religious families from Hebron. A similar number pretended sick. Major General Shamni ordered trial of the soldiers who refused evicting fellow Jews. Refreshingly, several rabbis counseled the soldiers to refuse the shameful mission. The developments are in stark contrast to the complacency about Gush Katif eviction.
2,500 IDF troops will guard the institutional murderers from Border Police evicting the religious Jews from empty stalls in abandoned Hebron marketplace. The funny part is that IDF will guard the police ostensibly against Palestinians who are expected to attack the police while it evicts the religious Jewish families.
The market in question, among many other properties, is legally owned by Jews but taken over by Arabs after the 1929 Hebron massacre of Jews.

A commander of the famed Givati Battalion will be removed under the left’s pressure for shielding Jewish soldiers during antiterrorist operation. The Supreme Court outlawed a military practice intentionally misnamed “human shield” whereas the IDF sends Palestinian neighbors to ask the hiding terrorists out of the house to avoid combat.
The Givati commander was sacked after a media-savvy Palestinian terrorist sent a 14-year-old girl out of the house instead of coming out himself, and the girl was shot.

IDF arrested three Arabs throwing stones at Israeli troops near Hebron, King David’s seat of power. IDF routinely instructs soldiers to drive away when attacked with stones. The assumption is that soldiers should not use their weapons to hurt Arabs if they can drive away to safety. Israeli civilians such as Michael Ezer were previously sentenced for kidnapping after conducting civil arrest of Palestinian stone-throwers.

IDF lacks money for training and basic maintenance, but Asheknazi’s budget proposal includes purposeless high-ticket items like missile ships and stealth fighters, too expensive to risk in battles and lacking adequate Arab adversaries.
Arab enemies embark on a different strategy, buying just good enough Russian MIG-29 and 31 at 20% the cost of hyper-expensive F-35 eyed by the IDF. United Arab Emirates also ordered F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and uniquely received friend-or-foe modification codes; IDF won’t know whether it is fighting its own or Arab F-35.
IDF moves toward the politically correct no-friendly-casualties war with production of Namer APC based on Merkava tank platform. Too heavy and costly, with limited operational lifespan, Namer will somewhat better protect the troops. Israel abandons her original emphasis on mobility and efficiency.
IDF will purchase Littoral Navy ships – which even the US Navy eventually refused due to rampant costs. Lockheed Martin pushes Littoral to Israeli buyers.

The seven soldiers refused to evict Jews from Hebron. The eviction serves to stigmatize the soldiers. Using the IDF against Jews is completely illegal.

IDF abandoned its previous silence and demanded that France 2 channel delivers the entire footage of the purported shooting of a 12-year Palestinian. The myth of IDF killing al Dura in Gaza made headlines in the year 2000 and reverberates among Muslims.
IDF commission of inquiry concluded soon after the event that IDF soldiers could not possibly shoot the young Arab, and he was killed by the Palestinians who staged the event. Then-prime minister Barak refused to publicize the IDF’s findings.

Seven years after the event, IDF arrested one of the peace-loving Arabs who murdered two Israelis in Ramallah. Abbas neglected arresting him. Earlier, Israel had a policy of assassinating killers of Jews rather than arresting them to be released later.

IDF closed off several sites in Judea and Samaria where conservative activists sought to erect hilltop outposts to prevent Arabs from shooting at Jewish villages.

Only 72% of Israelis (presumably, Jewish Israelis) support using nuclear weapons against our Arab enemies in the Mutual Assured Destruction scheme (Simons Foundation poll).

Ashkenazi, Barak praise IDF’s Nativ program which oversees conversion of Gentile IDF conscripts to Judaism. Ashkenazi earlier pushed for dismantling ultra-Orthodox platoons in the IDF, a move that pushed ultra-Orthodox conscripts away from the army. IDF is notoriously anti-religious, but deems Jewish religiosity good for Gentiles.

Dan Harel, an OC Southern Command in 2005 who commanded the troops which assaulted Jewish defenders of Gush Katif, becomes Ashkenazi’s deputy.

Doctors for Human Rights petition the Supreme Court to release information on the IDF experiments in which 700 soldiers were injected with unspecified substance.