Israel's military has become mediocre, general charges in parting shot

TEL AVIV [MENL] -- Brig. Gen. Aryeh Eldad has just resigned from the army. And the outgoing chief medical officer says he's worried about the future of Israel's fighting force.

In a word, Eldad says, the Israel Defense Forces is a mess. It has been taken over by a new ethos that has elevated modern management to the level of the absurd while diminishing such requirements as courage and commitment. It has also been eviscerated by a budget-conscious government and a judiciary that no longer set national security as a priority.

In other words, Eldad says, the military has become another Israeli government organization -- a dangerously mediocre one.

"Whoever chooses this can expect that the brilliant, most contemporary-minded and most original will be dismissed, leaving only those suitable to the [military] system," Eldad wrote in a harsh resignation letter released this week. "The worship of management tools and their dedication are being promoted as the new holy books, embarrassing in their shallowness and an insult to intelligence and the command."

Eldad's criticism of the military is not new. What is different is that the brigadier wrote the letter and ensured its release while he still in uniform. It is an indictment of what an increasing number of senior officers acknowledge is the new military in which the leading consideration is to ensure promotion and a fat pension.

The reorganization plan of Lt. Gen. Shaul Mofaz is a case in point. It has merged numerous units and corps, including that of Eldad's medical corps, into the new Technology and Logistics Corps. The idea has been welcomed by many military planners.

But military sources said the implementation has been atrocious. "What you have now is chaos," a senior military officer said. "Mofaz started the process but has not ensured that it is continuing. So, entire corps and units have been eliminated but their spheres and authorities have not been placed in other areas."

The most glaring gaps, military sources said, is in the communications corps and the intelligence corps. The communication corps is part of the new logistics unit. But bits of it have been placed in other units and the result has been the gutting of a vital military organization.

The intelligence corps, the sources said, may be faring better. Just last month, the military announced the formation of a field intelligence corps in an effort to fill a glaring deficiency in combat intelligence.

Prime Minister Ehud Barak calls Israel's military the most powerful in the Middle East and one of the best in the world. Barak should know. He grew up in the military and served as chief of staff in the early 1990s.

But in the end, the sources said, Barak -- who has dismissed warnings of a unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon -- abandoned the basis of the military's reorganization plan when he decided on a $250 million cut in the defense budget. The cut led to a delay in vital research and development programs meant to compensate for reduced manpower.

Quietly, even senior officers agree that Eldad's letter was a required warning to Israeli politicians and electorate that the obsession with budget planning and career priorities threaten the nation's defense. "Aryeh Eldad is a brilliant man with capabilities that go beyond his profession," said Amram Mitzna, a reserve major general and now mayor of Haifa. "He has strong opinions and they are important."

Uzi Landau, former chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, goes further. He says senior military officers are being educated that strategic depth is no longer important and can be replaced by technology. The result is that many in the General Staff regard the willingness by the Barak government to withdraw from the entire Golan Heights as an opportunity for more advanced U.S. weapons rather than a challenge to national security.

"For many years, the officers were educated that we can't leave the Golan Heights," said Landau, regarded even by his critics as being one of the best strategic analysts in parliament. "Now, that the government is replaced, the officers change their minds. The army must have a serious housecleaning regarding the education of officers."

Eldad's dark scenarios have in many ways been realized. Officers often tell of majors and lieutenant colonels leaving the army in disgust as the best and brightest get past over for the most obedient. The trend is particularly apparent among those in the technology sphere -- with private industry dangling tempting salaries and benefits to officers trained in computers and engineering by the military.

"I would say from the rank of captain and on, every officer is guided by the promotion ladder," a senior officer said. "In an army at peace, this would not be particularly disturbing. But in an army at war and facing increasing threats, this can be catastrophic."

Another senior officer who has researched the issue agrees. "Let's put aside the myth of Israeli invincibility," he said. "In reality, the generals throughout our history have made terrible decisions that led to many casualties. Our wars were won by company and battalion commanders."

The fear by critics is that the best of the junior officer corps might not survive the mediocrity of today's military bureaucracy. This, despite what military sources term as an increasingly capable officer corps.

"I must say that we have company and battalion commanders who are better than we were," Mitzna, who resigned in 1993, said.

Eldad's letter might be damning. But state radio repeatedly read large parts of the letter in broadcasts this week. Not one active officer, including Mofaz, responded in what could be the broadest hint that the military itself is calling for help.

"I am frightened of the dependence that military commanders are developing on this [management tools]," Eldad said.