Recent revelations of the ?Tze'elim Bet? accident may indicate that Left-oriented top Israeli military suffered from split personality, or from ?operandus interruptus? - acting in two opposite ways and regretting their own initiatives promptly after their onset. They certainly haven't displayed the unrelenting commitment and unshakable faith held and exercised by our Forefather Jacob, z.l., as unfolding in last week's Torah parasha.
It was just released that Yitzhak Rabin and Ehud Barak initiated a daring plan to kill Iraq's Saddam Hussein using a sophisticated missile attack by a top Israeli commando unit. The plan was aborted because of a training accident at the military facility at Tze'elim.
Obviously, such a disclosure couldn't have occurred without the approval of the military censorship, and one could expect that such an important decision must have been approved by the top position, up to the Chief of Staff. However, one day after the story was published in the Israeli media, IDF's Chief of Staff Moshe Yaalon defined the release of the story as ?precarious irresponsibility? and that ?some things have to be kept secret.? So, who ?gave the order,? Mr. COS? And if you haven't approved it, does that make the IDF ?precariously irresponsible?? And what are you going to do about it?
However, most important is the mere botching of the plan itself. All IDF's top brass were present at the dress rehearsal of the operation, including then-Chief of Staff Ehud Barak, the mastermind of the plan and its chief advocate. The plan was also approved by Prime Minister Rabin. Tragically, five soldiers, who played the role of the target, got killed because the dummy missile which was supposed to be fired at them was accidentally substituted by a live one. The missile did its job. It hit the target. However, because of the accident the operation was scrapped.
Obviously, the loss of five young lives is tragic and painful, but the military operation didn't fail. The exercise was nixed because someone made a terrible ?boo-boo?. It was a human error. But military life is never fail-safe, and if every failure leads to operation abort, then no army can be a winner. If the leaders of the plan, including Barak and Rabin, truly believed that it was a viable plan with sound tactical, strategic and logistical merits, then they should have brought it to fruition and not been stopped by a training accident, which, no matter how painful it was, hadn't diminished nor tarnished the plan's execution ability. The accident didn't prove that the plan was tactically bad. On the contrary.
One can only conclude that the decision makers at the highest level had an ambivalent attitude toward the daring operation. They hadn't had full ?mission commitment?, which is perhaps the most important ingredient of all military endeavors, especially the most daring and challenging ones, and they quickly changed their minds after the first setback. They acted as if they had seen an ?omen? telling them to abort. What kind of reasoning was that? What kind of dedication did they consequently project on their subordinates?
I am suspicious that this was one of the undisclosed reasons why Ehud Barak was later attacked with the quip ?Barak barach? (?Barak ran away?); not solely because he had allegedly left the area before all the wounded were evacuated. What impact would this kind of decision-making have on future challenging plans, and what have been the effects so far? Some ?sources? have hinted that this sort of ambivalence, lack of 100% "mission commitment" and motivation impairment, may have been the underlying reasons for the failure of the Mossad's assassination attempt on Hamas? political bureau chief in Amman a few years ago.
This ?split personality syndrome? may be one of the most important lessons of ?Tze'elim Bet?. Perhaps, in order to rectify this impairment, Israel's military leaders should learn more about, and be motivated by, our Forefathers. Most likely, Sun Tzu's classic, The Art of War, which they must have read, hasn't cut it.
It was just released that Yitzhak Rabin and Ehud Barak initiated a daring plan to kill Iraq's Saddam Hussein using a sophisticated missile attack by a top Israeli commando unit. The plan was aborted because of a training accident at the military facility at Tze'elim.
Obviously, such a disclosure couldn't have occurred without the approval of the military censorship, and one could expect that such an important decision must have been approved by the top position, up to the Chief of Staff. However, one day after the story was published in the Israeli media, IDF's Chief of Staff Moshe Yaalon defined the release of the story as ?precarious irresponsibility? and that ?some things have to be kept secret.? So, who ?gave the order,? Mr. COS? And if you haven't approved it, does that make the IDF ?precariously irresponsible?? And what are you going to do about it?
However, most important is the mere botching of the plan itself. All IDF's top brass were present at the dress rehearsal of the operation, including then-Chief of Staff Ehud Barak, the mastermind of the plan and its chief advocate. The plan was also approved by Prime Minister Rabin. Tragically, five soldiers, who played the role of the target, got killed because the dummy missile which was supposed to be fired at them was accidentally substituted by a live one. The missile did its job. It hit the target. However, because of the accident the operation was scrapped.
Obviously, the loss of five young lives is tragic and painful, but the military operation didn't fail. The exercise was nixed because someone made a terrible ?boo-boo?. It was a human error. But military life is never fail-safe, and if every failure leads to operation abort, then no army can be a winner. If the leaders of the plan, including Barak and Rabin, truly believed that it was a viable plan with sound tactical, strategic and logistical merits, then they should have brought it to fruition and not been stopped by a training accident, which, no matter how painful it was, hadn't diminished nor tarnished the plan's execution ability. The accident didn't prove that the plan was tactically bad. On the contrary.
One can only conclude that the decision makers at the highest level had an ambivalent attitude toward the daring operation. They hadn't had full ?mission commitment?, which is perhaps the most important ingredient of all military endeavors, especially the most daring and challenging ones, and they quickly changed their minds after the first setback. They acted as if they had seen an ?omen? telling them to abort. What kind of reasoning was that? What kind of dedication did they consequently project on their subordinates?
I am suspicious that this was one of the undisclosed reasons why Ehud Barak was later attacked with the quip ?Barak barach? (?Barak ran away?); not solely because he had allegedly left the area before all the wounded were evacuated. What impact would this kind of decision-making have on future challenging plans, and what have been the effects so far? Some ?sources? have hinted that this sort of ambivalence, lack of 100% "mission commitment" and motivation impairment, may have been the underlying reasons for the failure of the Mossad's assassination attempt on Hamas? political bureau chief in Amman a few years ago.
This ?split personality syndrome? may be one of the most important lessons of ?Tze'elim Bet?. Perhaps, in order to rectify this impairment, Israel's military leaders should learn more about, and be motivated by, our Forefathers. Most likely, Sun Tzu's classic, The Art of War, which they must have read, hasn't cut it.