Prof. Yitzhak Ben-Israel
Photo: Ofer Amram
Swift victories needed
Top priority shouldn't be home front, but rather, preparing IDF to win quickly
The country is in a state of turmoil: How could it be that the home front was abandoned during the last war? Who will have to pay with his head for the fiasco? What needs to be done so that the home front doesn't suffer in the next war?
Someone must stand up and tell the truth: There is no practical way to defend the home front and to fortify it so that the next war "will go over its head" as though it never happened. In order to do this, the country would have to be "doubled" in size and an emergency system alongside every main system would have to be established.
We would need two countries: One that would operate in times of calm ("peace"), and another that would operate in times of war (including the banking and economic institutions, health and educational services, commerce and food supplies, fuel and anything else that didn't function properly during the last war.)
There is no country that has enough resources to do this; certainly not a small country such as Israel.
Our enemies' attempt to inflict harm on the home front is nothing new. As early as the War of Independence we suffered more than a hundred casualties in a single attack by Egyptian bombers on the Tel Aviv central bus station (May 18th, 1948.) In the war known as the second intifada, which broke out in September of 2000 and ended three-and-a-half years later, we lost almost 1,000 civilians. Our enemies have always been able to recognize the emphasis we place on human life and have attempted to strike at the civilian home front.
It would suffice to mention the shelling of Tel Aviv during the Six Day War, the bombing of Netanya, the rocket fire on the Jezreel Valley during the Yom Kippur War, and the rockets launched by Saddam Hussein in 1991.
If this is the case, why do we now feel that defense of the home front failed?
This is primarily due to fact that this was the first time the home front was forced to endure ongoing rocket attacks (over a month) without it feeling that something was being done to mitigate the extent of the fire.
Setting right priorities
The root of the problem, therefore, does not lie in the defense and fortification of the home front itself, but rather, in the fact that the IDF allowed Hizbullah to attack the home front for more than a month. Had the military elite and the defense establishment conducted the war in a way that would have shortened this period to a week or 10 days, the home front problems we are now forced to probe would not have emerged.
And if this is the case, to what extent should we invest our limited resources? In fortifying the home front or in achieving the capability required by the military to win the next war in a short timeframe?
Every citizen should answer the next question: If a war with Syria is forced on us, what should we be more prepared for? For a swift and decisive victory over the Syrian regime, which would require us to invest our time and finances in training the army's armored divisions, or in fortifying the home front against rocket fire, so that it would be easier to sit out another month in the bomb shelters while listening to the rockets landing in our backyards?
Israel is currently analogous to someone suffering from an auto-immune disease – the body's immune system is attacking the body itself. Where the State is concerned, an "inoculation" is designed to attack anything that disrupts normal function, and it leans on the judicial system, the media, parliamentary supervision, the police force, the state comptroller and the home front etcetera. These systems are supposed to operate when something in the normal functioning of the state goes wrong.
However, when these systems are directed internally and begin attacking the healthy body itself, a situation of immune failure occurs in which the immune system loses its ability to separate the "wheat from the chaff."
It's still not too late. Properly identifying the problem and setting the right priorities can pull us out of the mud. The case pertaining to the home front is relatively easy: We should lend a hand and our support to the IDF to achieve a swift and decisive victory in a future war, and fortification of the home front will (almost) become unnecessary (except perhaps in places where we would not want to exert the IDF's full power in achieving a swift victory.)
Prof Yitzhak Ben-Israel, a former IDF major-general, has served in senior positions in the army in the fields of operations, research and development.
