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Photo: AFP
Search for kidnapped teens in West Bank. Affair getting more and more complicated
Photo: AFP
Eitan Haber

Abduction affair shows Israel has limited power

Op-ed: IDF is raising hell in search for a small Palestinian cell which is making a joke of a supposedly superior force.

For years and generations, we were taught to believe in the superiority of the Jewish mind and the Israeli force. We waved flags of "few versus many," "quality versus quantity" and praised all the possible tricks and shticks in battles and in war.

  

 

We continued to believe in the Israeli superiority even when we knew deep down inside that the final image perceived in our minds is inaccurate.

 

The years that have passed have improved the IDF's abilities, and particularly the abilities of the intelligence community, the Shin Bet and the Mossad. We have turned every positive outcome into a historic, revolutionary achievement. Each of our tanks was a diamond. Each bomb was piece of candy. That's why it's so obvious that we are undefeatable.

 

How can it be that a small gang is capable of mocking and deceiving the genius Israelis? Over the years the Palestinians have also improved their abilities, and have mainly got to know and carefully studied the Israeli enemy, its virtues and its shortcomings. They searched for and found the weak spots in order to bypass the unique advantages of the IDF and State of Israel.

 

The Israeli disappointment at the intelligence community's failure to locate the three kidnapped teens, and Gilad Shalit earlier, and other abductees even earlier, is understandable. How is it possible that the world's best intelligence community, which has such a great reputation, fails to locate the kidnapped even before the abduction, certainly during the abduction, and even more so after it has been completed?

 

In military symposiums this is referred to as "the limitations of power." It's quite possible that the entire kidnapping affair is being run by four or five frightened Palestinians who wanted "to do something" and ended up with "a bit too much."

 

The kidnapping affair is getting more and more complicated as the hours go by. We are raising hell, and it's quite possible that four or five Palestinians, without any special means, are making fun of the big army running around in front of them.

 

It's quite possible that the abduction affair will end well, in an hour, in a day, and that everything will be okay. It's possible that it will take a long time. In two or three days, everyone will go back to their routine life, and only three families in Israel will continue losing sleep.

 

The families, the public which believes in the IDF's abilities and in the State of Israel's abilities, the military officials themselves, are now all reading a chapter in the book called "The Limitations of Power."

 


פרסום ראשון: 06.19.14, 14:37
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