The soldiers come marching home, and demand answers

Dr. Gilbert N. Kahn,
a professor of political science at Kean University in Union.

At the end of the Torah it is related that Moses gave his farewell address to the people he had led for 40 years. At one point in this song of praise and rebuke, Moses attacks the Jewish people who “grew fat” (vayishman) with pride, with cockiness, with hubris. Moses, of course, is reminding his flock that without divine intercession they would never have made it to the outskirts of the Land of Israel. He charges the Jewish people to take stock of what they are doing and what has happened to them before they proceed into the Promised Land.

The stock taking over the war on Hizbullah has already begun in Israel and will only increase as the days and weeks proceed. The proposed review of the war recommended by Defense Minister Amir Peretz has already been essentially vetoed by the Knesset and public opinion. The demand for a full-blown independent investigation is virtually a certainty, even as Prime Minister Ehud Olmert stumbles toward accepting it. The opposition, which had been quiet during the hostilities, is now raising assorted loud exclamations of criticism of the Olmert government’s handling of the war.

Perhaps the most telling voice of criticism, however, is coming from Israeli soldiers themselves, especially from the returning reservists. In a country where virtually every young person serves in the army and where men remain in the reserves into their 40s, it is the voices of the members of the citizens’ army which is the most telling and the most significant. It is these proud, willing young men who rallied once again to fight against an enemy threatening their country’s very right to exist, who are angry and indignant.

As opposed to the voices on the Left — who want to proceed with business as normal including possible disengagement from West Bank settlements — and the Right — who are screaming out their “I told you sos” about the disengagement from Gaza — the voice of the soldiers must be heard.

It is the soldiers who brought about political change after the Yom Kippur War and after the first Lebanon War. The people’s army is again demanding accountability from its political leadership, beginning with Ehud Olmert on the political side and IDF Chief of Staff Dan Halutz on the military side. Their message now is the same as after previous military failures: You (We) are getting fat.

These heroic young men are trying to say that Israel today is dramatically different than it was before and even immediately after the 1967 Six Day War. Israel today is an economic powerhouse, a hi-tech wonderland, an artistic and cultural dynamo, a scientific world-class leader. But it has lost its soul. It has one of the finest military machines in the world and some of the best and proudest fighting soldiers. Any country would love to have them. Yet Israel is resting on its laurels.

Israel’s soldiers are not engaging in a religious or theological discussion with their leaders. They are attacking their political leaders for being weak, their military leaders for being unprepared, and their joint decision-making for being incompetent. While Israel’s existence was not immediately threatened by this war, they recognized the cockiness of the novices in the government and the lack of developed strategic and tactical skills on the part of their officer corps, as well as the clear logistical failures.

Finally, the soldiers are angry. They know that they and their brothers and sisters will probably have to fight a war in Lebanon again; it is this that they resent. While they recognize that there might have been another Lebanon war regardless, they felt that they should never have been sent into combat with inadequate preparation, insufficient planning, weak intelligence, and, in some cases, the wrong materiel. While some of them are mad at being the tail of the dog of the White House, they know that the real danger in Tehran still needs to be addressed, and they are ready to fight again — but not a war like this one.