Philip's posts with tag: army
'Lioness' Bulldozer is an IDF Alley Cat
IDF D-9 bulldozer by Hana Levi Julian 09 January 08 (IsraelNN.com) A new mini-bulldozer developed by the IDF has emerged as the latest in a series of new ways to combat Palestinian Authority terrorism emanating from Arab cities in Gaza, Judea and Samaria. The “Lioness” made its public debut in the pages of this week’s edition of “BaMachane,” the IDF weekly magazine. Although it looks like a cute little vehicle, the Lioness can be deadly. Unlike its predecessor, the new bulldozer was specifically designed for counter-terrorism operations in close quarters, according to IDF Col. Amir Kochavi, who was quoted in the report. “There are different combat requirements that we faced before,” he said, “most because of the need to carry out engineering tasks in crowded, built-up areas.” The little bulldozer is specifically designed to zip down the narrow alleyways and streets typically found in Arab towns, clearing the way for ground troops and other security forces to follow during counter-terrorism operations. Previously, Israeli soldiers have had to rely on the jumbo-size bulldozers used for demolition of illegal structures and clearing security buffer zones, which can cause unintended damage to buildings along the narrow routes as IDF troops pursue terrorists. The vehicle, which has room for only one person in the cab, is higher than it is wide, with small wheels and a black shovel in front. It also comes equipped with the ability to “destroy targets” and hold off attacks by firing in a 360-degree circle. Until now, the safety of soldiers driving bulldozers has been compromised due to the lack of firepower available on the vehicle.
October 16, '07 IDF Commander Issues Adminisrative Orders Against Jews ( IsraelNN.com) IDF Central Commander has issued administrative orders against a number of Jewish residents of Samaria. The orders, three months in length, prevents the Jews from being in the region of their residence. The reason given for the orders is that the Jews must be distanced for the duration of the olive harvest. Neriah Ofan Among Those Who Received Restraining Orders ( IsraelNN.com) One of the Jewish residents of Samaria to be barred from returning to his home by IDF administrative order is Neriah Ofan. Ofan was victim to a similar order in 2006, along with 19 others. Prior to the 2005 Disengagement, Ofan was jailed without trial via administrative detention order due to fears by the government that his logistical skills in organizing the monthly encirclement of the Temple Mount were being used to organize opposition to the expulsion. MK Ariel: Administrative Orders Scandalous (IsraelNN.com) MK Uri Ariel (National Union) responded angrily to reports that the IDF has issued administrative orders distancing several Samaria Jews from their homes.
MK Ariel said the renewal of the use of administrative orders for such purposes violates a Knesset decision condemning such use by the security establishment of the administrative orders in the past.
“The actions are even more sever in light of the fact that no such steps were taken against the Arabs and left-wing activists who uprooted 6,000 Jewish-owned vines near Nerya two months ago.” MK Ariel: Administrative Orders Scandalous ( IsraelNN.com) MK Uri Ariel (National Union) responded angrily to reports that the IDF has issued administrative orders distancing several Samaria Jews from their homes. MK Ariel said the renewal of the use of administrative orders for such purposes violates a Knesset decision condemning such use by the security establishment of the administrative orders in the past. “The actions are even more sever in light of the fact that no such steps were taken against the Arabs and left-wing activists who uprooted 6,000 Jewish-owned vines near Nerya two months ago.”
| | Sep 25, 2007 20:30 | Updated Sep 26, 2007 9:46
Civil Fights: Debunking a persistent canard
By EVELYN GORDON | | | The mantra "there is no military solution to terrorism" is so rarely challenged these days that it was shocking to see the following commentary last Wednesday on the front page of Haaretz, a leading bastion of the "no military solution" theory. "It's common to claim it is impossible to defeat terrorism," the analysis stated. But in the seven years since the intifada began, "the IDF and Shin Bet have come as close as possible to achieving victory. Since the beginning of the year, two soldiers (one each in the West Bank and Gaza) and six civilians (three in a suicide bombing in Eilat, two from Kassam rockets in Sderot and one who was stabbed to death in Gush Etzion) have been killed by terrorism. This is a very small number, considering the number of attempted attacks, and also compared to the high point of the intifada, when 450 Israelis were killed in 2002. The last suicide bombing in central Israel occurred 18 months ago, in April 2006. "The formula that produced this achievement is known," it continued: aggressive intelligence gathering, the security fence and "the IDF's complete freedom of action in West Bank cities." If this is not victory, it is a close enough approximation that most Israelis would happily settle for it. That is why the June Peace Index poll found Jewish Israelis overwhelmingly opposed to security concessions to the Palestinian Authority, with 79 percent against arming the PA, 71 percent against removing checkpoints and 54 percent against releasing prisoners: Few Israelis want to scrap measures that have reduced Israeli fatalities from 450 to eight over the last five years. It also helps explain the stunning reversal in Israeli attitudes toward Sderot revealed by August's Peace Index poll. According to that poll, fully 69 percent of Jewish Israelis now support an extensive ground operation in Gaza to stop the Kassam fire at southern Israel - whereas last December, 57 percent opposed such an operation. Moreover, this support crossed party lines: Even among people who voted for the leftist Labor and Meretz parties, 64 and 67 percent, respectively, favored a major military operation in Gaza. CLEARLY, THIS reversal occurred partly because in the interim, all other options had been exhausted. The December poll came a month after Hamas declared a cease-fire in Gaza, and while the truce had not fully taken hold, many still hoped that it would. By August, those hopes had died: Not only were rockets fired at Sderot almost daily during the "cease-fire," but in May, Hamas trumpeted its contempt for the truce by claiming credit for over 100 Kassam launches in a single week. Additionally, in December, Mahmoud Abbas was nominally in control of Gaza, and many still hoped that he would take action to stop the rocket fire. By August, Hamas was in full control. The fact that Israel first sought nonmilitary solutions in Gaza resembles its behavior during the first 18 months of the intifada: It signed cease-fires (which instantly collapsed), declined to respond even to major suicide bombings inside Israel (Dolphinarium and Sbarro), and generally sought to get the Palestinian security services to reassert control. But as the casualty toll, especially inside Israel, mounted, it became clear that salvation would not come from the PA. So in March 2002, Israel reconquered the West Bank in Operation Defensive Shield - and Israeli fatalities dropped dramatically, that year and every year thereafter. HOWEVER, there is one crucial difference between the intifada's early years and the recent Israeli quest for a nonmilitary solution in Gaza: While Israelis would always prefer to avoid risking soldiers' lives, they now know, as they did not in 2002, that the military option works. After all, not a single Kassam has been fired at Israel from the West Bank. Hence Israelis are not awaiting leadership from above; they are backing military action even as the politicians still vehemently reject it. Given this growing recognition among the Israeli public, it is bizarre to hear senior politicians and military officers still parroting the "no military solution to terror" mantra. But at least these officials understand that in practice, Israel's defensive measures in the West Bank work, and therefore, ending them would be a bad idea (not to mention unpopular with the voters). International agencies and diplomats, in contrast, have not even gotten that far. Any of them could, if they took five minutes to examine the data, realize that Israel's military measures in the West Bank have dramatically reduced Israeli fatalities, especially inside Israel, since 2002; yet they persist in declaring that these measures are unnecessary and must be scrapped. Thus Condoleezza Rice uses her every visit to pressure Israel on this issue, while the World Bank once again demanded last week that Israel remove West Bank checkpoints, open its border with Gaza and restore freedom of movement between Gaza and the West Bank. Or perhaps this is feigned ignorance, meant to cover a willingness to sacrifice Israeli lives in order to demonstrate "progress" in the peace process. The World Bank report, for instance, coyly stated that "the costs are subjective to each side and are beyond the scope of this report" - thereby sparing it the need to acknowledge that the likely cost is Israeli lives - but "all parties will need to expend more resources and assume more risks than they have done in the past." Is it really unaware of what those carefully unstated risks are? Either way, however, this willful blindness perpetuates the conflict by ensuring that a key obstacle to resolving it - Palestinian terror - remains unaddressed. In 1993, many Israelis hoped that a peace agreement would end terror. Fourteen years later, after having suffered more fatalities from Palestinian terror post-Oslo than during the entire preceding 45 years, most Israelis have concluded that the allegedly nonexistent military solution does a much better job of protecting their lives. And until there is concrete evidence of Palestinian willingness and ability to do the job as well or better, there will be no Israeli majority for any deal with the PA. | |
| Women in Combat Units and Inverted Values: By Moshe Feiglin | |  A committee established by Head of IDF Personnel Major General Elazar Stern, decided this week (as expected) to include women soldiers in all military combat units and under all circumstances. This is not surprising. When women were first included in combat units a number of years ago, Moshe Feiglin wrote to the heads of the Religious Zionist hesder yeshivas and stated that if they do not establish an ultimatum against introducing women into combat units, they would also not direct their students to refuse orders to expel their fellow Jews that came a few years later. And that is exactly what happened. Those religious soldiers who received authorization from their rabbis to serve in combat with women soldiers eventually also received directives from the same rabbis to expel their brothers from their homes. Just as the expulsion from Gush Katif became a value in and of itself -- detached from any reason, so the inclusion of women in combat units has also become a value detached from any military or security benefit. The following article, from Moshe Feiglin's book, "The War of Dreams," was written in 2001, when the issue of women in combat units first arose. Women in Combat Units and Inverted Values: By Moshe Feiglin 24 Av, 5761
August 13, 2001 Between a slaughter in a pizza shop and a massacre in a coffee shop, between shootings on the roads of Yesha, shootings in Jerusalem and rockets on the settlements of Gush Katif, the State of Israel has been occupied in the last few weeks with the question of women's service in combat units. A stranger would not understand. Don't the Israelis have enough troubles? Why are they bringing another trouble on themselves? But in truth, it is all the same trouble. It is all the same disease. The State of Israel has entered a sort of values vertigo. The heavens are the earth, the earth is the heavens, good is evil and evil is good. The most obvious expression of this vertigo was Rabin's handshake with Arafat on the White House lawn. That handshake seated all the Israelis on the defendant's bench in the International Crimes Court at The Hague. It implied Israel's recognition of the legitimacy of the struggle of the Palestinian Liberation Organization -- the organization that strives to liberate "Palestine" from the yoke of the Jewish occupation. In other words, that handshake created the Palestinian nation, recognized the fact that it has a homeland in the Land of Israel, that this homeland is occupied by the Zionist colonialist conquerors and that the terrorists are really freedom fighters -- necessarily making the Israelis war criminals. The criminals who perpetrated Oslo rode upon the vehicle of post-modern/feminist philosophy. To understand this on a deeper level, we have to understand the forces at work here. On the most basic level, what is happening in Israel is a war between life and death. Good, morality and life -- are one. Evil and death also embrace each other. "Behold, I have set before you today life and goodness, and death and evil."
(Deuteronomy 30:15) There is good and there is evil -- and not as the pagan post-modernism would have us believe. There is life and there is death. Life is created by separation of the sexes, and not as feminism would have us believe. Life is created by separation. The cell divides, differentiates and develops. The primordial default is death and confusion. In the beginning, there was chaos and disorder and darkness on the face of the abyss. Then the Creator of life began to make separations: between light and darkness, between the sea and the dry land, between animals and humans, between men and women and between the nations of the world and the Jewish People. Life is not static. In order to preserve life, we must always invest energy in making separations. Every mother knows that the natural condition of the house is "a mess" and how much energy must be invested on a constant basis to preserve the separation that transforms the mess into a living and functioning household. Death pulls us inexorably toward its depths. Materials that are not separated will mix together. If we want to keep them alive, we must invest energy to separate them. Chaos and disorder, the blurring of distinctions, the pagan enticement to give in to the whirlpool that draws the world down to its death -- are all forces that the Nation of Israel must face. These forces of death always wrap themselves in an enlightened and preening cloak. They present themselves as the pure beauty of life. They speak in the name of order and civilization. But in truth, they serve chaos and disorder, darkness and death. "Why did you insist on ruling that two men constitute a family?" Chief Justice Barak was asked. "If the homosexual partner is eligible for compensation, you could have awarded it to him on a regular contractual basis. Why mix laws of matrimony into the ruling?" In typical dictatorial fashion, Chief Justice Barak felt no need to explain. It is unlikely that he himself understands the forces that motivate him. But in essence, he uses all the dictatorial tools that he has created in order to foster confusion. Confusion of values, confusion of sexual identity, confusion of the family unit, confusion of our national identity, confusion of our territorial borders, confusion of separation and return to chaos, disorder and death. What motivated the woman soldier who wanted to be a combat pilot to appeal to the Supreme Court? Was it a rare outburst of love for her homeland? Was it eternal Zionism? Or was it the desire to express herself as a man -- the best that feminist confusion has to offer? It was clear from the very start that the Supreme Court would cooperate with her in full. Its ruling broke down the very last separation of the sexes that still existed in the IDF. It makes no difference that women soldiers in combat units critically reduce the operational abilities of the unit -- a fact that has been proven in other armies that have already reneged on the preposterous idea. Trash the IDF, crush the State -- the main thing is that we achieve our goal. We will take advantage of the young women's desire to contribute to the State and channel it for our purposes. We will take advantage of the most respected Israeli value, the security ethos -- the basic survival instinct that remains the last justification for the existence of the nation of Holocaust remnants -- and use it to drag this confused and tormented nation down into the whirlpool of chaos, disorder and death. And where do the rabbis come in? "Did I do the right thing?" the brave woman soldier, Chani Abramov asked the Chief Rabbi who came to visit her in the hospital. Did the institutional rabbi think that she was asking his medical opinion? Deep down, she felt the pain of falsehood that added to the pain of her shattered face. The Rabbi mumbled a few word of encouragement and left. Did he understand the issue? The Ultra-Orthodox rabbis have no problem. Their forecasts were precise and they can rub their hands in affected sorrow as they wait for Zionism to self-destruct. In the end, though, all the Jews get thrown into the pits of death together. And where are the Zionist rabbis, heads of the hesder yeshivas and the NRP? How can they accept this situation? They are in Zionist captivity. Their self-imposed dependence on Zionism does not allow them to understand the destructive process that is taking place here. Their arguments against the service of women in combat units are truly humiliating. The Leftist broadcasters have a field day with every stuttering rabbi who explains his opposition to women serving in combat units because it makes it too difficult for the male soldiers to concentrate on their mission. "Aha!" the broadcasters rejoice. "What kind of thoughts do you have in your heads? This is solid proof that when you separate between the sexes, it creates even more severe problems. Separation is death. Chaos and confusion are life. If it is difficult for you, dear rabbis, to face women in combat units and to continue to abide by Jewish law -- no problem. We will create religious reservations for you. Don't worry, we'll work it all out." Manhigut Yehudit Weekly Update Tishrei 8, 5768 (Sept. 20, 2007) Issue: 6801 |
Tuesday, August 28, 2007 by Staff Writer  Israel Today At least 50 percent of young Israeli army officers today are conservative religious Jews, according to a report in Israel's Ma'ariv daily newspaper. Religious, thought not not necessarily Orthodox, Jews are a minority in Israel, but because of their strong Zionist upbringing are “becoming the backbone of the [Israel Defense Forces],” the newspaper noted.
Religious soldiers have long been praised within Israel as the most dedicated and courageous combatants in the army.
However, there is also a growing fear that the Bible-based beliefs of such soldiers regarding Israel's right to the land could result in mutiny if the secular government orders a mass evacuation of Jews from Judea and Samaria as part of a peace deal with the Palestinians. Earlier this month, a group of religious soldiers refused to participate in the removal of Jewish settlers from Jewish owned property in the Judean town of Hebron.
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