Former IDF Galilee Formation Commander Opens Old Wounds

Former IDF Galilee Formation Commander Gal Hirsch, 42, spoke publicly about the Second Lebanon War for the first time in a year on Sunday night - and ripped sharply into his former superiors. "The senior military echelons hid behind and deserted the fighters during the war," said Hirsch, who quit a promising career and resigned from the IDF last year following sharp criticism of his performance. He added that his superiors refused to accept responsibility and left lower-level commanders on their own.
"I pronounce that deplorable political norms have penetrated into parts of the army, which is afflicted by dangerous politicization that is likely to undermine its very foundations," the ex-Brig.-Gen. said.
The army's mediocre performance during the war in Lebanon in the summer of 2006 led to strong public criticism and several investigations, which in turn led to the resignations of Defense Minister Amir Peretz, IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz, and a few top commanders, including Hirsch. It was widely felt that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, too, would be forced to resign, but that has not yet happened.
The primary failure during the war belonged to the senior military command, according to Hirsch, "which did not trust existing plans and, when the situation became too complex, forgot all the core values of camaraderie and mutual support upon which the IDF has based itself since its inception."
"As the war proceeded and then came to an end," Hirsch lamented, "I learned just how far the slander had penetrated, just how distorted was the information delivered to the public, just how alone we commanders were, and, personally, just how alone I was in those days."
"The war was not investigated properly," Hirsch charged, "and if another war occurs, it could end up looking just like this past one. The kidnapping, too, was not investigated properly; it was tendentious, distorted, and lacking; it sought whom to blame, and did not deal with the complicated situation that existed then on the northern border."
The Kidnapping
On July 12, 2006, two reserve soldiers - Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev - were taken prisoner when Hizbullah terrorists attacked their vehicle at an IDF outpost near Moshav Zar'it on the Israeli-Lebanese border. Four other soldiers were killed in the attack, and four others were killed shortly afterwards when they took off in pursuit of the kidnapped soldiers and their tank was blown up by a Hizbullah-placed bomb. Not a sign of life has been had from the hostage soldiers since their abduction, and it is widely - though not publicly - felt that at least one of them may be dead.
The Investigations
A military investigative commission headed by Maj.-Gen. (ret.) Doron Almog sharply criticized Hirsch for the kidnapping, saying that the lessons learned from Hizbullah's kidnapping of three soldiers in 2000 had not been learned. The Almog report recommended that Hirsch be relieved of his position and not be promoted further in the IDF; Hirsch did not wait and offered his resignation immediately.
Though it noted that several kidnapping attempts were thwarted between 2000 and 2006, the commission blamed Hirsch for failing to verify that his directives were being carried out; the troops did not practice a kidnapping scenario beforehand. The report stated that the patrols along the border set out "as if going on a day trip" instead of patrolling a particularly dangerous border zone. Hirsch should have placed his troops on heightened alert automatically after IDF soldier Gilad Shalit was kidnapped on the Gaza border two weeks earlier, the report found.
Another IDF investigation - not of the kidnapping, but of the war that followed - found fault in the way Hirsch and other commanders functioned during the war.
Responses
Former IDF Intelligence Chief Gen. (ret.) Uri Saguy, asked by Voice of Israel Radio to respond to Hirsch's remarks, said he did not wish to interpret or comment. When pressed, he said only that everyone should look at his own actions, and that now was not the time for such sweeping statements. "From what I understand, I know the army is training very energetically, and is working hard to learn the lessons of the past war."
Gen. Almog said in response that he regretted that Hirsch had chosen to "put himself in the center, before the State, before the army, and even before the bereaved families and the wounded."