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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sam who wrote (198044)	8/18/2006 11:46:50 PM
From: bentway	Respond to of 281500

Bush would be awarding all those Israeli military losers Medals of Freedom!

To: Sam who wrote (198044)	8/19/2006 9:54:51 PM
From: Bilow	Respond to of 281500

Hi Sam; On the question of how hard the IDF fights in the 21st century, read this fascinating report from 1997. In addition to the section on readiness, quouted below, it covers the details of how the native born Israeli compare to recent immigrants. It supports the "Tel Aviv yuppie" argument that the Israelis aren't the fighting force they once were. Of course it would be hard to find a large number of high quality soldiers in such a small country. Quite fascinating, and a bit prescient: "PORTRAIT OF THE NEW ISRAELI SOLDIER" Stuart A. Cohen, [Research for this paper was funded by the Israel Science Foundation, administered by the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities. The author also gratefully acknowledges the research assistance of Mr. Ya'akov Green.] ... The recent public list of IDF operational failures is almost as long as that of its successes. Since the early 1990s, even conscripts attached to the highly trained Golani and Givati infantry brigades have succumbed with embarrassing regularity to comparatively primitive ambushes in southern Lebanon. Reservists may be in worse shape. One small but telling example occurred in summer 1996, when a patrol of reservists, none of whom possessed any previous combat experience, was mauled in broad daylight by a handful of infiltrators along the Jordanian border, an encounter which cost the IDF three fatalities and the local division commander his job.(22) A survey carried out by the IDF parachute school uncovered an accident rate of 9.1 percent among reserve formations during training drops.(23) ..." meria.idc.ac.il -- Carl