According to the military correspondent of the daily “Maariv”, Amir Buhbut, the former chief of staff, General Dan Halutz, admitted that the war was not ended by a knockout, but by points. Today an internal document of the “Israeli” army, which speaks about a poll that was conducted among army officers, shows a superiority of Hezbollah’s men over “Israeli” soldiers by points.

The poll results were uncovered by the commander of the Department of application of the Navy, major Dr. Ruby Sandman, in an article published in the “Israeli” military magazine, “Marakhot”, which reveals that contrary to “Israeli” propaganda emitted by politicians, military men and the media there is inside the military circles an impression that the performance of the “Israeli” army was inferior to that of Hezbollah.

Estimations of Israeli army officers

Hezbollah		IDF
7	Intelligence	6
9	Strategy	5
8	Leadership	6
8	Pursuit of outcome	4
6	Control	8
5	Human management	9
5	Supplies	8
5	Weapons	8
8	Rehabilitation & organization	7
5	Technology	9

The article shows that the poll was conducted among 24 high ranking army officers in various fields, the results showed that they gave a higher number of points to Hezbollah than these given to the “Israeli” army in the fields of intelligence, strategy, fighting theory, and what is important is that the research’s author, who relied on the poll’s results, received the award of the chief of staff, Gaby Ashkenazy, for writing in the fields of the army and security.

Results deducted from the poll shows that “Israel” has decisive superiority in the fields of arms supplies, control and human management, but it suffers inferiority in the crucial field of decision-taking: strategy, fighting theory and leadership, pursuit of the  outcome of the battle.

For this reason Major Sandman concludes that the pattern the “Israeli” army relied upon is not necessarily fit for the changing facts on the ground in the battlefield, it changes only with “topical changes” and not systematic. And here the officer explains how the coming war will start: a joint attack on the border line, inside the enemy country and by air.

According to “Maariv”, Sandman examined the threats Hezbollah’s Secretary general, Sayed Hassan Nassralah emitted, and wrote that during the next round the enemy will attack “Israel” using thousands of cells each formed of four to five excellent infantry fighters, carrying medium size machine guns, anti-tank rockets and among them a sniper armed with light weapos, and as soon as they cross the border they will receive support from Arab inhabitants. Sandman wrote, “Up till now the Israeli army has a no reply to such a scenario”.  He added that the Air force superiority is not decisive anymore.

Sandman added in his article that the structure of the Israeli forces is old and doesn’t fit with the latest conditions on the battlefield (with the exception of the elite forces, as the “Israeli army is formed of heavy reserve units); so he foresees that the (“Israeli”) army should be trained on landing American forces in “Israel” within short notice: “such a force could deter the enemy and prevent them from launching an attack”. He concluded that “Israel” should be ready for the day when the United States shall not be available to provide “Israel” with help in emergency times.

Source: As-Safir

Original article published on 30 Sepember 2009

About the author

Adib S. Kawar and Fausto Giudice are members of Tlaxcala, the network of translators for linguistic diversity. This translation may be reprinted as long as the content remains unaltered, and the source, author, translator and reviser are cited.

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