I’ve been waiting for someone to say this, someone who can say it not with the guide of history and logical inference but with actual knowledge of the IDF. And here it is.
In the Israeli daily Ha’aretz tonight, military affairs writer Ze’ev Schiff says that the main conclusion that will be drawn from the IDF’s disappointing performance in the Lebanon war will be that the army’s fighting capacity and edge has been blunted by years of policing duties in the territories.
Writes Schiff …
Most units, in their training and operations, followed fighting doctrines of police forces and not of standing armies. Hezbollah trains, fights and is equiped as an army, utilizing some of the most advanced anti-tank missiles and other weapons.
The character of the IDF – known for its blitzkrieg methods, encircling movements deep inside enemy territory, and the ability to bring about a quick and decisive conclusion to the fighting – has been spoiled by years of involvement in operations that tied it down, emotionally and politically.
A couple weeks into this war, long enough that it seemed clear that things weren’t going exactly according to plan for the Israelis, TPM Reader EF wrote in and put the matter more acidly but I think correctly …
The IDFâs troubles are the bitter legacy of the endless occupation. Armies engaged primarily in harassing civilians tend to perform poorly in combat. The Argentine army, which had been engaged in a dirty war against its own people, mostly powerless to fight back, suddenly found itself in a real fight in the Falklands. The British soldiers and Marines did not arrive strapped to tables with electrodes attached to their genitals, so the Argentines didnât know how to handle them. They lost pretty quickly. Nor is this because the whole Argentine military were simply bullies and cowards; the Argentine air force, which had not been involved in rounding up and torturing helpless people, put up a good show against the Royal Navy.
Occupation duty is always bad for combat units. The American units in Korea in 1950 and those sent to Korea from occupation duty in Japan to stop the North Korean offensive performed poorly by most measures. It would take months to get them back into fighting trim, and non-occupation troops, brought in from the States, would do most of the heavy lifting in driving the North Koreans back from Pusan and Inchon.
I don’t want to get sidetracked on to the question of equivalence between the Argentine military regime and modern day Israel. I certainly don’t think they’re remotely equivalent. 
But that question is irrelevant to the point EF is making.
Occupation degrades a fighting force — a reality the Israelis need to confront right now and we Americans need to come to grips with as well. The occupation of the West Bank and Gaza is something Israel really cannot afford now as it becomes more clear that she is in renewed need of a very potent fighting army.
But, of course, this goes beyond the military sphere. Or rather the military sphere is revealing a deeper reality. The occupation itself is corrupting Israeli society just as it seems to have corrupted (remember that in its original and deep meaning, ‘corruption’ means ‘decay’, ‘rot’) the IDF. And here too, can we not see the echoes for ourselves?
As Amos Oz, the great Israeli novelist, wrote just after the Six Day War, in his first foray into public letters. âEven unavoidable occupation is a corrupting occupation.”
The occupation has become Israel’s weakness, not its strength. True friends of Israel realize this.
