Israeli army identity angst
ISN - August 10, 2007
The Israeli military is struggling to redefine its public role and regain support for the draft lost in the Lebanon war, second intifada and Gaza evacuations.
By Dominic Moran in Tel Aviv for ISN Security Watch (10/08/07)
Beset by conscientious objection movements, the Israeli military is struggling to come to terms with the slow undermining of its leadership role in society.
A report released by the Israel Defense Forces Manpower Division late last month showed that only 75 percent of potential conscripts were recruited into the military in 2006, the lowest figure in the nation's history.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak promised a group of army reservists that youths who "shirk" their duties would be dealt with in order to "minimize drastically this phenomenon of avoiding the IDF."
Asked by ISN Security Watch whether Barak was serious, Begin-Saadat Center for Strategic Strategies expert Professor Eytan Gilboa said: "Yes, he has to do something about it, because it now endangers the ability of the military to deal with current and future threats."
"Some of the problems that emerged in the second Lebanon War can easily be attributed to failures in Israeli society to understand the [security] environment," he said.
Arik Diamant from Courage to Refuse told ISN Security Watch that Barak's statement on the draft was a populist effort to curry public favor ahead of a his upcoming electoral tilt for the premiership.
"If there is a decline in responsiveness to the military draft, it is fairly consistent. This is not something that happened yesterday. There is a slow decline and there are many reasons for it, he said."
Societal shifts
The Israeli military role in society has always been envisioned by Zionist Israelis as a mechanism for social integration and for both building and defending the state.
However, with the 1973 Yom Kippur War and the 1982 Lebanon War and its bloody aftermath, this image began to ebb, reaching a nadir with the first intifada, when many Israelis began to understand the extent of Palestinian opposition to military rule in the Occupied Territories.
"The threats were visible, clear and so everybody understood that if you don't go to the army you are endangering your family, yourself, people around you. In the last decade this perception evaporated and now it needs to be restored," Gilboa said.
Asked to confirm rumors that students had learned how to avoid induction through skewing the army's mental and psychological profiling, co-founder of anti-militarism NGO New Profile, Ruth Hiller, told ISN Security Watch, creative youths could always find a way out.
According to Diamant: "They [the military] are trying to sell us panic and fear and I think it is inconsistent with the quality of life in Israel which has gone up dramatically. It is very difficult to convince the people that if you don't give three years of your life then we are in great danger."
Reservist foment
Reservist movements joined other social groups in demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, then-defense minister Amir Peretz and wartime IDF commander Dan Halutz over the failures of the July-August 2006 Lebanon War.
Reservist units were thrown into battle without sufficient direction from above, lacking basic equipment and sufficient training. In several instances, units were reportedly forced to break into Lebanese shops for food and water.
Reservists typically serve around 36 days a year in the army following three years of compulsory service after high school.
"As a consequence of the war we had last year [Lebanon] I think there is a great disbelief in the system, more in the authorities, but also in the IDF, in its ability to defend when we need it. And more and more people are saying, "Why should I do these three years, I don't believe in the system," Sivan Rozenblum from pro-draft educational NGO Aharai told ISN Security Watch.
Religious exemption
The draft has had a profound formative impact on the nature of communal relations in Israel, particularly in determining the nature of state-Haredi and secular-Haredi relations.
On 18 July, the Knesset (Israeli parliament) voted overwhelmingly to extend the Tal law granting Haredim (ultra-Orthodox) an almost blanket exemption from military service.
The legislation, which was initially passed in 2003, was an effort on the part of the then-Ariel Sharon government to address popular discontent among secular and national religious Israeli Jews concerning the failure of the military and successive governments to ensure universal conscription.
The issue peaked politically in the late 1990s, forcing most major secular parties to come out openly against the maintenance of the Haredi exemption.
The blanket exemption was attendant on the continued study of haredi men in yeshivot (Torah academies) and has created a situation in which the majority of ultra-Orthodox men are at least nominally engaged in Torah study and play no role in the workforce.
The result has been the gradual impoverishment of many haredi communities.
Under Tal, haredi youths are permitted to leave the yeshiva at the age of 22 for a year of work without fear of conscription. Hailed as a major breakthrough in 2003, the law has reportedly had little impact.
Gilboa believes the Tal law is inadequate. "It does not resolve the major issue of haredi service in the military. It was supposed to create a better understanding between secular and haredi society but it failed to reach this goal."
"Any law should be enforced equally, that is the very basis of democracy, and I think with that regard it is very important that as long as there is a draft everyone should serve," Diamant said.
"Regardless of whether we have Tal or not, in the next few years they will be allowed to work, even though they will not be obliged to serve," he said. "I think it is evident, because no one has the political power to get them into the army but no one can take the pain of having them not working."
Conscientious objection
There was an efflorescence of left-liberal conscientious objection to military service in the West Bank and Gaza Strip following the 2000 outbreak of the second intifada, with the formation of new refusenik organizations and the addition of several hundred objectors to their ranks.
The organizations have different positions on their relationship to Zionism and the military.
"In northern Tel Aviv in particular those who come from the most affluent sector of Israeli society, they are the ones who are trying to evade most service in the Israeli army," Gilboa alleged.
While the initial impetus of left-liberal objection movements has slowed with the end of the second intifada, the public interest generated by their formation has an ongoing impact on the public discourse regarding the role of the military in the West Bank and Gaza.
Fractured relations
The 2005 evacuation of Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip created a profound crisis in the worldview and relationship to the state - and by extension the military - of the religious Zionist national-religious community, which views as sacred the state's duty to maintain the Jewish hold on the Land of Israel.
The military and police managed, at the time, to prevent profound national-religious discontent with their role in the evacuations from burgeoning into a full-scale conscientious objection movement.
However, the tensions over Gaza exploded during the evacuation of nine buildings at the Amona outpost in 2006 with major violence on the part of settlers and police. This was followed by a series of low-scale violent confrontations in the West Bank, culminating in the refusal of around a dozen national-religious soldiers to obey orders to participate in the evacuation of settlers from two residences in central Hebron this week.
The soldiers said they were acting on rabbinical authority, raising a storm of controversy in the secular Israeli press concerning the ongoing role of hard-line national-religious rabbis in undermining the community's relationship to the state.
"When soldiers in the army seek for authorities outside the army to tell them what to do, for guidance for their own orders whether to evacuate Jewish settlers or not, then it is very dangerous for society as a whole, not only for the army," says Rozenblum.
The soldiers' refusal presents a profound challenge to the military given its increasing reliance on national-religious soldiers, who have also been reaching mid-level officers positions, previously dominated by seculars, in the IDF in recent years.
"The ratio of service among the national-religious youth is the highest in the country," Gilboa confirmed. "And not only do they serve in the army they also continue to volunteer for service in the permanent army in a much larger ratio compared to representatives of the other segments of Israeli society."
A Haaretz-Dialog poll published in the wake of the Hebron evacuation showed that 30 percent of the public supported the soldiers' refusal of orders.
This growing public disillusionment with the role of the security forces may have a potential impact on the conduct of future Israeli withdrawals from the West Bank.
Military education
The fight for the future orientation of youth to the military is underway in schools where a series of large-scale, well-funded youth projects operate to encourage a positive attitude to military service.
Aharai's Rozenblum works for one such group. A recent article on Aharai shows students inspecting a machine gun.
"Once you enter the IDF it is also a window to Israeli society. I think it deals with educating the soldiers and it deals with getting to know different sectors within society, and that is very important," she told ISN Security Watch.
To Hiller: "We provide situations within the public school systems that open up doors so the military has free access all the time. Most of the last two years, and particularly the last year of high school is centered around preparation for military and matriculation."
"I think it is probably too easy these days to dodge the army," Rozenblum said, while adding that some forms of conscientious objection were legitimate.
Referring to the social and financial impact of non-enlistment, she said, "If you don't do your military service then obviously getting employment afterwards, your options in civil life are minimized."
"Young people are still attracted to combat positions because it still buys you a good place in society," Diamant explained. Not going to the army if you are an 18 year old guy, for many girls [romantically] that is a non-starter.
"I think that the concrete benefits given by the state are not the consideration weighed by young people when they choose to enlist or not, it is more the social side of it," he said.
Gilboa, Diamant and Rozenblum agree that the current national service framework whereby a limited number of those found unfit for army service work in charity, welfare and other community organizations should be greatly expanded. Hiller disagrees, seeing the measure as an effort to promote cheap labor.
Returning to the subject of conscription, Hiller concluded: "You can't fool the Israeli public anymore, the military is not what it was."
Dr Dominic Moran, based in Tel Aviv, is ISN Security Watch's senior correspondent in the Middle East and the Director of Operations of ISA Consulting.
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Russia: Ghosts haunt succession
Boris Yeltsin's handoff to Vladimir Putin established the rules of the game: Outgoing presidents name their successors, and the Kremlin uses any means necessary to get its way. From RFE/RL
By Brian Whitmore for RFE/RL (10/08/07)
It was the summer of 1999, and Boris Yeltsin's boozy and tumultuous presidency was drawing to a close.
Prosecutors were investigating Yeltsin's cronies - and even members of his immediate family - for graft. Russia was reeling from an economic crisis. Voters were in an angry and surly mood.
And elections were looming.
Such was the atmosphere when Yeltsin went on television eight years ago this week, on the morning of 9 August 1999, to tell the country that he was firing his government - for the third time in less than a year.
Yeltsin replaced his prime minister, Sergei Stepashin, with Federal Security Service (FSB) head Vladimir Putin. The president then shocked Russians - and much of the world - by anointing the dour and obscure former KGB officer Putin as his chosen heir.
Putin's unlikely ascent followed months of chaos, turmoil and uncertainty as rival clans ruthlessly battled to control Russia's first post-Soviet transition of power. And the events surrounding his meteoric rise in 1999 proved decisive. It was at this time when Russia's clumsy, fleeting, halting and tentative experiment with Western-style liberal democracy ended.
New game, new rules
It was also when the new rules of the game - the ones Russia's political elite plays by today - were established: Outgoing presidents name their successors, the bureaucracy is expected to march in lockstep to support the heir to the throne and the Kremlin will use any and all means necessary, no matter how brutal, to get its way.
The Yeltsin-Putin succession and its aftermath also provides a lesson that is haunting Russia's current political elite. Once they are embedded in the Kremlin, Russian presidents become virtually all powerful and are impossible to control - even by the patrons who orchestrated their rise to power.
"The Russian presidency is so strong according to our archaic constitution that it is impossible to trust anybody with it," says Moscow-based political analyst Vladimir Pribylovsky. "It is dangerous. It turns a person practically into a Tsar. This is dangerous even for a short term."
Putin said at the time that he had not planned to run for president, but added that he was accustomed to following the president's orders - and would obey this one as well.
"Sergei Vadimovich [Stepashin] and I are military men. The president has made a decision, and we will carry it out," Putin said.
Months later, on 26 March 2000, Russian voters would make Putin their president in an election that looked more like a coronation.
Putin is widely expected to be able to anoint any successor he so chooses. According to recent polls, a startling 40 percent of Russian voters are prepared to cast ballots for Putin's chosen candidate in next March's election - regardless of who that person is.
A more popular spymaster
When the deeply unpopular Yeltsin anointed Putin his heir eight years ago, however, it looked like the longest of long shots.
In August 1999, the most popular Russian politician was a steely former spymaster who talked about cleaning up graft, punishing the corrupt and restoring Russia's lost pride. That savior's name, however, was not Putin. It was Yevgeny Primakov, who served as Yeltsin's prime minister from September 1998 until he was fired in May 1999.
Primakov had teamed up with Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov and other regional leaders under the banner of the newly formed political party Fatherland-All Russia. The alliance appeared to have all the elements for political success - a popular leader and a nationwide political machine that could deliver votes on election day.
The thought of a Primakov presidency terrified Yeltsin's inner circle.
Primakov made it clear that he had Yeltsin cronies like oil tycoon Boris Berezovsky and electricity monopoly chief Anatoly Chubais squarely in his crosshairs. He pledged to wage a war on economic crime, and proposed an amnesty for petty criminals to save jail space for corrupt officials and oligarchs.
"Yeltsin, Berezovsky, Chubais, didn't want to lose power - and maybe not just power but possibly their lives or freedom - when Primakov and Luzhkov came to power," Pribylovsky says.
In order to stop the Primakov juggernaut, Yeltsin's team frantically searched for a marketable candidate.
Several names were floated, including retired General Aleksandr Lebed, then the governor of Krasnoyarsk Krai, and Stepashin, a former interior minister who preceded Putin as prime minister.
According to media reports at the time, Yeltsin removed Stepashin in favor of Putin because Kremlin insiders did not think he was tough - or unscrupulous - enough to take the extreme measures that many felt might be necessary to win and hold power.
When Yeltsin and his inner circle settled on Putin, very few political observers gave the stern former spymaster much of a chance. Pribylovsky says Yeltsin's endorsement looked like "a brick tied to Putin's legs," adding that the president's endorsement "was a minus and not a plus."
Apartment block attacks
But the game was about to change dramatically.
Days before Putin's appointment, Chechen rebel commander Shamil Basayev invaded Daghestan. Weeks later, a series of mysterious bombings of apartment blocks in Moscow and other cities terrified the country and killed more than 300 people.
Without presenting any evidence, Russian authorities immediately blamed the bombings on Basayev's rebels and a wave of anti-Chechen hysteria gripped the country.
Putin spoke like a gangster, vowing to hunt down and kill what he called "terrorists," memorably saying, "if we catch them in the toilet, we will wipe them out in the outhouse too."
Russian forces then bombed and invaded Chechnya, which had enjoyed de facto autonomy.
Putin's tough-guy stance touched a nerve among Russians. His popularity soared.
Andrei Ryabov, a political analyst with the Moscow Carnegie Center, says he began to take Putin seriously as a candidate in mid-October 1999, when his popularity surpassed Primakov's.
"He adequately met society's demands and aspirations. He rode the wave. And therefore part of the elite was prepared to support him seriously," Ryabov says.
There is no doubt that Putin benefited from the wave of terror that swept Russia following the apartment bombings. But many analysts say that autumn's dramatic events were no coincidence.
David Satter, author of "Darkness at Dawn: The Rise of the Russian Criminal State," is one of those who believes that Russian authorities orchestrated the apartment bombings.
"I think that the evidence is sufficient to conclude that the FSB blew up the apartment buildings and organized a pretext for the beginning of the second Chechen war in order to create that miracle of electing somebody chosen by Yeltsin," Satter says.
Extreme measures
With Putin wildly popular, such extreme measures will probably not be needed this time around. But nevertheless, Satter says the precedent has been set and such options are now on the table.
"We have a terrible precedent, because in the minds of everyone is the idea that power changes hands with the help of such methods," Satter says. "So it is not excluded that there could be further provocations, maybe not on that scale, in the run-up to the 2008 elections."
Putin also benefited from a barrage of nonstop propaganda promoting him on media controlled by the Kremlin and its allies.
Satter says the bureaucracy, got the message loud and clear that it was time to march in lockstep behind the new leader.
"What happened in 1999 was that those who were behind Luzhkov and Primakov, they didn't have any great affection for those two figures. They knew who they were and what they represented. But they saw power moving in that direction," Satter says.
"And as soon as they saw power moving in the other direction as a result of the apartment bombings and the second Chechen war...of course their loyalty to Luzhkov and Primakov evaporated," Satter adds.
Yeltsin sealed the deal by resigning on New Year's Eve and abdicating power to Putin.
The main legacy of 1999 is a pliant electorate and a unified obedient bureaucracy - both of whom are waiting for Putin to give the order about whom to support.
The problem this time is that there is no potential successor that everybody in Putin's inner circle trusts - including the two purported front-runners, First Deputy Prime Ministers Sergei Ivanov and Dmitry Medvedev.
"They [Putin's team] have problems among themselves," Pribylovsky says. "They are afraid of each other. They are seeking somebody they can trust with the throne. Everybody trusts Putin. They don't know what will happen with his successor."
They may have cause to worry. Putin kept the promise he allegedly made to Yeltsin to make sure him and his family were spared prosecution.
But soon after coming to power, Putin did turn on some of those who put him in power - most notably Boris Berezovsky, who fled to London where he now lives in exile.
And that inherent mistrust that is now built into the system may be the most enduring and consequential legacy from that fateful year of 1999.
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