Talpiot’s mission isn’t to learn how to fight. It is to learn how to think. Its recruits, now referred to by many in the Ministry of Defense as the IDF’s top priority (even more than finding and training fighter pilots), must agree to stay in the army for at least ten years. This is substantially above the norm of three years for men and two years for women, and there’s a good reason for it.
Fighting is of course a major component of the Talpiot program. Many graduates go on to command elite troops in the field, command naval vessels, and even fly F16s in combat. But mission number one can be described as intellectual.
This was the case from the moment the unit was founded. Talpiot was created by two professors who were horrified at Israel’s setbacks in the opening days of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. After Israel’s stunning victory in the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel began to lose its military edge. France, Israel’s main weapons supplier, had abandoned the country in the face of threats from Arab nations. Israel was left without a military sponsor, while the Soviet Union showered the Arab states, especially Egypt and Syria, with state-of-the-art weapons and military training. When the two countries launched a surprise attack on Judaism’s holiest day, the result was devastating. While Israel eventually turned the tide and won the war, it was a shrill wake-up call that ended Israel’s self-confidence and sense of security.
The army had been torn apart in the war. Israel lost a fifth of its air force, more than a thousand tanks had been destroyed, and the casualty rate was shocking, with almost 3,000 soldiers killed and 8,000 wounded. Israel could not survive as a nation if it was forced to go through a war like that every few years. A new path was needed.
blogs.timesofisrael.com
