Talk:Israel Defense Forces
and Just out of curiousity.
Who exactly considers the Israeli Army to have the most effective methods of crowd control and use of non-lethal force?
Conventional military wisdom is that armies should minimalize their involvement in crowd control and non-lethal force, and that military forces in general handle this very badly. It doesn't seem obivous to me that the Israeli army handles hostile crowds better than most civilian police forces, so I'm curious where that statement comes from.
As to Israel's being the only country that uses assassinations as a defensive measure: how would one categorize George W. Bush's request to bring Mr. Bin-Laden, dead or alive? Mullah Omar? --Uriyan
Semantics. The official policy still is that targeted assassinations by the US are not-sanctioned by the US government. However, that doesn't mean that the US military has to avoid bombing places where OBL might be for *eh-hem* other legitimate reasons. Oh darn is if they happen to kill OBL in a raid or he happens to not surrender to ground troops. That's what was meant. The statement in this article about the "officialness" of the US policy needs to be changed. --maveric149
U.S. Tomohawks striking god-knows-where in Sudan and Rangers touring Mullah Ommar's house are in fact not ambigious at all: these are all official assassination attempts. Also, the US $25 million reward makes the search after OBL & Co. an officialy-sanctioned bounty hunt. Israel does not play in these games: it does not do carpet bombings and it does not lease its affairs to subcontractors. But I still have difficult figuring out why everyone is silent with the US but so angry with Israel. Must be something in the Israeli genes. --Uriyan
- It's still not an official US policy to solely target a single individual with military action that is only aimed at killing the individual. There is a Presidential executive order barring the US military from taking such action and this order has not been rescinded. There always needs to be a demonstrated military goal in taking military action. The reward for OBL is a police action that is common in the United States. Besides, bombing an area that is deemed to be a military target and also has the bonus of harboring a wanted individual is on a different level that placing explosives in a cell phone. One is military action that may result in the death of the wanted individual and the other is a prima facie assassination. I will change the sentence to reflect this. --maveric149
Funny, I never knew Afghanistan was a part of the U.S. - or how one would explain the bounty regarding Bin-Ladin a police action? Also, a point to ponder about - which is more moral: placing explosive in a guy's cell phone, or carpet-bombing the whole city in which he's in? --Uriyan
- Yes and the West Bank is not a recognized part of Israel either (at least not by the States if I recall). International bounty hunts are common and this is also an area where extradition treaties and international law come in. I never once stated that the US method is better in any way than the Israeli one -- it does have major issues. Chief amoung these is a tendency to sometimes exaggerate the need to blow-up a military target just to put a certain person on the run or to kill that person out-right (remember Kadhafi in Libya?). This issue here was with the "officialness" of the US policy on assassination not on the merits of one method vs. another. --maveric149
You see, Israel is not pretending this to be a police action. This is a war, and in a war you sometimes do things you're not normally be doing in peacetime. Extradiction treaties (read: Oslo) would be nice, if the Palestinians had bothered to fulfill them. As to the U.S. method, it's much worse than the Israeli one, as it involves killing huge amounts of people, most of whom are innocent. The reason why the U.S. can proceed, and Israel can't? The U.S. is the U.S., and Israel is Israel. Talk about hypocricy. --Uriyan
- And September 11th wasn't an act of war? The US isn't pretending this is a police action either. But the US is using many means to fight this war -- including police action. --maveric149
Exactly my point. Both Israel and the U.S. are now participating in a new kind of warfare. This warfare is different from most major conflicts of the past, as it involves fighting a vastly inferior oponent, who however has the advantages of stealth, mobility and the more powerful side's ignorance. Both Israel and the U.S. are committed to their warfare, which translates into their readiness to commit actions which go against regular peace-time morals (as well as international conventions), for example assassinating enemy leaders through various means. This is tragic, but that's the nature of war. But now the big question: if you take some more-or-less impartial observers (e.g. Europeans): why do they begin to care so much when Israel is fighting its war - but forget all their conventions when the U.S. does the same thing? Is that hypocrisy, or what? And yes, the fact that not a single word or deed by Palestinian Authority was there to oppose the hostilities then in October 2000, makes them responsible for the current Intifada. --Uriyan
- Are you arguing to change the article in some way or are you just arguing because you perceive that Israel is getting a bum rap in their war against cross border terrorism while the US is getting more or less carte blanche for fighting its war on international terrorism? If the later is true then this discussion no longer has relevance to the article and can only be counterproductive. --maveric149
Well, I'm not arguing in direct relevance to this article, but I do consider writing an article concerning this question, and this discussion with you did give me a lot of stuff to think about. But, if I had wasted your time, then I apologize :-). Uriyan
- No need to apologize - we both seemed to get carried away. This whole terrorism situation is screwed up and our two nations are on different paths in fighting it. --maveric149
I agree to the situation's being screwed up, but I don't really see a difference between Israel and the U.S.: both countries were not exactly the favorites of the Muslim world, both were attacked and now both try to exterminate the terrorists - without a complete success so far, with thousands of innocent people getting hurt on both sides. --Uriyan
- This isn't to help this specific article, but rather to help the atmosphere on wikipedia: could we not speak about "exterminating" human beings? That kind of language is extremely disturbing, with it's implicit metaphor comparing human beings to insects or rats. It definitely turns me off to participating in these articles, and I believe others as well. :( DanKeshet
Well, I was writing in a hurry and I rather meant eradicating terrorism as a phenomenon threatening U.S. and Israel. But, to me, the very concept of terrorism is so morally repulsive (no matter who carries it out), that I do not see a moral problem in killing an active terrorist. I think that war is war, and until it ends, I will not feel compassion for the soldiers of the other side. This does not hold true for non-combatant civilians - but terrorists do not belong to them. Perhaps many of those who read this would disagree with me - but there are no daily attempts on the lives of most of them. --Uriyan
- Men serve three years in the IDF, as do the women on combat positions, but women on non-combat positions serve two. In addition, men complete up to one month annually of reservist service, up to the age of 43-45. Completion of military service gives higher unemployment benefits, child support and widow pension ([1]) and it is also required for attaining a security clearance and serving in some types of government positions (in most cases, security-related); Israeli Arabs claim that this puts them at a disadvantage.
The information above is false; indeed, a couple of months ago there was a bill that proposed the introduction of such priveliges, but it was turned down. Currently, there are no civilian benefits associated with serving in the army. --Uri
Q had written the following, which I turned into a clause. --Ed Poor
- It was formed following the establishment of Israel by combining the groups of the Haganah, Lehi and Stern gang. The IDF has built upon the tactics of these groups (especially the latter two).
- Q, I expected better from you. The IDF is explicitly known to have built upon two schools, but those were of the British Army, and of the Palmach. Lehi and Irgun personnel (and their experience) were mostly pushed away by the leftist elite (associated with the Palmach), and didn't have a major part in forming the army. --Uri
Apart from Uri's statement above saying info is wrong (I have no view on this), I do feel that "Men serve three years in the IDF, as do the women on combat positions, but women on non-combat positions serve two." is at least a mis-type with combat and non-combat probably swapped round. -- SGBailey 07:27 Dec 25, 2002 (UTC)
- No, it's correct as written. The army requires women who want to serve in combat positions to serve for three years because combat soldiers must go through a lengthy period of training, and the army wants to get as much use of that training as possible. -- AdamRaizen
- the fact that the Palestinian Authority has never arrested individuals on Israel's wanted list has essentially led to
The PA has arrested such individuals, according to the news I read. Not always, and not always when Israel wants, and sometimes they let them go (and sometimes the prisons get bombed) - but never is way too strong a word. Martin
I tried to improve the English and the NPOV a bit but there is much yet to do. Don't use words like "recently" and "lately", they get out of date too quickly. I removed the sentence "The International Solidarity Movement, which has blamed the IDF for downright murder, has lately been found to house escaping Palestinian terrorists, under the cover of "peace activists"." because it is a pure lie. It was found that some Palestinian on a wanted list had attended an ISM meeting; that's not even close to the same thing. Btw, "alleged" nuclear capability? Come off it. -- zero --- 80.179.85.7, I'm sorry to report that most of your additions are duplicate work of articles that already exist. While additions are never a bad thing, rehashing the complete history of Israel on this page may not be feasible as the article loses focus on the IDF which is what the article should be about. Maybe you should consider working on articles about Israeli history instead? Please also read Wikipedia:NPOV. BL 03:27, 1 Oct 2003 (UTC)
I'm recently started working about IDF history. So far, I added the history from 1948 until 1981. The next big entry would be 1982 Lebanon war.
Also, I have entred a subsection about IDF technology and weapons with general introduction and a list of weapons (the "tech tree").
I think the Sheva' Brigade is more often called the 7th Brigade nowadays, the other brigades seem to have retained their "nicknames" though. BL 23:32, 9 Oct 2003 (UTC)
It may be useful to add a section on unit sizes in the IDF. After a while, the whole platoon, company, squad/section, etc thing gets difficult for newbies, especially in how many of x are in y and so forth and so on. More especially, every nation has its own idea of how it works, so looking at how the IDF organizes may be a good idea. -Penta 06:54, 31 Oct 2003 (UTC)
- The following information is classtified. You may add an article about units hirracy in general, but don't relate specific to the IDF and don't diclose information about its ordeal and sizes.