The IDF - Hard Decisions to Be Made:
My Personal Insights and a True Story

We civilians (and those of us who were soldiers) are aware of how hard the decision making process in the IDF can be. But we are mostly unaware and do not understand how new immigrants are viewed in the IDF.

Large systems such as our military are not infallible; they have made mistakes in the past and will continue to make mistakes in the future. Naturally the system will generally learn from these mistakes and improve itself sooner or later. The sole purpose of this article is to give the new immigrant an inside view of the decision making process and some proportion of what a young new immigrant should or should not expect from the army.

Democracy and the army:

Naturally these two concepts cannot coexist together, not even now when the IDF has a much more open approach to “personal requests or special needs”. Today the IDF has provided a much better and flexible means of communication between the soldier, his family and the military command chain, but still there is absolutely no intention to make the system a “democratic system”.

The anomaly of the chain of command:

I remember myself many years ago as a young sergeant being told to train a new group of soldiers in basic training, all new immigrants from different countries. Their ages varied from 30 to 40, they spoke different languages, had different educational levels and academic degrees and almost everyone had a family and children waiting for them at home.

Which other country in the world would have a program such as this one (Called “Shlav Bet”) with recent and older new immigrants such as me: a sergeant, only 22 years old, singly commanding all of these people? This is the beauty of our army. The interaction, the togetherness and the natural discipline where a young commander can give orders to a famous PHD and be obeyed! All this in a language they can barely manage.

The Commander’s Mission:

One of the best lessons we learn in the early stages of training as commanders, is the fact that under that uniform and that “personal number” (Mispar Ishi), every soldier is a human being with special needs.

Another great lesson I used all during my service was that the main task of a commander, besides accomplishing his missions, is that we have a moral and military duty to send back home every one of our soldiers at the end of the mission or at the end of the service, safe and sound.

The hard decisions:

There are times a new immigrant has needs others don’t have – this is a fact not always welcome or understood in the chain of command. It is not possible to fulfill every special need or every request. A soldier should know that even when a negative or unfair response is given to his request, he is still a soldier and must follow the orders and the military laws, like it or not. Otherwise he will find himself in a very unpleasant situation with serious consequences.

I remember sitting as a military judge (as a Company Commander that functions as a judge to the soldiers under his command) having to make a decision about a situation that could happen only in Israel.

Imagine a 30 year- old captain judging a 35 year-old soldier, who against direct orders, left the base and went home for 48 hours without permission. Upon returning to the base to report to his commander, he was to be punished for his crime - an extremely serious offense under the military law – abandoning the service!

I knew that soldier. I knew he was an exemplary soldier and I could not understand why he did it; therefore in the hearing I asked the simple question: Why? Why did you do it? To my surprise he refused to answer me and instead told me: “Sir, I am ready to pay the price, sir”. I was pretty much in shock and could not believe it, but the law is the law and I decided to send him to prison for seven days, beginning the next morning.

I still could not understand and was not sure I had made the right decision. I decided to call the division`s chief rabbi late that night and ask for guidance and he asked for a few hours to think about. Early in the morning the Rabbi told me “I have the feeling he is not telling us something – call his wife”. What? What for? She is not a soldier and I cannot do it – we are in the military and family therapy is not my field! He then gave me a very simple military answer: “Fine - so this is a direct order – do it now”.

I called his wife who already knew about my decision to send her husband to prison. To my surprise she was very polite on the phone. It took the use of a lot of psychology and some time to get an honest answer. His wife told me that for more than eight years they were trying to have children with no results. They had started some experimental method in the US and after making Aliyah they had made some progress, but unfortunately this was their last chance and if it failed they would have to adopt.

That same day the husband, my soldier, was supposed to go home for a short vacation but as often happens in the army, a last-minute change of orders had made me cancel his leave, meaning he had to stay on duty that day. That same two days were the days they had to “be together”! She also asked me not to tell him she had told me because her husband was so embarrassed for her. Now what do I do? I had to find a way out. So again I called the Rabbi who told me to make “the best decision I could as a commander” and hung up on me. Great - what now?

This is not a story with a totally happy ending because the couple did not succeed in having the child they wanted so badly and since then I lost contact with them, but to prison he would not go. I had to work hard in the system and convince my commander to cancel the entire legal process “as if it never took place”. Instead, I had him under retention in the base (kind of a house arrest) for 14 days.

The decision may sound simple and easy, but remember this is not one soldier and one commander story. We are talking about more than 300 soldiers and the bad example of leaving the base, and setting the bad precedence of not punishing the “criminal”. This would affect the discipline. I could not tell the story to anyone and could not just let it go, so I had to create a situation where I fulfilled the needs of one soldier, the discipline in the entire battalion, and also show that a legal procedure cannot be disregarded. For this purpose we created a “white lie”, explaining that the soldier had some illness that could not be handled in jail! It worked and everyone understood.

The moral:

You may understand now how difficult it can be with one soldier. Imagine now a battalion or a huge army of more than 150,000 soldiers from several different backgrounds living in a small country where everyone knows each other.

When enlisting, or having your children or grandchildren enlisted, remember he/she is not the only one with special needs. But also remember these young soldiers are not alone, not for a second. The, military has created not only a strong army but also a strong family. Give it a chance and have some faith and just in case – there are many ways to appeal any decision.

Sincerely,
 

Tzvi Szajnbrum, Attorney at Law