The air force has rightfully earned the considerable credit it receives from the Israeli public. Its excellence, professionalism, thorough and uncompromising self-introspection – all these attributes have duly made it the country's insurance policy.
Unlike the customary Israeli approach of patchwork improvisation, the IAF is the State of Israel as we dream it could be. Not perfect, but as close to it as humanly possible. The public also expects the Tel Aviv municipality to function properly but is willing to tolerate its shortcomings. It is not willing to accept such mistakes from the air force, and that's a good thing.
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Hence the public's shock and dismay over the flooding that occurred at the Hatzor airbase last Thursday. The air force is not Nahariya or Ashkelon. It is entirely unacceptable that one of its bases was knocked out of commission for three days, and that eight fighter jets were damaged while sitting on the ground – and that business continued as usual. No one on the base took responsibility, and no one demanded that it be taken.
The officers of the IAF general staff should launch an exhaustive investigation into what transpired, and determine whether the Hatzor base functioned properly in this instance. Why did the repeated warnings from the local regional council – that the nearby streams were dangerously close to overflowing – go unanswered, and why did the base fail to respond efficiently in real-time.
We expect better from a base that is supposed to be well-trained in handling incoming missiles. To be sure, the flooding was a rare natural occurrence, but the question still begs: If this was the level of performance at the base last Thursday, how will it perform under a missile barrage in the next war?
That this occurred specifically at the Hatzor base is especially disconcerting. Its commanders are the first ones to know why it happened. Woe unto Israel if its battle fitness is so easily undermined, and commanders would do well to ask themselves how the base is preparing to contend with the troubling possibility of similar natural disasters in the future.
The IAF on Monday said that responsibility for draining the adjacent streams falls on the local regional council. Even if this is true, it's just an excuse: The air force is capable of moving mountains when it wants to. It can shut down entire training areas, move civilian airports, reroute passenger planes. But in this instance, it turned deaf and abided the notoriously commonplace Israeli approach of "don't worry, everything will be fine?"
This failure reverberates even more because of the ridiculous attempt to hide it. The air force should convene its top brass and chief field security officers and they should be informed we're in the year 2020. The thought that it would be possible to conceal the closure of a vital base and damage to planes is amateurish and points to a dangerous disconnect from reality.
It's unclear why the IDF Censor lent its hand to the attempt, and why officials in the IDF Spokesperson's Unit didn't stress to decision-makers that the risk of trying to conceal the incident both undercuts the public's faith in the air force and far outweighs any possible benefits.
We expect the air force to be different. This is the source of its pride. Its rare standards cannot apply strictly to the skies; they need to be implemented on the ground as well – in terms of norms, values and daily performance. The air force cannot be allowed to become a joke.
For this precise reason, the incident at Hatzor cannot culminate with the words "we are investigating and will draw conclusions." There needs to be a clear assumption of responsibility, not just because millions of shekels were flushed down the toilet and operational readiness was unnecessarily impaired, but to ensure the IAF remains a staple of unique excellence within the broader tapestry of Israeli mediocrity.
