IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi's tenure has created one of the biggest discrepancies seen thus far between rhetoric and conduct. Kochavi's predecessors turned the IDF into an army without a mandate for victory, an interest group fighting to "peacefully co-exist" with terrorism and constantly failing to stand up to it but protected its senior staff, command centers, and systems.
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Kochavi came into the job speaking a different language. There was never a chief of staff who said the word "victory" so many times – in workshops, in published plans for the IDF, in lectures. He was marked as the "victory chief of staff." It looked like the DNA was about to change. Even when he encountered a high-tech company that boasted about taking the "best and the brightest," he was angry.
But in Operation Guardian of the Walls in May, Hamas' underground "Metro" shelters remained safe ground for them. Divisions of tanks didn't come rolling in over the heads, and Kochavi didn't demand that they be brought it. If they had, we can assume the Metro would have been abandoned instantly. This past Saturday, two rockets landed off the coast of Tel Aviv and it appears that Kochavi's senior staff rushed to order the IDF Spokesperson's Unit's media department with much more determination than they showed in issuing commands to the operations branch – the main thing was to explain that the rockets had landed in error, and contain the event.
One can assume that Kochavi planned something else. It's still possible. In the past few years, the IDF has been busy waging PR operations in the enemy's home front. If only the chief of staff would use his skills to shape the thinking in the General Staff, or Israel, and devote his fourth year in the role to daily contact with Israeli society. There is a strong need that will change the reason why the General Staff resists using the ground forces – its view that Israeli society cannot accept casualties and is not willing to pay the price needed to oust the leadership of Hamas from the Gaza Strip.
Let the army under his leadership publish the results of research he has certainly ordered about the importance of raiding the Hamas command centers in Gaza – a complicated effort that will lead to a demilitarized Gaza Strip, something to which the current leadership there will not agree. Let the army report the military cost of such an operation and discuss it honestly, along with the civilian cost of not taking action, and demonstrate courage. Because pushing off action like this for the "next guy" to handle means rockets of a quality and in a quantity that in a dual-front war (in the south and the north) no Israeli defense technology will be able to counter in a manner that can guarantee that life in Israel will go on as normal.
Kochavi has to launch a campaign for public opinion and talk to Israeli society. He needs to make sure that the path as he sees it in the General Staff's headquarters, which holds back from any maneuvers and sacrifice, is the right one. If it is, then he should decide to shape thinking, build spirit, make it clear to society what role the IDF plays and what it means to be a sovereign nation. And if he finds out that society is determined, strong, and is being treated with a defeatist attitude, he should campaign the decision makers in society's name and argue that the chief of an army of the people should speak for the people and demand security in their name.
Reading society is the weak link. As long as the axiom in the General Staff is that when faced with violations of sovereignty the people should only activate its cyber or air defenses will not lead to victory. At least Kochavi can win hearts so that his successor can keep them safe.
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