For anyone involved in our work at Unit 11741, nothing that Ynet published over the weekend is particularly surprising. Israel was simply not ready for the war post 10/7 and has been scrambling for over 14 months.
It’s worth reading the article in full as it outlines what Israel has done on the black market to acquire essential items such as gunpowder, artillery shells, and other weapons.
I want to highlight one portion in particular that pertains to basic protective equipment for soldiers (emphasis added):
During the week following October 7, IDF officers opened up the emergency arsenal storerooms of two Northen and Southern Command reserves divisions (146th and 252nd respectively) and their faces dropped.
Alongside the shortage of equipment, such as walkie-talkies, ceramic vests, weapons and hundreds of tanks and armored vehicles not fit for use, they realized that over 50% of commanders didn’t have the night-vision devices (NVDs), needed for the upcoming ground operation. These instruments are critical for any modern ground warfare, and Hamas and Hezbollah already had them.
There are only a few companies in the world that know how to manufacture NVDs meeting military standards. “Elbit is one such company, and we knew that it already had a deal finalized at the time to supply the American Army with 10,000 bino and monocular NVDs,” says an officer who was involved.
“So, we swiftly asked the American Army if they would turn this deal over to us. They explained, however, that only a presidential decree could release the equipment that was already in U.S. Army warehouses. We paid $127 million for these NVDs, got the presidential decree and flew them straight to officers in Gaza as, even on those first days, we knew we were going for a long war. That was one of many complex measures we’ve taken along the line to equip the army.”
And the root cause of the problem is the long war: Over the years, the IDF had readied for short wars of a few weeks. “Short wars were a national necessity,” a senior ranking officer tells us. “The Israeli economy can’t take, and may consequently collapse from, a long war. The Israeli public, on whose civil-Zionist sentiment the IDF’s strength as a reservist army rests, will erode accordingly. The political echelon instructed the IDF to prepare for a short, deadly war with powerful opening strikes. Bang-and-we’re-done, if you like—like in the Second Lebanon War in 2006, and Operation Protective Edge in 2014.”
Herein lies the problem and why groups like Unit 11741 have proven necessary - Israel never prepared for long wars and therefore never created the systems to sustain long wars. When there are tens of thousands of agenda items, “smaller items” like the safety of ceramic plates, helmets, and ballistic glasses (to name a few) simply slip through the cracks.
It’s about time that media outlets begin to say the quiet part out loud - the IDF needs donor assistance.