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What Israel must do RIGHT NOW
Major General (Res.) Itzhak Brik (res) on what needs to be done immediately in order to save the state of Israel from a military defeat, which means an annihilation.
WHO IS Major General (Res.) Itzhak Brik (res)
“Major General (Res.) Itzhak Brik … started his military career as a Tank Commander during the 67 war while climbing up the ranks. Some of his key military roles include the 78th Reserve Division he commanded, 36 division commander, Field Forces commander, Southern Recruitment 441 Commander, and chief of the IDF Senior Colleges…(his) civilian roles are widespread and significant, such as: Ombudsman for Soldiers’ Complaints in the IDF; Chairman of the Forum of Mayors and Councils in the Galilee and the Negev; Strategic adviser for the “Rashi” foundation and more.
Major General Brik holds three degrees from Israel’s top institutes. a degree in industrial and management engineering from the Technion, Haifa; an MA in public administration, Tel-Aviv University and graduate with honor, Israel’s national security college.”
What you are about to read is my (fast) translation to English of the opening statements that Major General (Res) Itzhak Brik has given about the 1st day of the war that started on the 7th of October 2023, from an online symposium (in Hebrew). About the symposium:
“An in-depth discussion about the events of the first day of "Iron Swords" with the participation of: retired major Yitzhak Barik, retired lieutenant colonel Ametsia Chen, Avitar Ben Tzadf, former editor of the "Systems" magazine, artillery officer Adam Feder, under my guidance. In the opinion of retired Major General Yitzhak Barik, this is the tip of the iceberg of a war on several fronts and the IDF today does not have the capacity to conduct such a war. In the opinion of Major General Ametsia Chen ('Pazzi'), "Israel does not have a real army... and it must immediately appoint Yitzhak Barik as your chief of staff.”
Here is the segment, in Hebrew. The English translation follows.
“Well, since I have talked in the past about the IDF's problems in an extremely focused and difficult way, and since now we are really fighting, I prefer to talk about what needs to be done immediately. And to derive from it also things that are an exceedingly difficult problem that need to be dealt with now and immediately. What we are seeing now is only the tip of the iceberg. In case this will spread from Judea and Samaria to inside Israel, with thousands of rioters, radical Arabs who will run with thousands of weapons in their hands, with bunkers of ammunition, and they will be joined in Judea and Samaria by tens of thousands of Tanzim (militant faction of the Palestinian Fatah movement) terrorists, and inside Judea and Samaria will run into the settlements, and some of them will rush into Israel and help the Arab rioters, and if Hezbollah also enters the picture, and add to this missiles attacks, we are in a situation for which we are not completely prepared.
But I am not going to get into that right now.
I will say this: Therefore, we need to prepare for a situation that can deteriorate into what I just said immediately, as much as possible, according to priorities, as if it were going to happen. The meaning, for me, is to mobilize the army for war. To recruit an army that will be able to reinforce the northern border against Hezbollah's Radwan force, numbering 10,000 trained commandos, a hundred times more than Hamas, who could break through on foot, as Hamas did inside the communities in the south, to the communities in the north. We must immediately thicken the area, we must not wait!
Unfortunately, at this stage the IDF is stuck in Judea and Samaria, along with 20 other reserve battalions , which is also why we wait for hours for IDF forces to arrive to help communities where terrorists have taken over the communities near the Gaza Strip, because the IDF has no reserve. They reduced the army to a miniature size, so basically for today to recruit troops to come and do a job he has to release the regular army by quite a reserve, but the Deere has to run to the north, because the threat there is not only that is not smaller, it is much bigger. So he has to recruit and recruit reservists who will run to the South. Reserve mobilization is long hours, and we are in a terrible shortage of manpower, and everyone asks how is it possible that in Be’eri (Kibbutz that is just on the border with Gaza) the terrorists are there for 7 hours and no one has arrived yet (maybe they have just arrived)? Because the IDF does not have forces. The IDF (leadership has) cut the army to the brim. They did not consider combat in five arenas, but they cut it down to one and a half arenas, and when the army now have to turn to several arenas, it does not have the forces. And we see this picture before our eyes now in the Israeli area near Gaza, of how the army for hours has been unable to concentrate forces there because it does not have it. And it's in a terrible spirit. Therefore, as mentioned, we need to prepare for the Great War of 5 arenas with exceedingly small forces that we do not have in hand, and all this must be presented in front of the Government table immediately. I come and say to our friend Bibi (Israeli PM): Declare a national emergency. The judiciary reform should be stopped immediately, stop the refusal to serve in the military, stop the protests, and concentrate all the elements under one baton of state security. Not in the face of what is happening in the Gaza area, but in the face of all-out war. There are things you can do right now. For example, we have 200,000 soldiers, commanders and officers who were released from the reserves because they do not have units. They will be at home, and they will not call to war at all. They should be organized in the National Guard, at least of one hundred thousand. There are fighters who are in every town, in every city, and as soon as the great riots begin in Judea and Samaria and within the State of Israel, they will have to carry weapons. If everyone will not carry weapon, at least the weapon should be placed in armory. They should go out into the streets and defend the country, the population. No others will do it for them. You see that the army can't get along with some communities near the Gaza Strip, how will the army deal with riots inside the State of Israel, with riots within the communities of Judea and Samaria, with the Radwan force that will break into our communities. This also means the forces on the northern border, the communities, must be equipped with weapons and be prepared to fight for their community, because no one will come to help them. We see this terrible picture, that this is happening near the Gaza Strip and no one came to protect them for hours. So how will they protect? This small army, and some of it is incompetent, about all-out war in all areas, with Tanzim crossing the border into us, with pogroms of the Arabs and everything I said before. Therefore, from National Guard, and when I talk about National Guard it should get up immediately. Put a commander on it, decide that it is being done on the fly, not government discussions, not stories, not legalization. Distribute weapons tomorrow to civilians who know how to shoot. With a license? Excellent. Without a license — armory, and letting people defend themselves, because we are now completely exposed. This is a point from a nurse's book that needs to be done immediately.
And the next thing: We need to strengthen the army immediately. To stop selling the 200 tanks that we are planning to sell to Europe, I hope it is no longer there, and to build a “silent” division of tanks, a division that has enough commanders and staff members who are at home, a division that can be another reserve for what is going to happen here. We should raise all these topics at the government security cabinet table. We need to make sure that the entire country is mobilized for the national effort that is so vital and current even before the outbreak of an all-out regional war.
I want to add a few words. The major television channels cooperated for years with the political and military echelons and played to the public what it wanted to hear. Argumentative and arrogant senior commanders on the big channels, especially Channel 12, have been sitting for years and say that we are the strongest army in the Middle East. Only today, a retired general who is the star of Channel 12, which there is no discussion in which he does not appears, told the people of Israel that "We are the strongest army in the world”. This is just throwing sand in the eyes of the public, creating apathy and unpreparedness. The people wanted to believe all these stories, and the sand-seeding in their eyes, and they made the people complacent and indifferent. It reminds me of the Yom Kippur War, only much worse, because this time the war will be on the Israeli home front, and the settlements of the Jews, just as it is happening in the communities near the Gaza Strip, and not at the borders of the country.”
More translation and transcription will follow soon!
Ehden