"Major-General Yisrael Tal, who died last week, aged 86, was an Israeli soldier who designed what many considered to be the world's finest battle tank; when first introduced in 1979, the Merkava's unique shape made it one of the safest vehicles on the battlefield, its 105mm gun one of the most lethal."
A brief and fitting eulogy for an outstanding general composed not by a comrade in arms but a columnist in The Telegraph .
More remarkable is the mention General Tal received in the Lebanese Daily Star. Admittedly it was provided by Associated Press correspondent Diaa Hadid, an Israeli Arab who listed her abode as "occupied Jerusalem," however the obituary contained no malice. Hadid listed Talik's (Yisrael Tal's soubriquet) many achievements. "He is considered one of the best five armoured commanders in history, alongside US General George S. Patton, General Creighton Abrams, German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel and Israeli Major General Moshe Peled," she said quoting military sources.
Talik was both an innovative tank warfare strategist and a revolutionary tank designer.
He has been described as short in stature , somewhat Napoleonic and a strict disciplinarian. Those who knew him well say that despite his authoritarian posture Talik was a caring and likeable man.
He was barely out of high school when he joined the British Army's Jewish Brigade in World War II and saw action in the Western Desert and later in Italy. After the war he returned to Palestine where he joined the Hagana. During the War of Independence Yisrael Tal was a brigade commander, in the 1956 Sinai campaign he was an armoured division commander and in the Six Day War he led an armoured division along the northern axis in Sinai. He was commander of the southern front in the final stages of the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
In 1974 Yisrael Tal retired from the IDF after serving as its deputy chief of staff.
In 1970 while he was still in active service General Tal was appointed to head a committee commissioned to design a tank suited to IDF specifications.
At that time the ministry of defence was finding it difficult buying military hardware.
The new tank, named the Merkava, was equipped with a number of unique features which are still incorporated in the later Mark IV and V models.
They are best demonstrated in a YouTube clip which can be accessed by the following hyperlink:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjVg4Bdri8Y
The first Merkava was supplied to the IDF in 1979 and was first deployed in battle during the June 1982 invasion of Lebanon. At that time many IDF commanders believed it was invincible. With the passage of time this exaggerated confidence in the tank's capabilities was rudely deflated, nevertheless it is unsurpassed in its ease of handling, superior firepower and crew protection features.
2006 was a crucial year for the IDF and the Merkava production line. Cutbacks in defence expenditure adversely affected the acquisition of military hardware and impaired the IDF’s training programme. As a result the army was ill-prepared for the war that broke out that year. The situation was aggravated by a decision to phase-out the Merkava IV, a decision reversed after the war.
Improvements in tank armour plating have been matched by parallel advances in anti-tank weapons. Hezbollah armed with new anti-tank weapons destroyed two Merkava tanks and damaged a number of other tanks during the 2006 Lebanon War.
In the wake of the war, especially when the IDF became increasingly involved in unconventional and guerrilla warfare some analysts began to doubt Talik's claim that, "The tank is the decisive weapon of land warfare." They believed that the Merkava was too vulnerable to missiles and unsuitable for use in urban warfare. Other military experts disagreed with this arbitrary and inconclusive finding. They argued that reports of losses sustained in the Second Lebanon War were overstated.
Since then the Merkava was deployed successfully in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead.
Battlefield tactics have been revised since 2006. There has been more emphasis on aggressiveness, concentrated firepower and more coordination between air and ground attacks. Units have been trained to operate nonstop, with greater mobility using blitzkrieg manoeuvres. The Merkava was designed to be deployed primarily in conventional battle arrays. In recent years IDF. tactics have been modified in order to use its main battle tanks in urban environments where they effectively deal with asymmetric or guerilla war threats.
The Merkava's designers placed great emphasis on affording the tank's crew greater protection against anti-tank weapons. In fact it is probably the safest tank operating today.
However the tank's robust armour is not impervious to the armour penetrating capabilities of the latest generation of anti-tank weapons. In order to counter these weapons a unique active protection system dubbed the "Trophy" has been developed by Rafael Israel Armament Development Authority. The IDF plans to equip its tanks, armoured personnel carriers and hopefully its whole range of fighting vehicles with the "Trophy" active protection system. The Trophy's capabilities are demonstrated in a YouTube presentation accessed by clicking on the following hyperlink:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-Ri-kce6pA&feature=related
On Sunday, about the time Major-General Yisrael Tal was brought to rest President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt was preparing to host Secretary of State Clinton, Prime Minister Netanyahu and Chairman Mahmoud Abbas at Sharm el Sheikh. This brief encounter between the sides in a new quest for peace aroused little optimism. Everyone present was familiar with the passage in Ecclesiastes allocating appropriate times for everything including, "A time for war and a time for peace." If the pessimists are right this isn't the time for peace. Yediot Ahronot columnist Ron Ben Yishai doubts if the New Year we are celebrating will bring us war. Ben Yishai a seasoned military analyst doesn't use crystal bowls, astrology charts, Tarot cards or examine goats entrails to predict the future. Instead he relies on observation and an analysis of the political and military forces in this region.
" No dramatic changes are expected in our security situation next year. A war will not break out, and a major military confrontation will likely not take place. For the time being, all the main players in the region that may ignite a major flare-up have a strong interest in maintaining restraint and avoiding confrontation." Having said that, Ben Yishai hurries to stop anyone about to beat his sword into a ploughshare.
Warning that the Middle East being the Middle East there is always cause for concern he adds, "The constant tensions in the Lebanon and Gaza theatres may cause occasional flare-ups, despite the desire on both sides to avoid them. This was the case this past year, and this will likely be the case in the coming year. "
Furthermore he believes that the three main threats we faced this year will continue to concern us, namely: the Iranian nuclear threat, the rocket, missile, and mortar threat in the north and in Gaza, and the de-legitimisation campaign against us in the international arena.
The de-legitimisation campaign already limits Israel’s ability to contend with the threats it is facing, both tactically and strategically. It manacles the IDF in confrontations with Hezbollah and Hamas and it limits our military initiative.. Both these terrorist organisations operate deliberately from within densely populated civilian areas,
According to Ben Yishai these threats are interrelated and in the worst-case scenario may combine to produce a war where we will face hundreds of missiles and rockets from Iran, Lebanon, Syria and Gaza, while the IDF’s air and ground forces will be severely restricted by the " collateral damage" factor. Now more than ever before the UN Human Rights Council is ready to send another Richard Goldstone to investigate alleged Israeli war crimes.
In an lead article entitled “Ready, aim. Seek legal advice” that appeared in last Friday’s Yediot Ahronot’s weekend supplement columnist Ariella Ringel Hoffman also emphasised collateral damage factor.
In February this year, following the lessons learnt from Operation Cast Lead, Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) Maj. Gen. Eitan Dangot was instructed to set up a layout of humanitarian aid officers that will accompany the battalions in the field.
These officers are in contact with the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and with representatives of the aid organisations in the Gaza Strip. They are meant to coordinate between them and the forces in the field and to indicate the locations of sensitive facilities such as hospitals, schools, and UN aid centres.
As a result a field commander’s staff will have three additional adjutants a media advisor, or, in military language, an IDF Spokesperson Unit representative, a legal advisor, or, put otherwise, a representative of the Military Prosecution, and an advisor for humanitarian affairs, a representative of the COGAT.
Each of these advisors, separately and together, are meant to ensure that the fighting in the territories will look better and sound better, and, mainly, will prevent the next Golstone report.
The officers in the field were not exactly enthusiastic about the idea.
One of them told Ariella-Ringel Hoffman "The idea is a basically correct. In the future battlefield, media, legal, and humanitarian dilemmas can dictate how the force will behave even more than topographical demands. But to say it makes it easier for us? Not at all. Even worse. In my opinion, it won't even spare us the next media onslaught."
Hoffman concludes by asking, “Has the IDF read the map of the new battlefield correctly by understanding that victory does not lie solely in the hands of the soldiers, as skilled and determined as they may be, or that it is a futile effort at best and a fig leaf at worst? That war will forever be the same horrid, bleeding occurrence spawning commissions of inquiry time after time here and abroad? “
The Jerusalem Post also related to the futility of our PR efforts quoting Edwin Bennatan’s blog Point/Counterpoint referring to the “Irish Question” which in this instance is really the “Jewish Question.” There has always been something slightly sinister in Ireland's attitude towards Israel. As Michael Weiss wrote recently in the New Criterion, "The sons and daughters of Eire are not generally known for their fondness of Jewish statehood." Even the occasional expression of admiration for the Jewish state's achievements often seems restrained. Ireland was one of the last countries of Western Europe to establish diplomatic relations with Israel.
Yet, when I think of the Emerald Isle, I would like to be able to think mainly of the late Connor Cruise O'Brien, that grand old Irish politician, writer, historian, academic and great friend of Israel, who wrote that "a signal of anti-Jewish bigotry is when your interlocutor feverishly turns Jews into Nazis and Arabs into Jews."
I found another righteous Irishman – Kevin Myers who wrote a brilliant piece in the Irish Independent . He had this to say about an Irish artists boycott-
“One-hundred-and-fifty Irish 'artists' have announced they are boycotting Israel. What, 150? That's about 140 more than I thought we had. Poor Israel! Being boycotted by Irish daubers it's never even heard of. Yet strangely enough, these 'artists' don't condemn the totalitarian Islamo-Nazism of Hamas, or the emerging Fourth Reich of Iran. No, instead, they obsess over the misdeeds of a democratic state the size of Munster in a democracy-free, Arab landmass as big as the US.”
Read the complete article by way of this hyperlink:
Controversial British Journalist Julie Burchill blasted the Irish in an article she wrote for the Jerusalem Post -
“Until Ireland sorts itself out and stops projecting its own neuroses onto the tiny Jewish state, you guys will just have to struggle on as best you can without those all-important Irish intellectuals and artists.”
Major-General Yisrael Tal lived long enough to witness the completion of one of Israel’s most ambitious industrial military undertakings.
Eight years ago Israel Military Industries and Israel Aircraft Industries were contracted to upgrade Turkey’s main battle tanks and F-4E fighter jets.
Last month the upgraded tanks and planes participated in Turkey’s 'Victory Day' celebrations marking the 88th anniversary of the end of the 1919-22 War of Independence The upgrading of the 170 upgraded M-60A1 tanks was carried out by one of Israel’s leading industrial conglomerates - Israel Military Industries (IMI) under a $687.5 million turnkey project considered to be one of the world’s largest tank upgrade programmes. The design implemented in the Turkish programme utilised systems already proven in modern armoured vehicles in service with the Israel Defense Forces, such as Israel’s Merkava 4 main battle tank.
Ironically Turkey’s refurbished military hardware was proudly displayed at a time when the relations between Israel and Turkey are experiencing an unprecedented crisis.
I want to wish everyone fasting on Yom Kippur well over the fast.
Beni 16th of September, 2010.
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