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With public pressure mounting for the establishment of an independent committee of inquiry to look into the management of the war, hundreds of reserve soldiers who served in Lebanon sent a letter of protest addressed to Defense Minister Amir Peretz and IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz on Sunday, while two reservists led a protest march to the prime minister's office in Jerusalem.
In the letter, they described a severe breach of trust between the leadership and the soldiers. "The management of the war," they wrote, "caused us to feel that they were spitting in our face."
The letter expressed frustration with the "indecision" that, the soldiers say, characterized their assignment in Lebanon. It also stated that the lack of a clear mission for their brigade in the final days of the war needlessly endangered their lives, Army Radio reported.
In a private meeting between Halutz and the commanders of the reserve Alexandroni Brigade, which fought in the western sector, the officers of the brigade criticized the army's management over the last month.
Among other things, they described serious trust issues with the commanders, and told Halutz, "We need to rebuild the soldiers' trust in the system before it is too late." Many officers spoke about the inadequacy of the food and water supply in the battlefield.
On Sunday, Chief Infantry Officer Brig.-Gen. Yossi Hyman was the first senior IDF officer to admit the failure of the war in Lebanon. "I did not succeed in preparing the infantry well enough for war," he said, adding, "Sometimes we were guilty of the sin of vanity."
It appeared on Monday that a majority in the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee supported setting up a state (judicial) commission to investigate the war.
With the exception of members from Kadima - such as MK Otniel Schneller, who said that "the time is not right to devote our attention to an investigation committee, when the IDF and the state have to prepare for the next round" - the remaining committee members voiced their approval of setting up a state commission to probe the failures of the war.
Only the government has the power to appoint a state commission; however, the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee's approbation would put another layer of pressure on the government to form such a commission.
As of this report, 11 Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee members were in favor of the commission, and only three were against it.
Meanwhile, reservist Roni Tzvangenboim and his friend Assaf Dovidov led a protest march from the Castel on the outskirts of Jerusalem to the prime minister's office on Monday morning.
"We're not leaders - we're just the ones shouting first," Tzvangenboim said in an interview with Army Radio. He added that he believed many others would join them in the march.
Tzvangenboim said that the problem with the war was on a much wider scope than the issue of the inadequate food and weapon supply that other protesters were raising.
"The problem," he said, "is that there's no leadership. There's a strong army, with all the best technology in the world, with the bravest soldiers in the world…but there's no one who knows how to operate it."
In 1973, Capt. (res.) Moti Ashkenazi launched a national protest movement after the Yom Kippur War, as Golda Meir and Moshe Dayan sought to place all the blame for Israel's refusal to prepare for Egypt's invasion on the IDF. Ashkenazi's demand for accountability forced Meir and Dayan to resign and set the conditions for the Likud's rise to power in 1977.
