DrShPk

As more and more IDF soldiers are killed and injured by Hezbollah drones, while demolishing buildings in Lebanon. The soldiers are complaining that they are being used irresponsibly and taking a great amount of damage as a result. An article in Haaretz today shed light on this: 1) Capt. Maoz Israel Rakanti was killed Friday by an explosive drone while securing a tour held at midday despite standing guidelines to minimize daytime movement due to the drone threat. A commander in the division who had argued against the tour put it bluntly: "For what? To secure a visit by the division commander who wanted to see the Litani and the Galilim Bridge. There was no operational benefit to this visit." He added that the timing made the decision especially indefensible, coming a day after Sgt. Negev Dagan of the same Golani battalion was killed by a mortar in the same area: "The directive is not to move during daytime unless it's a matter of life and death. This infuriates me to levels I can't even describe." 2) The army's defense of the decision concedes much of the criticism. A senior military source argued Norkin acted on operational judgment, but acknowledged the security arrangements were inadequate: "Maybe a tank instead of an open jeep. Maybe not staying there 20 minutes after a senior commander leaves." The justification ultimately fell back on command prerogative: "He's the commander, and if he thought he needed to see the bridge with his own eyes in daylight, then we execute." The IDF has not ruled out that Hezbollah identified Norkin's presence and targeted the location accordingly. 3) The incident reflects a broader erosion of operational discipline around the drone threat. Commanders and soldiers describe a pattern in which troops are exposed to serious risk for missions that are neither urgent nor essential, often demolition work that could be done at night. As an officer serving in the north described the dynamic: "Forces that are required to hide all day and avoid unnecessary exposure find themselves on missions that could be done at night, without endangering the troops beyond what's already dangerous." 4) The demolition mission itself structurally exposes troops to the drone threat. A central part of IDF activity in southern Lebanon is the systematic destruction of buildings, with commanders required to report daily tallies of structures demolished. This work demands sustained exposure in open terrain, precisely the conditions in which explosive drones are most effective. One soldier captured the contradiction directly: "We stand exposed securing house demolitions while there are drones in the air. There's no logic to it." An earlier account from a soldier in the sector framed the deeper problem: "The only mission is to keep destroying." What we are seeing is that the IDF mania to destroy every building in Lebanon is putting their soldiers at risk. But the IDF command would rather put the soldiers at risk in daytime to increase the speed of demolition, than secure the lives of soldiers. Life is cheap for Israel.

in retrospect, what probably infuriated MIGA Trump most about Biden's inclusion of BAgram air base in the US abandonment of Afghanistan is that it removed an important staging point for ultimate US-Israeli attack on Iran. The current war might be playing out differently if US and Israel still had Bagram. I'm even wondering whether original neocon interest in occupying Afghanistan was with an ultimate objective of attacking Iran from both sides,