Yair Iny

I do not doubt that the IDF shelled the UN compound on purpose, probably not as a direct order from high up, but rather, there might have been some movement or fire or some pretext and the local commander was given permission to fire with the knowledge of all involved that it is a UN building. The animosity people in Israel feel towards the UN is difficult to underestimate, and is probably justified to an extent, at least in my opinion. But to fire on a UN compound, and to do so while the Sec Gen of the UN is in Israel? Seems to me that the leaders have lost the plot, drunk with their pyrrhic victory in the First Gaza War (as it will no doubt be named The Gaza War, and no doubt not be the last). Soon this operation will end, and then the true nature of the destruction will start coming to light. I predict that the casualties won't be quite as high as the Palestinians are reporting (they always over-report), and instead on focusing on the fact that the operation killed say 200 civilians, discourse in Israel will be that they said 300 and there were only 200... My only prayer is that Israel will make good out of the quiet period that will surely come now, and use it to make a just peace deal with the Palestinians, but I'm not keeping my hopes up... This article, on Ha'aretz, the best newspaper in Israel, captures my feelings quite well (don't worry, it is in English) - http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1055968.html

Yes, probably, but what military commander in his right minds, in any army in the world, would limit himself that way? The problem is not with the execution, the problem is with the futility of the operation and that any operation in such a dense place is bound to cause lots of civilian deaths.

Markh and Ali, There seems to be a view that the West Bank is a paradise of peace and Palestinian freedom. This is not the case. I know the west bank very well, having served there many times. Palestinian cities were hammered by the IDF in 2003 in the "Defensive Shield" (Homat Magen) operation which virtually destroyed the Palestinian security forces and began Arafat's siege in the Muquata in Ramallah. They subsequently lost their appetite for a fight and currently are back to living a relatively peaceful and relatively prosperous life under occupation. However, their land is riddled still with hundreds of settlements and their movement is controlled by tens if not hundreds of road-blocks. And instead of Israel leveraging this peace to give them a state, they are getting nothing but a fairly good life with no political rights. This has been the formula Israel has offered the Palestinians since 1967. People who think that Israel mistreats the Palestinians out of racism are wrong. Under the Israeli occupation they have become the best educated people in the Arab world, with the lowest infant mortality, best health care, and apart from oil-rich saudi and kuwait and their likes, the best standard of living. Only one little thing was missing and that is their national right to be free people. This burst in 1987 in the first Intifadah and has been on and off since then. I suspect that after this operation, the people of Gaza will also lose their will for a fight for a while, a few years even. Conditions there might very well improve, and people in Israeli leadership will once again delude themselves that the Palestinians are accepting the "deal" that is on offer. This is the real tragedy of the situation. That the only advances the Palestinians were ever able to make came through violence, and unfortunately, I don't see the political will in Israel for this to change. I will now stop my chain posting, at least for today

Thanks Steve. I'd just like to make one correction to this. There are many Israelis who think the same as I do (and as she did/does). Their voices are many times not heard, but it is not because they were not allowed to be heard. Israel proper (not the occupied territories), is a democratic country and allows freedom of speech. I have never heard of any case where someone was punished because of what he said, except for some cases where people were charged for inciting violence. I myself, when living there, felt absolutely free to voice my opinion. I remember being in reserve duty in the Gaza Strip in 2001 and having lively political debates. Even in the regular army people feel free to discuss the politics of what the army does. There is a lot of internal debate and criticism in Israel that is not seen in the western media, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Ali, Thanks for your kind words. I actually don't think of myself as being objective, but rather I am on Israel's side, and I think what it is doing now is wrong for Israel. This would probably surprise you, but there are many people who think the same as I do and as Ari Fulman does, far more than is apparent. Not all Israeli press is gung-ho and pro the operation. The Haaretz newspaper, which is the main broadsheet, has two reporters who regularly cover issues from the Palestinian side, one of whom, Amira Hess (she is Jewish, not Arab), actually lives in the occupied territories with the Palestinians who's lives she covers. You'll find that the usual pattern is overwhelming support at first for military operations, a gut reaction really, which quickly turns into a more examining and critical view. One of the reasons that the IDF isn't happy to send reservists into the actual meat of the operation (besides the sensitivity to their casualties), is that they bring back the "news" unfiltered, and unlike their younger 18-21 y.o. comrades, actually are generally more mature and able to see things in a different, more balanced, light. Already there are louder and louder voices in Israel calling for the operation to be brought to an end, and I don't expect it to last much longer. Hopefully, my expectation is right.

This is more or less true. I served in a regimental sized unit, commanded by a Full Colonel (Aluf Mishne), and all officers, up to an including him were addressed by their first name. As a regular soldier I would probably err on the side of caution when introduced to a full colonel and call him Sir at first, but that would just be the initial encounter. In general the IDF (especially outside of the Air force which is a bit more formal) is very informal as far as officers-enlisted relations. There is no separate dining room in the army in general (as opposed to the Air Force) and there is little concept of officers deserving special respect just because they are officers. A regular soldier can expect the same freedom to offer his opinion, discuss, argue, etc. as one might expect to in the workplace. At the end of the day I have to do what my boss says, but I don't automatically say "Yes Sir" and go do it. The big difference of course, is that I can't get fired or quit the army, and I can't go to the stockade at work Thus, while I wouldn't say that it is SOP to consult the entire platoon about the course of action, it would definitely be considered ok for any soldier in the platoon to offer his opinion, and depending on the people involved, I can definitely see such consultations taking place in many places.

Ali, Why does Yaalon's quote make it fact? Why does his opinion mean that this is what's behind the current operation? Moshe Yaalon, aka Boogy, is now a member of the right wing Likkud Party. He is in opposition to the current government and spares no chance to criticise it. He can be heard monthly advocating this attack or that one, on Gaza, on Iran, on Lebanon. Heck, if he had it his way, israel would be attacking egypt for allowing weapons to be smuggled into Gaza. Quoting an editorial by Rashid Khalidi is hardly the basis for fact on this conflict. It would be akin to quoting Benjamin Netanyahu (or worse). For the record, I heard this Yaalon quote in Hebrew directly from the horse's mouth (ass's in his case) on the news. He said that the Army should burn into their consciousness that they cannot beat israel. A stupid thing to say, but not quite the same as "they are a defeated people". I am in touch with many people in Israel, including my family, who, Thank God, don't live far enough south to be in (current) range of the rockets. They, almost to a man, support the operation. Why is this, I ask myself. Do they not care about Palestinians at all? That is not the case. Mostly, my friends, like me when I lived there, voted for Meretz, a quite left-wing party that supports a full Palestinian state in the 1967 borders. But people in Israel are baffled by the fact that Hammas have been firing rockets for 8 years. They don't want to hear about "disproportionate responses" and comparing israeli dead to Palestinian dead (which as I said before, is morally wrong and irrelevant). They say that if other western countries were being fired at by their neighbours, then they would do the same or worse. Rightly or wrongly, mainstream Israeli perception is that they evacuated the Gaza strip and let the Palestinians rule themselves, only to get a Hammas government which calls for the destruction of Israel and and fires rockets and mortars for 8 years. I know it isn't that simple. I know that as soon as Hammas was elected Israel blockaded the strip and ensured that Hammas would be isolated internationally. I don't know what Israel should have done otherwise in the face of a government that publicly says it wants it destroyed, but I know that what it did isn't good. I would like to ask you though, what you think Israel should have done after leaving the Gaza strip and Hammas' election, that would have resulted in a different situation. I would like to know what you think Israel should do now instead of this operation. I ask this sincerely, because I don't know myself. I know that what it is doing now is wrong, but I am at a loss to offer a better solution.

My Apologies, Ali. I didn't mean to imply that you personally said that, but rather put you in the same bag as some of the far left critics of Israel in Europe. I made that assumption based on your "Nazi" comments, but had no right to, hence my apology.

Agreed. And the Israeli Supreme court found that the defence minister is complicit and ordered that he be stood down from his post, which he was. I agree that this is not a just punishment for Ariel Sharon, and I have no love for the man. But you cannot say that the state of Israel completely ignored what happened. Well, in that case it is a stupid symbol to use, especially against Israel. Israel's (and other, cf. GW Bush) politicians sometimes make quite cynical usage of the holocaust (e.g. comparing Yasser Arafat, Saddam Hussein, Ahmedinejad, Hugo Chavez, Mugabe, etc. to Hitler) and using the term Nazis about Israel is exactly playing the mirror image of that. There are still many people alive who were in concentration and death camps in Israel, and definitely their children are alive. When people in the far-left in the West use the term Nazis about Israel, all introspection stops, and people stop listening to the criticism that is sometimes spot on. This plays exactly into the siege mentality that is prevalent in Israel, that same mentality that hardens people's hearts to the suffering of their neighbours and allows such military operations to happen. If you want to go about shouting in futility that Israel is Nazi Germany in disguise and that the world would be better off if it were wiped off the map, by all rights be my guest, but realise that this extreme voice is only to the detriment of the Palestinian people.

Back to the NCO discussion. The IDF is not based around an NCO "culture". In fact, in the army and outside of it career NCOs, which as Lang rightly stated, exist in technical capacities only, are lowly regarded. Recently (about 5 years ago) there had even been a changed in uniform, moving their rank insignia from the collar to the shoulders, to more closely resemble officers in a (vain?) attempt to "uplift" their image. The whole concept of NCO ranks is different in Israel. For example, all men have to server for 3 years. At the end of such service, unless disciplinary matters intervened, all soldiers, regardless of their actual duties, i.e. infantrymen, cooks, tank commanders, etc. would have the rank of a staff sergeant. As you then continue to do reserve duty (which is also compulsary until around 40 y.o.) you continue to gain enlisted ranks in an accelerated schedule. An infantryman who consistently did his reserve duty until being fully discharged would probably be at least a master sergeant in rank while never being in a different "MOS" other than that of a squaddie. That being said, by having a heavy emphasis on reserves, the Israeli army manages to have a fair amount of experience and maturity in its fighting ranks, which is unfortunately less apparent and available when only the regular army is involved.

Ali, I do not support Israel's actions, definitely not to the extent they are being taken to currently. But I would have to say that you should learn a bit more before mouthing off like that. For starters, the Sabra and Shatila was actually perpetrated by the Maronite Militia and happened under the knowledge of the Israeli Army. The Israeli defence minister, Ariel Sharon, was removed from his position after this happened. How many Nazi ministers were removed from power by Hitler? Israeli, barring exterme-right nuts, DO NOT treat palestinians as an inferior species. I have heard many horrible things said by people when I lived there, such as "for every rocket they fire on us, we should kill 1000 of them" and others, but I have not heard people saying they are not as human or that they were "unter-menchen". Compare this to the mainstream arab press which regularly uses phrases such as "descendents of snakes and monkeys", "children of the devil", etc, when describing jews (not even israelis, jews as a whole). I know, in person, people who were in Auschwitz, and your comparison of israel to the nazis is as ridiculous as it is unhelpful. Most people in israel, who hear this sort of comparison, immediately dismiss it as being extremely biased and anti-semitic, which I would have to agree with. It is also useless, because it implies that as long as the israeli army isn't as bad as the wehrmacht/SS, it is OK, when clearly you don't need to descend that low to not be ok.

Sorry, but what does that have to do with anything? This whole calculus of death, disproportionate idea is revolting. Don't get me wrong, I think what Israel is doing is wrong, and even worse, a futile waste of lives, Palestinian and Israeli lives. But if Hammas were to score a "jackpot" and hit say a school with one of their rockets and kill 50 kids, would that then justify everything? Would israel be ok to now sit back until the rockets fired kill enough people to achieve a "good" proportionality and then be right to attack again? Bottom line is, Hammas was firing rockets at israel and Israel had to do something about it. That they chose to go on a full-scale military operation knowing it would cause hundreds of civilian deaths, is not a good thing. Exactly how many israelis the rockets killed is irrelevant to that.

Re: Career NCOs in the IDF. As an ex-IDF serviceman, I can confirm that this is absolutely true. In a typical infantry unit, the squaddies will be around 19, after 12-18 months of training, while their squad commander is maybe 6 months older, their platoon commander and company sergeant maybe 12-18 months older, and the company CO, probably 22-23. One thing that shows this situation well is the difference between the regular (young) army and the reserve army. While not so much a feature of this smaller scale of conflict, the bulk of the IDF is actually reservists, and in any full scale war, the regular army's job is to survive the first onslaught of the attackers, and prepare for a counter attack which is composed mainly of reserve units. This may also help to explain why the IDF has had military success in the past. When you compare the maturity of the units, there is a marked difference between the two, which affects in many ways how the civilian population is affected by the army. Reserve units will generally be far more discriminate in firing, and far more humane in their treatment of people at say roadblocks, etc. In my opinion, if there wasn't such an (understandable) aversion in israel to the combat deaths of reservists (who by then have families, jobs, etc.), the army would love to be able to use them instead, and I would predict fewer civilian deaths as a result of that. Of course, reservists' deaths put a lot of pressure on the government, which is why, so far, almost no reservists have been used, even though about 30000 were called up. As to victory conditions, etc., I'd have to say there's no way Israel can win this, and I think the leadership don't really think they can get an actual victory. They basically had to do something in the face of the continued rockets, etc., and that's the only thing they know how to do. There is a concept that is doing the rounds in Israel now, saying that Israel should show the arabs that they can "go crazy too" and thus increase deterrence. Proponents of this viewpoint, cite the fact the Hezboullah have so far stayed out of it, as opposed to 2006 when they initially attacked that patrol exactly in response to a different operation in Gaza. Only problem I see with that view, is that I doubt Israelis can "go crazier" than Hammas, Hezboullah and Iran. Already there is talk of Hezboullah and Hammas extracting revenge, and they will probably do so by hitting some Jewish community centre away from Israel, like in Argentina a few years ago. Iran has already (according to an Haaretz report), promised to resupply Hammas with more, longer range rockets, if they continue to fight. So, in my personal opinion, that's not going to work.

Well, FWIW, I agree with you about the emotional attachment, it would be great. In the CMx1 days I used to play with Robert Oleson's Quick Campaign spreadsheet that would track troops and run a campaign, and I loved to see how many kills my men got and see them increase their experience. The realism comment was meant to say that I don't think it is realistic for commanders to send green guys as cannon fodder ahead of experienced guys, assuming they are from the same unit, etc. I think the point about the rangers not guarding the motor pool is more because it would be a waste of their skills rather than because guarding the motor pool is dangerous and the commander would prefer someone else to die instead. Finally, your post made me unsure if you know about this, so I thought it worthwhile to mention, but the campaign does actually track a core force, it is just that you don't know who they are. There is definitely a continuation factor between missions in the campaign. If you lose to many guys in one mission you'll have less guys in the next ones. What is missing is the RPG element of having their names, kills, awards, etc. continue, and I would love to see that too.

While I'd love to follow my men from battle to battle as well, I don't think that protecting favourites and sending in green guys as cannon fodder is particularly realistic. In fact, Battlefront's argument for not letting you know which troops in the campaign are your core force is exactly that knowing would cause the player to protect them at the expense of others, and at the expense of realism. But, that being said, it is a game after all, and it is fun to track your guys, I'd love this option too. Cheers

British Module is coming up next, but even now, there's heaps of old fashioned CM goodness right there. Oh, and did I mention the marines are awesome?

Yes I do, it wouldn't be that hard to do, it's just a truck, and Steve et. all have proven responsive to fair and reasonable requests by people who have a positive and contributory attitude. Considering that Paper Tiger has both a positive attitude and has contributed immensely to this community and the enjoyment of the game, and considering that as a prolific campaign and scenario designer, he has good reason for asking for a regular truck to be added, I would say that there is quite a good chance his request might be at least considered. I would also humbly suggest that people like Paper Tiger should be treated with slightly more respect given their level of contribution to the community of CMSF players, and not be accused of "whining long and hard". Cheers

Greenjacket, not sure you are making the same mistake as I did, but is it possible that you have the smoke graphics off? I think Alt-K toggles smoke graphics. Cheers

Wow! three similar replies at once... great minds, etc....

Cerebrus, I beg to differ. With the old AI it was pretty boring to play anything but attack. When you played as the defender it was only interesting by giving the AI overwhelming odds. And besides BFC have already stated that it would be impossible (or too hard to be worthwhile) for them to make a credible AI for modern combat given the higher variety of weaponry and capabilities. What I would like to see though, are greatly expanded "scripting" tools, such as triggers for plans to move to the next step, allow for sub-plans and branching between them based on enemy and friends dispositions, condition, ammo, etc. I would like to see AI triggers and general scripting functionality for a proper fire support plan, I would like to see the designer able to not only specify that he wants a force to go to a specific location, but also to "point out" to the AI a preferrable route or routes to "consider" based on known enemy dispositions. I would like to see the designer being able to coordinate different forces' plan steps so that e.g. force A only moves to step 3 when force B moves to step 4, but will only wait up to 5 minutes before not waiting any longer, etc. Given the amount of expertise, knowledge, ingenuity and dedication of the community, even some of these tools would result in absolutely massively, clever, diabolical, surprising, exciting, ingenious scenarios. Consider the limited tools we have now and compare with the wonderful scenarios and campaigns already on offer, they are way better than CMx1 scenarios in my opinion. Cheers

Steve and the rest of the Battlefront Staff, If you keep giving us great value and continuous improvment in modules and titles like you did with the Marines module, you can definitely expect continued pre-orders and release day "mass attack" sales from us, at least as far as I'm concerned. So, as long as you keep doing what you are, your business model is more than sound Cheers

Hey Spooner, You are absolutely right, my apologies. I will fix the scenario to allow up to 15% casualties without giving the syrians points, and re-upload. I prefer 15% since that allows 7 people to be injured/killed, and one lucky hit by an RPG could easily get you close.

Hi reto. Are you sure you are running with patch 1.10? A feature was added to the game ages ago that made sure trenches are visible from all overhead (i.e. 6-8) views at all times. Cheers

Hi, the first scenario, conducting a frontal assault on a fort has been released to CMMods, see http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=84100. Thanks very much for the help so far, it is much appreciated. Cheers

Hi, My first scenario has been released to CMMods (my username there is yairiny). This is a training scenario, intended to be the first in a series of platoon-level training scenarios based around the USMC infantry platoon with various levels of support. In this scenario your platoon conducts an unsupported frontal assault on a fort. I decided to make these scenarios as a training aid to new players and also because they allow you to practice basic skills and display the capabilities and limitations of the USMC infantry platoon without getting lost in a host of other vehicles and support elements' capabilities. If there is decent uptake of this scenario I will proceed to create more, based on a long list of excellent suggestions by theFightingSeabee. Cheers