Day 462 - Israel’s security concept collapsed on Oct 7. What now?

The Times of Israel Daily Briefing

The Times of Israel

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4.4 • 864 Ratings

🗓️ 10 January 2025

⏱️ 40 minutes

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Summary

Welcome to The Times of Israel's Daily Briefing, your 20-minute audio update on what's happening in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world.

Diplomatic reporter Lazar Berman joins host Amanda Borschel-Dan for a special Friday Focus episode, part two of last week's discussion, "Why the IDF abandoned the offensive and ended up with Oct. 7."

When Israel's founding prime minister David Ben Gurion envisioned the country's defense forces, he proposed a small standing army and a large reservist force. In the first part of our conversation, we discussed how this model served the state, alongside a doctrine of deterrence, intelligence, and battlefield victory.

However, as the state evolved, the standing army was increasingly shrunk alongside an outsized confidence in Israel's air array. How did this lead up to the complete failure of the army to prevent -- and spur -- the Hamas onslaught on October 7, 2023?

This week, we speak about how Israel's army continues to evolve by learning from our current enemies -- non-state actors who don't fight by the rules. We discuss how this generation of IDF soldiers grew up in the shadow of the Disengagement -- and without much ground-operation experience.

Finally, we hear lessons the IDF has learned from October 7 and how it is already attempting to implement them.

For news updates, please check out The Times of Israel’s ongoing live blog.

Subscribe to The Times of Israel Daily Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was produced by the Pod Waves.

IMAGE: IDF forces operation in the Gaza Strip in a handout photo issued by the Israeli military on January 9, 2025. (Israel Defense Forces)

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Times of Israel's daily briefing.
0:08.1	Today's Friday, January 10th, Day 462 of the war.
0:13.6	Amanda Borschelle, Dan here in our Jerusalem office with diplomatic reporter Laser
0:17.7	Bearman for another Friday Focus. Yep, we're here with, what is this,
0:23.5	our fourth Friday focus? I think it is, actually. And Laser, I just want to say thank you at the
0:28.5	outset for taking the time to do it this Friday because I know you're going on reserve duty
0:34.2	and this is your last day of work for a couple weeks. Yep, I will be away for
0:38.4	three weeks, so don't miss me too much. I will. Oh, you will, but our readers, don't worry,
0:44.4	we have people to pick up the slack, and we will be on the diplomatic beat throughout.
0:49.2	That's right. The Friday focus will also continue, but we will sorely miss laser. So today we're here to continue
0:57.2	a discussion that we began last week in a podcast that we actually called Why the IDF Abandoned
1:03.9	the Offensive and ended up with October 7th. And in this podcast, we talked about the origins of the IDF and the push pole of its
1:13.1	mission between offense and defense. We did a historical survey, and in the end, I think,
1:20.4	laser, you basically set the stage for October 7th and had, I don't know if I can be a little
1:27.0	cheeky, come to the conclusion that
1:29.5	the best defense is a good offense. So just to rewind slightly, I'd like you to super quickly
1:37.4	explain the concept of the triangle of deterrence slash intelligence and battlefield victory that we talked about. And so we're all
1:46.7	like on the same page, virtual page as we begin this discussion. Sure. So in our classic
1:54.0	security concept, which started in the 50s, there were kind of three pillars to it. If you think
1:59.4	maybe a stool had three legs. And each of these,
2:03.5	it was kind of a reinforcing circle. So the first one was deterrence. We would try to make our enemies,
2:09.0	which are generally state enemies, Arab states, understand that if they attack us, they will pay
	...

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