TL;DR: Optics ain’t much when it comes to life and death.

Today’s post is devoted to those who, even when tried by fire, would not stand down.

The Hero

49 years ago to the day, Isaac Brik was a 25-year old studying for the last undergrad year of industrial engineering at the Technion. He was also an armor reservist at the rank of Major, a company commander in the 113th Battalion. As with most IDF reserve units, the understaffed and underequipped battalion was called up from the synagogues to fight what was thereafter called the Yom Kippur war.

On at least two occasions in the next 3 days, the 113th was sent into battle by incompetent superiors who acted rashly and wastefully with lives, resources and - most crucially when it comes to war - initiative. By the time the war was over two and a half weeks later, only a handful of the 200 men on the 113th pre-war roster had not been killed, medically evacuated or held captive by the enemy (the latter group including the batallion’s commanding officer). Brik’s face had been severely burnt in an engagment with Egyptian commando on October 7th, but he chose not to evacuate and fought for the rest of the war.

After the war Brik was decorated for his valor and rose in ranks in the reserves. Several years later he re-joined the military full time, serving both in both line command and staff roles, and rising to the rank of Major General. His last role was that of Head of Personnel Complaints, ending with 2018.

Criticism and Critique

Since leaving that last role, Brik has become a vocal critic, indeed a thorn in the current army leaderhip’s backside. Without going into all details, the core of his criticism is the lack of military preparedness, especially of the reserves - undoubtedly reflecting the dysfunction that Brik paid for literally with his blood. Brik’s criticism is loud, though well-argumented. It is not pretty and totally out of line with top brass’s typical confident nonchalance.

Most wise men would not speak; however, one of the younger generation’s generals went as much as to argue that Brik was “stuck in 1973”, a comment that may be interpreted as an assertion that the failure of 1973 is not going to recur. However, that position, while superficially plausible, implies one the following:

  • Either everybody agrees that the failure will not recur (perhaps with the exception of Brik); then there’s really no use for the army as it is now, and it should doubtlessly be reduced and the budget diverted to productive fields such as education.
  • At least some people besides Brik think that the failure may recur; in that case, the person delivering the comment should probably talk to them and figure out what to believe, because the consequences of a mistake would be disastrous.

I side with the second line of thought. History may not say much about the future, but it is all we’ve got, and if history says anything at all is that failures persist until addressed.

The Rhyme of Time: war in 1973 and tech in 2022

The Yom Kippur War was culturally a consequence of a great cultural upheaval in many areas of Israeli public life, reaching its peak by the great military victory in the Six-Days War of June 1967.

While war is about lives and tech “only” about livelhoods, there are several parallels to be made:

One crucial angle is the “builders” vs “followers” one. The success of 1967 was a result of 15 preceding years of hard-pressed “builders” who wrote the playbook for a successful war, but who themselves were capable of revising it. That generation had almost entirely moved on by 1973, replaced by “competent followers” – however as such, they failed to grasp that they are in a new era with new rules.

One of the aspects of the 1967 victory was that it cemented the foundational trust into an arbitrary, flawed and unstable superstructure - that proceeded to crack when the shock came. The same applies to multiple organizations established in a period of plenty, who cemented otherwise resonable business cases with unsustainable (and often times, unnecessary) business practices - and now the entire thing is cracked.

And making a full circle to General Brik, the most intolerable thing for many has been the hubris of success - the insistence on the wrong solutions to the wrong problems asserted by the wrong people. For sure, “prophecy has been taken from prophets and given to fools and children”, but being a fool or child is a neceessary condition rather than a sufficient one, and indeed “you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows”.

Having just passed the Yom Kippur of 2022, I wish all my readers that they may have an opportunity to improve their own judgement - and that they choose to do so.