Reservists, Israel's “secret weapon” and most vulnerable

Crying breaks the silence in the military section of the Herzliya cemetery, north of Tel Aviv.

Hundreds of people - many in uniform, others wrapped in the national flag - say their last goodbye this Wednesday to Mark Kononovich, one of the 21 Israeli reservists killed on Monday in Gaza, mainly when a grenade thrown by a Palestinian militiaman hit one of them. the buildings that they were mining to demolish and these collapsed.

It was the deadliest day - with 24 deaths in total - in the nearly four months of war, so the pain over the loss of a loved one or comrade in arms is interspersed at the funeral with calls for victory to elevate the mood.

Yehuda Bach, the commander of the 261st brigade, in which Kononovich served, takes the floor: “On October 7 [the day of the Hamas attack that left some 1,200 dead and more than 200 kidnapped], the enemy felt we were weak, but I didn't know that we have a secret weapon: the reservists.

Thousands of people who left their homes out of responsibility for the State of Israel and its future.”

This “secret weapon” today represents the bulk of the men and women deployed by Israel, particularly guarding the borders with Lebanon and Syria, where daily skirmishes occur.

These are not the 170,000 active military personnel, but rather another 465,000 men and women between the ages of 21 and 49 who completed mandatory military service and can be called up overnight in the event of war or natural disaster.

This time Israel has called up some 360,000 soldiers, in the largest mobilization in half a century, since the Yom Kippur War (1973).

Precisely, the delay of the then prime minister, Golda Meir, in massively mobilizing reservists, despite information from the intelligence services about the imminence of an attack from Syria and Egypt, almost cost her defeat.

In the midst of the

shock

of another surprise attack, on October 7, the deadliest day for Israel in its 75-year history, some reservists put on their uniforms and showed up at the barracks.

Others – at least 550,000 Israeli adults live abroad – hastily returned.

The three main national airlines increased flights, consulates (or private individuals, at airport counters in the United States) paid for tickets, and the army sent transport planes to some European cities.

Three weeks before that day, Kononovich, 35, had become a father for the fourth time, but he also insisted on joining.

He had the rank of sergeant major.

When he took off his stripes, he lived in Herzliya with his wife and ran a unit of the Ministry of Justice to protect threatened people.

Friends and family remembered at the funeral through tears how they tried to convince him on his last leave not to return to Gaza.

"I told him: 'Stay, make some excuse, think about your children.'

He answered me: 'We all want to stay at home, in a safe place, but if we all make excuses and don't go, we won't have an army.

And, then, we will not have a State,” said his wife, Orel.

"I told him: 'Stop it, don't come back.'

'I will stay until the last of the [136] hostages in Gaza return,' he answered me,” recalled his best friend, Aviad Dadon, wrapped in the Israeli flag.

Less preparation

His case exemplifies the situation of the reservists.

They are not professional soldiers, so they abandon their studies or work when they put on the uniform.

Their preparation is less and, in fact, a reason for debate for years, even as a possible cause of their percentage of casualties.

Nor are they recruited into compulsory service just out of adolescence (it begins at 18 years of age and lasts 32 months for men and 24 for women) and in practice only half of the population completes it, due to various exemptions.

They are Israelis – almost all of them Jewish and mainly men – who, due to their age and in a very family-oriented society, have usually formed a home.

The reservation continues until age 40 for regular soldiers, 45 for officers and 49 for those who perform tasks such as nursing, mechanics or driving heavy equipment.

The reserve was created after the war that followed the creation of the State of Israel (1948-1949).

It was the response to the economic impossibility of maintaining such a large army and the need to mobilize many troops in a very short time in a country then surrounded by enemies.

The chief of staff who designed it, Yigael Yadin, used to call them “soldiers on 11 months leave.”

The description is nothing like it now.

The country has been reforming and slimming it down to making it

de facto

voluntary (and, in some cases,

de jure

), although on paper it is still mandatory and in theory they must wear the uniform for a few days each year.

In 1985, reservists served an estimated 10 million days.

In 2018, there were already two million.

The analysis center Institute for National Security Studies estimates that only 6% of those who finish the military go at least 20 days a year in the three subsequent days.

“It has been reducing because mobilization is a sensitive issue, having a family and other factors, such as economic or preparation.

But when they are well equipped and trained, their recruitment is very important,” explains Yagil Levy, professor of Political Science at the Open University of Israel, specialized in military sociology.

Levy also emphasizes that they allow rotations in a war to which the Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, predicts still "many months" more.

Their deaths, he adds, are socially considered “the most painful,” because they are at an age in which both children and parents mourn them, but they have not generated protests, as in previous cases, because “a large majority of the population justifies the war and sees them as part of that sacrifice.”

So far, 222 soldiers have lost their lives.

The list of names on the army website shows that more than half were reservists.

The mobilization has been so broad and the internal unanimity around the war is so clear (50.8% of the Jewish majority considers the use of force used in Gaza appropriate and 43.4%, insufficient, according to the Index of Peace this month, a survey carried out by Tel Aviv University) that the population profiles are diverse.

This is shown by the case of the 21 reservists killed on Monday.

There are, on the one hand, the stories of personal improvement that the national media likes to highlight so much.

Like that of Cydrick Garin, the son of non-Jewish Filipino immigrants whose father was only allowed to return to the country for burial.

Garin, 32, dropped out of school as a child to help his mother, who did not speak Hebrew, and was arrested as a teenager for his criminal activities in the drug world.

Or the Bedouin Ahmad Abu Latif, exempt from serving and who had published a message on social networks about the pride of volunteering after October 7 that went viral.

Other fallen people are more linked to religious nationalism, the spearhead of the settler movement that interprets the fight with the Palestinians in biblical terms.

Like Israel Sokol, from the settlement of Karnei Shomron, in the northern West Bank, whose father, Yehosha, recalled at the funeral how his son complained that the Government was preventing the army from acting without restrictions in Gaza.

Or Elkana Yehuda Sfez, 25 years old and resident of Kiriat Arba, the settlement near the city of Hebron, where the far-right Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben Gvir, resides.

The expert Levy assures that these profiles are increasingly present.

Not only because of the right-wing of Israeli society in the last two decades, but also because the voluntariness of service in the reserve gives more presence to people from religious and right-wing backgrounds, and less to the elites and urban middle classes.

The latter are generally more secular and liberal, with better jobs to preserve and more experience in units such as intelligence or cybersecurity.

Economic hole

The mobilization of the reservists has also left a hole of tens of thousands of workers and university students.

The 360,000 called up represent 8% of the workforce.

In Tel Aviv or Jerusalem it is common to see closed stores or new faces just in those businesses that used to be served by men between 21 and 45 years old.

The high-tech sector is at half speed.

Tens of thousands, in fact, have already been demobilized.

It is difficult to assess the impact on the economy, because it is not known how long the mobilization will last.

Every month it drains the public treasury of around 1.2 billion euros and absences from work leave a hole estimated at 393 million euros.

Employers must continue to pay wages during the absence.

The law prevents them from pressuring them to return, although this does not always happen.

At the peak of recruitment, 30% of those enrolled in universities were in the reserve.

Today, they are 10% and several centers have paralyzed studies these days, to offer recovery classes to returning reservists, reports the newspaper

Haaretz

.

On the social network TikTok you can see a video of a young man studying on his cell phone inside a military vehicle in Gaza.

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