Director of the National Research Institute for Disaster Reduction: Citizens are an integral part of defense preparations. We still need to wake up and internalize this. There is no such thing as “uninvolved” people in the war zone.
Col. (Res.) Dr. Efraim Laor, director of the National Research Institute for Disaster Reduction, member of the Public Council for Jordan Valley, was a guest in the Sovereignty Movement’s series of Zoom meetings, and the discussion with him focused on the connection between citizens and the army during times of emergency and war, both in the context of the ability to contain the enemy’s attack and the matter of the uninvolved, if this definition actually exists at all.
According to him, a pattern exists that for some reason that has taken root, according to which the state provides security and the citizens have no role in it, which is a thought pattern without basis. In reality, in the past decade and a half, it is the cooperation between the citizens and the security system that has maintained the security of the citizens in the states where there is conflict.
This cooperation, he says, does not only relate to enlistment for reserves and regular, permanent service but to various roles that are fulfilled by every citizen, whether male or female. Laor believes that this fact, as well as the fact that settlement has value, has disappeared from our lives and withered.
“Since there were no wars, it has not been tested. The army, police and the entire security system can cope with small incidents such as local terror, but not with a situation of war, which requires the citizens’ cooperation in everything. We see this in all Middle Eastern states. In Lebanon, it was the citizens who decided the wars, in Syria the war was decided by citizens and this is true for Iraq as well, in Afghanistan and southern Turkey and even in Ukraine, he says, emphasizing that the army indeed worked with the citizens, but the resolution came from the citizens.
In the context of Ukraine, Laor mentions the admiration that accompanied the first days of the war there because the citizens stopped the Russian progress of armored columns with their bodies, while in Israel, the message was that the security is and will remain in the hands of the army alone. “We, the citizens, accepted it and were quiet. They did not give us tasks to do”.
“There is a very clear distinction between the citizens and the establishment security system that must rely on parallel security bodies such as the National Guard, the Police, etc., and on the other hand, on the citizens who have a security role within the state, while the army deals with attacks on the borders of the state”.
Laor emphasizes that this is not about the citizens’ choice to act or volunteering, but part of their duties, therefore they must train and be skilled in the various fields of defense, and they can gain their training through various professional elements, some of which will happen as part of military service. “It is not by choice. It is a duty. There is no other alternative”, he says, noting also in the events of the seventh of October, it was ordinary citizens who bore the brunt in the first hours of the Hamas attack. “At the height of the events, it was ordinary citizens who happened to be there, who heard and came, but there were no organized units; it was citizens who came, each one with whatever he had and some came with nothing”.
“If we want to defend the State of Israel, and not only the line of conflict, where it is imperative, as in the Jordan Valley and Judea and Samaria, we must know how to defend ourselves. The enemy can strike even in Bugrashov Street in Tel Aviv. Even if we depend on the establishment forces for backup, there is a time gap between when the event happens and the time it takes for them to arrive. This might be 6 minutes or 60 minutes and even 6 hours and sometimes several days. This is not peculiar to Israel, but it is needed especially in Israel, which is in conflict and only someone with an overly active imagination can think that they will be able to plan for every scenario and have a response for it”.
Laor says that Israel has been has suffered the horrible blow of Simhat Torah morning because there was no preparation of this sort and it doesn’t exist at this point. “In the beginning of October, there were a few dozen standby units in Israel and now there are more than 800, and the phenomenon is still expanding. It is happening because people are not stupid and this must be the direction”, he says, adding that before October 7th he spoke with friends and colleagues living in neighborhoods close to a potential enemy and there too, there was no readiness and preparation for such a scenario. “They awere complacent”.
From his personal experience, Laor says that two of the captive children that returned from captivity are relatives of his, their father remains in Gaza and their mother was murdered by the Hamas terrorists. He himself requested them a long time ago to be careful and prepare them for such an eventuality but they waved him off, in his words, claiming that “it isn’t necessary”.
Dr. Laor recommends that “Everyone should check to see what is happening in and around his house”.
In his words, Laor is careful regarding forecasting the future of the current war, but he makes clear that the objective of the war, according to the way it was stated at the beginning, was the correct objective and must be adhered to. “We can and we must achieve it. It is one part of a large, ongoing war involving additional places and we must win in all places in such a way that will be unambiguous, even to the dullest person. In our world, you win when you kill the enemy and conquer territory and crush regimes and especially, remove the enemy’s desire from to go another round.” It is impossible to kill dreams; dreams may remain for thousands of years but it is possible to uproot the will.”
He brings up an example of his words from his own experience as commander in the Yom Kippur War, in the Syrian sphere. Five decades have passed since that war and nothing is happening. “How does this happen? Because they know it is not worth it. In the defensive fighting of fifty years ago, they failed and learned the lesson that even under the best of conditions they cannot conquer the State of Israel and reach Haifa or even Safed. Our attack into the enclave, an attack that was stopped artificially forty kilometers from Damascus but allowed for cannon fire at the Damascus airfield, taught them, for fifty years, at least for now, that it is not worthwhile to start with us because from their point of view, it might end badly, and the fact is that it has lasted for Assad the father as well as the son, who feels that it is not worth it for him.”
On the attempt to differentiate between enemy fighters and uninvolved civilians, Dr. Laor says that experience proves that “At the front lines, there are no uninvolved. Anyone who does not want to be involved packs up his things and leaves. If he remains within the area of his state, he is considered displaced and if he goes to another country, he is a refugee and there are 140 million refugees and millions of displaced. Those who remain are involved, period. Anyone who is involved is treated like an enemy.”
“In war, they shoot with tanks for a distance of 3000-4000 meters. Is anyone looking for a certificate of integrity or conduct a project to investigate whether someone is involved or not? We shoot and every target is legitimate, and we have seen that the enemy uses hospitals and ambulances as a shield so they are a legitimate target”, repeats Laor.
Regarding what is happening in the Gaza Strip, Laor believes that the IDF should not be the one to move the Gazans to another place because the displaced have a dynamic of their own and those who desire to reach a place that is not dangerous for them will know how to do it. “They know to take their bags and the family and go to another place. From that moment, they are not in a dangerous area and they are not involved”, he says, noting that in Israel as well, anyone who did not want to be involved traveled away from the lines of conflict.
He finds the concept of a humanitarian corridor during battles to be an Israeli invention that is unknown in other battle areas, where such corridors can exist only after the end of the battles and as part of the settlement between the two countries. The relevant concept is that after saying something that clarifies the army’s objectives, there is no longer any place for discussion – it is time for action.
And what about the rule of Gaza after the war? “Since we are only in the very first phases of the developing war here, and because it is only the first line of contact in Gaza and there are additional lines of contact within the State of Israel between the Sea and the River and Lebanon, to think about what will be after the war… Let’s first wait and see how it ends. To add problems in a place where nothing has cooled off yet and discuss the bear’s skin before it has been trapped, it’s too early.”
On the attempts by the American administration to determine political facts for after the war, Laor says, “Let them talk”, noting the past attempt between war and regional peace, and the result. There is no great harm from talking, he says. “This talk has no physical existence”, he states, emphasizing that now, what we need to think about is the answer to the question of how we win. “Since no one in our world knew on the sixth of October, now, we want to guess what will be after on the day after the war? Fantasies in the air. Dealing with this even harms us because afterwards, they check every day whether we are getting closer or farther away from this goal. Forget these vain discussions. Let them talk. Nothing will be as it was before.”
Col. (Res.) Dr. Efraim Laor, director of the National Research Institute for Disaster Reduction, member of the Public Council for Jordan Valley, was a guest in the Sovereignty Movement’s series of Zoom meetings, and the discussion with him focused on the connection between citizens and the army during times of emergency and war, both in the context of the ability to contain the enemy’s attack and the matter of the uninvolved, if this definition actually exists at all.
According to him, a pattern exists that for some reason that has taken root, according to which the state provides security and the citizens have no role in it, which is a thought pattern without basis. In reality, in the past decade and a half, it is the cooperation between the citizens and the security system that has maintained the security of the citizens in the states where there is conflict.
This cooperation, he says, does not only relate to enlistment for reserves and regular, permanent service but to various roles that are fulfilled by every citizen, whether male or female. Laor believes that this fact, as well as the fact that settlement has value, has disappeared from our lives and withered.
“Since there were no wars, it has not been tested. The army, police and the entire security system can cope with small incidents such as local terror, but not with a situation of war, which requires the citizens’ cooperation in everything. We see this in all Middle Eastern states. In Lebanon, it was the citizens who decided the wars, in Syria the war was decided by citizens and this is true for Iraq as well, in Afghanistan and southern Turkey and even in Ukraine, he says, emphasizing that the army indeed worked with the citizens, but the resolution came from the citizens.
In the context of Ukraine, Laor mentions the admiration that accompanied the first days of the war there because the citizens stopped the Russian progress of armored columns with their bodies, while in Israel, the message was that the security is and will remain in the hands of the army alone. “We, the citizens, accepted it and were quiet. They did not give us tasks to do”.
“There is a very clear distinction between the citizens and the establishment security system that must rely on parallel security bodies such as the National Guard, the Police, etc., and on the other hand, on the citizens who have a security role within the state, while the army deals with attacks on the borders of the state”.
Laor emphasizes that this is not about the citizens’ choice to act or volunteering, but part of their duties, therefore they must train and be skilled in the various fields of defense, and they can gain their training through various professional elements, some of which will happen as part of military service. “It is not by choice. It is a duty. There is no other alternative”, he says, noting also in the events of the seventh of October, it was ordinary citizens who bore the brunt in the first hours of the Hamas attack. “At the height of the events, it was ordinary citizens who happened to be there, who heard and came, but there were no organized units; it was citizens who came, each one with whatever he had and some came with nothing”.
“If we want to defend the State of Israel, and not only the line of conflict, where it is imperative, as in the Jordan Valley and Judea and Samaria, we must know how to defend ourselves. The enemy can strike even in Bugrashov Street in Tel Aviv. Even if we depend on the establishment forces for backup, there is a time gap between when the event happens and the time it takes for them to arrive. This might be 6 minutes or 60 minutes and even 6 hours and sometimes several days. This is not peculiar to Israel, but it is needed especially in Israel, which is in conflict and only someone with an overly active imagination can think that they will be able to plan for every scenario and have a response for it”.
Laor says that Israel has been has suffered the horrible blow of Simhat Torah morning because there was no preparation of this sort and it doesn’t exist at this point. “In the beginning of October, there were a few dozen standby units in Israel and now there are more than 800, and the phenomenon is still expanding. It is happening because people are not stupid and this must be the direction”, he says, adding that before October 7th he spoke with friends and colleagues living in neighborhoods close to a potential enemy and there too, there was no readiness and preparation for such a scenario. “They awere complacent”.
From his personal experience, Laor says that two of the captive children that returned from captivity are relatives of his, their father remains in Gaza and their mother was murdered by the Hamas terrorists. He himself requested them a long time ago to be careful and prepare them for such an eventuality but they waved him off, in his words, claiming that “it isn’t necessary”.
Dr. Laor recommends that “Everyone should check to see what is happening in and around his house”.
In his words, Laor is careful regarding forecasting the future of the current war, but he makes clear that the objective of the war, according to the way it was stated at the beginning, was the correct objective and must be adhered to. “We can and we must achieve it. It is one part of a large, ongoing war involving additional places and we must win in all places in such a way that will be unambiguous, even to the dullest person. In our world, you win when you kill the enemy and conquer territory and crush regimes and especially, remove the enemy’s desire from to go another round.” It is impossible to kill dreams; dreams may remain for thousands of years but it is possible to uproot the will.”
He brings up an example of his words from his own experience as commander in the Yom Kippur War, in the Syrian sphere. Five decades have passed since that war and nothing is happening. “How does this happen? Because they know it is not worth it. In the defensive fighting of fifty years ago, they failed and learned the lesson that even under the best of conditions they cannot conquer the State of Israel and reach Haifa or even Safed. Our attack into the enclave, an attack that was stopped artificially forty kilometers from Damascus but allowed for cannon fire at the Damascus airfield, taught them, for fifty years, at least for now, that it is not worthwhile to start with us because from their point of view, it might end badly, and the fact is that it has lasted for Assad the father as well as the son, who feels that it is not worth it for him.”
On the attempt to differentiate between enemy fighters and uninvolved civilians, Dr. Laor says that experience proves that “At the front lines, there are no uninvolved. Anyone who does not want to be involved packs up his things and leaves. If he remains within the area of his state, he is considered displaced and if he goes to another country, he is a refugee and there are 140 million refugees and millions of displaced. Those who remain are involved, period. Anyone who is involved is treated like an enemy.”
“In war, they shoot with tanks for a distance of 3000-4000 meters. Is anyone looking for a certificate of integrity or conduct a project to investigate whether someone is involved or not? We shoot and every target is legitimate, and we have seen that the enemy uses hospitals and ambulances as a shield so they are a legitimate target”, repeats Laor.
Regarding what is happening in the Gaza Strip, Laor believes that the IDF should not be the one to move the Gazans to another place because the displaced have a dynamic of their own and those who desire to reach a place that is not dangerous for them will know how to do it. “They know to take their bags and the family and go to another place. From that moment, they are not in a dangerous area and they are not involved”, he says, noting that in Israel as well, anyone who did not want to be involved traveled away from the lines of conflict.
He finds the concept of a humanitarian corridor during battles to be an Israeli invention that is unknown in other battle areas, where such corridors can exist only after the end of the battles and as part of the settlement between the two countries. The relevant concept is that after saying something that clarifies the army’s objectives, there is no longer any place for discussion – it is time for action.
And what about the rule of Gaza after the war? “Since we are only in the very first phases of the developing war here, and because it is only the first line of contact in Gaza and there are additional lines of contact within the State of Israel between the Sea and the River and Lebanon, to think about what will be after the war… Let’s first wait and see how it ends. To add problems in a place where nothing has cooled off yet and discuss the bear’s skin before it has been trapped, it’s too early.”
On the attempts by the American administration to determine political facts for after the war, Laor says, “Let them talk”, noting the past attempt between war and regional peace, and the result. There is no great harm from talking, he says. “This talk has no physical existence”, he states, emphasizing that now, what we need to think about is the answer to the question of how we win. “Since no one in our world knew on the sixth of October, now, we want to guess what will be after on the day after the war? Fantasies in the air. Dealing with this even harms us because afterwards, they check every day whether we are getting closer or farther away from this goal. Forget these vain discussions. Let them talk. Nothing will be as it was before.”