About a week after the IDF investigations into the October 7th failures were published: Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir decided to cancel all silences in the IDF.
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According to a report by military commentator Yossi Yehoshua on Ynet, in a conversation with the IDF's senior command staff, Zamir announced the dramatic move: "There are no more silences in the IDF, the army will be on alert all year round.".
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According to the report, Zamir emphasized that conscripts and permanent servicemen will be entitled to "regular" vacations, but there will be no time when the army is in silence.
In doing so, Zamir is eliminating the long-standing silence procedure, under which many permanent and regular personnel go on vacation, mainly during the holidays of Tishrei, Hanukkah, Passover, and at the end of August.
These are concentrated unit vacations during which some bases remain with reduced personnel and certain wings are temporarily closed.
The Chief of Staff announced his decision yesterday in a commanders' meeting, saying that this was a lesson from October 7. Investigations revealed that Hamas, which deceived the IDF, took advantage of the fact that the Gaza Division, intelligence units, and the Air Force were on a well-known, regular, concentrated Sukkot vacation.
The investigation revealed, among other things, that the architect of the massacre, the mastermind of the murders, Yahya Sinwar, said that on holidays and Fridays, "they don't leave many people.".
As published in Ynet, one of the scandalous omissions that the investigations revealed is the decision from about five years ago by the General Staff to reduce the number of fighters in the current security sectors by about half on weekends.
The move was mainly intended to increase motivation for combat recruitment. That decision, recently described by the Southern Command as a "mistake," had a heavy blood price on October 7, especially in outposts with sparse forces - such as the Nahal Oz base, in the battle for which 53 soldiers and men paid with their lives.
Chairman of the Subcommittee on IDF Readiness and Current Security, MK Merav Michaeli, on the Chief of Staff's decision to cancel the silences in the IDF: "I welcome Chief of Staff Zamir's decision to immediately cancel the silences in the IDF. History teaches that the State of Israel's major wars began with complete surprise, when the IDF lowered the level of alert following the widespread release of soldiers for the holiday break.
""I recently presented this insight and need in the appropriate forums, and I am glad that this recommendation fell on attentive ears.
""Later this month, I will hold a dedicated discussion in the IDF Readiness and Current Security Subcommittee that I chair, within the framework of the Foreign Affairs and Security Committee, to study in depth how the Chief of Staff's decision will be implemented and to ensure that the IDF will be ready for any scenario at any time.".
Last night, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Chief of Staff Zamir met for a first working meeting that dealt, among other things, with the IDF's preparations for renewed fighting in the Gaza Strip, should talks with Hamas not progress.
