The reports by [Amiram Levin] and [Udi Shani] were the outcome of two of the most important of a series of 11 inquiries ordered by the IDF to investigate key aspects of the 34-day war, during which the IDF failed to stop Hizballah from firing over 4,000 medium- and short- range Katyusha rockets at civilians in northern Israel. Another 30 committees were appointed to look into specific issues. The committees are dealing with everything from the General Staff, the Northern Command, the air force, the Navy, the reserves, the kidnapping of IDF soldiers Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser on July 12 that triggered the war, to the the IDF's battle doctrines and the readiness of its commanders and men for war.

The reliance on air power led to a number of wrongheaded derivatives. Generals spoke about "controlling" land areas without occupying them in the same way as planes might control the skies or ships might control the sea. But, says [Avi Kober], in classical land warfare, areas must be captured before they can be controlled - a lesson the IDF was taught in the war in the Hizballah town of Bint J'beil, which IDF troops entered and withdrew from several times, without ever rooting out the small Hizballah force dug in there. The IDF also spoke about using firepower to "achieve effects" that would ultimately break the enemy's will to fight. But in the Lebanon war, this never happened.

Amidror, a political hawk, is optimistic about remedying the IDF's ills. He expresses great admiration for Israel's fighting men and argues that if the right steps are taken, the IDF can be restored to its former glory relatively quickly. But some former generals on the left take a more pessimistic view, arguing that the IDF's problems cannot be divorced from deep formative developments in Israeli society. Brig. Gen. (res.) Giora Furman, veteran pilot, economist and member of the left-leaning Council for Peace and Security, sees two underlying processes that have had a major impact on the IDF: the 39-year-long occupation of Palestinian territory and economic policies that have undermined social solidarity inside Israel. "The need to deal with the terrorism sparked by the occupation limited training and preparation for other types of warfare. It created a mentality of trying to avoid casualties, as soldiers asked whether this was something worth sacrificing their lives for. Moreover, involving an entire army in policing paralyzed its intellectual resources and prevented it from thinking creatively about other kinds of warfare," he charges. Worse, he says, it eroded the IDF's moral norms. The occupation "forced soldiers to turn a blind eye to persistent breaches of human rights, Israeli and international law. That created a sense that no law is really important, including the IDF's own internal norms, which left it without a moral compass, even for relations among its soldiers. In other words, the occupation helped to erode group solidarity and undermined readiness to sacrifice for common goals."