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Israel's defense budget means costs elsewhere

Unlike late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will likely once again give in to the terrifying annual intimidation campaign of the defense establishment eager to secure its budget.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (C) listens to Defence Minister Moshe Ya'alon (2nd R) as Chief of the General Staff Lieutenant General Benny Gantz (R) sits beside them during an air force pilots' graduation ceremony at Hatzerim air base in southern Israel December 26, 2013. REUTERS/Nir Elias (ISRAEL - Tags: MILITARY POLITICS) - RTX16UH7
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A few months after Yitzhak Rabin was elected prime minister in 1992, one of his aides invited me to join Rabin for lunch in the Knesset cafeteria. Rabin was so introverted that he always depended on his staff to find him company, so as not to be left alone. I was a reporter in the Knesset at the time, and I saw the invitation as an opportunity to engage the new prime minister in an intimate conversation. When I asked him about his decision to serve as defense minister as well as prime minister, his response surprised me: “They can’t fool me, and they can’t intimidate me either,” he answered with a wide grin on his face. By "they," he meant the military’s top brass. “I made a commitment to change the country’s priorities, and the only way that I can implement that change is by cutting the defense budget. Can you imagine the army agreeing to that and sitting by silently while it happens if I wasn’t both prime minister and defense minister?”

I recalled that conversation this week, after the defense minister and the chief of staff spent the past few weeks collaborating in an effort to terrify the Israeli public. Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon threatened that without billions more in defense funds, he cannot guarantee the calm the country is now experiencing would continue. Chief of Staff Benny Gantz took it a step further. On May 19, he announced that he gave orders to stop training reserve units, claiming that he lacked the funds to enable the training.

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