Talk:Israel Defense Forces

Just out of curiousity.

Who exactly considers the Israeli Army to have the most effective methods of crowd control and use of non-lethal force?

Conventional military wisdom is that armies should minimalize their involvement in crowd control and non-lethal force, and that military forces in general handle this very badly. It doesn't seem obivous to me that the Israeli army handles hostile crowds better than most civilian police forces, so I'm curious where that statement comes from.

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As to Israel's being the only country that uses assassinations as a defensive measure: how would one categorize George W. Bush's request to bring Mr. Bin-Laden, dead or alive? Mullah Omar? --Uriyan

Semantics. The official policy still is that targeted assassinations by the US are not-sanctioned by the US government. However, that doesn't mean that the US military has to avoid bombing places where OBL might be for *eh-hem* other legitimate reasons. Oh darn is if they happen to kill OBL in a raid or he happens to not surrender to ground troops. That's what was meant. The statement in this article about the "officialness" of the US policy needs to be changed. --maveric149

U.S. Tomohawks striking god-knows-where in Sudan and Rangers touring Mullah Ommar's house are in fact not ambigious at all: these are all official assassination attempts. Also, the US $25 million reward makes the search after OBL & Co. an officialy-sanctioned bounty hunt. Israel does not play in these games: it does not do carpet bombings and it does not lease its affairs to subcontractors. But I still have difficult figuring out why everyone is silent with the US but so angry with Israel. Must be something in the Israeli genes. --Uriyan