There have been instances of pilots and 8200 personnel showing reluctance in the past, particularly around issues of conscience where soldiers and officers refused to participate in operations they claimed resulted in the killing of innocents. However, the recent wave of refusal is unprecedented, with dozens of pilots and hundreds of soldiers and officers from units like 8200 and special operations units announcing that they will not volunteer for reserve service or participate in exercises preparing them for operational activity. This has caused a delay in legislative proceedings in the Knesset and sparked public protests. Despite efforts to diversify army units and reduce social disparities, elite units like the technological units in the Intelligence Division or the IT Division continue to recruit graduates from the upper deciles at a much higher rate than their share in the population. However, there has been a rapid closure of social gaps in recent years, with programs like Magashim and Bridges operating as the main training arenas for candidates from the periphery. The IDF predicts that the number of graduates from these programs will reach 100,000 each year within two to three years, leading to tectonic changes in the composition of field units. The IDF sees 8200 and technological units as a solution and a world-class program that identifies potential based on learning potential rather than previous training, and aims to engage young people from all over the country in the most advanced technology for the benefit of the most worthy goal.
Manifestations of reluctance among pilots or 8200 personnel are nothing new – these have occurred in the past around issues of conscience when soldiers and officers refused to participate in operations that they claimed resulted in the killing of innocents. But the new wave of refusal seems to have no equal: it broke out against unprecedented legislative moves and is at the center of a large public protest. This time it was dozens of pilots and hundreds of soldiers and officers from units such as the 8200 and the special operations units (MM) who announced that they would not volunteer for the reserve service and would be absent from exercises that were supposed to prepare them for operational activity.
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The power of the wave and its effect on the delay of the legislative proceedings in the Knesset also brought with it a backlash. “Besides reforming the judicial system, we need to reform the academy, the 8200 and the pilot course,” Diaspora Minister Amichai Shikli told the news 12 days after minister Yoav Galant was fired. MK Almog Cohen, from the Otzma Yehudit party, was also quick to tweet: “These are exactly the people who refused to accept the boys from the periphery to the units and brought their children there because they were afraid that someone would taste the cream for them. It’s good to die for our country in Golani, Givat, Magb and Kaffir – but not good enough to taste the cream of the privileged.”
But in fact, the process of social diversification in the various army units began years ago, and continues even more strongly these days. According to data published by the IDF at the end of 2022, in recent years there has been an increase in socio-economic diversity in the units, among other things due to changes in the identification, sorting and placement processes designed to reduce social disparities in the IDF.
Elite units are still not diverse enough
And yet, the process is far from perfect. Despite the many programs to locate candidates from the periphery and low socio-economic clusters, the technological units in the Intelligence Division or the IT Division recruit graduates from the upper deciles at a much higher rate than their share in the population. As of the end of last year, 37% of all employees in the technological units came from the 9th grade, even though their share in the population is 22%. A tenth of the servants in the technological units belong to the top decile, even though their share in the population is only 4%.
Meanwhile, the mirror image is reflected among the lower deciles: only 3% of the servants in these units come from socioeconomic cluster 4, even though their share in the population is 10%. Only 1 percent of servants belong to cluster 3, even though their share in the population is 6%.
Gabi Portnoy, head of the National Cyber Array, is intimately familiar with the elite technological units in the IDF. Until recently, he served in senior positions in the Intelligence Division as the commander of Unit 9900, the field array of the AMN, and then as the head of the operational activation division. In a conversation with Globes, Portnoy says that the social gaps found at the end of last year are rapidly closing: “The theory of the cyber recruits who come mainly from the area between Gedera and Hadera is no longer relevant today. A decade ago, 3% of the recruits who came to the ‘cyber pool’ (the pool of manpower recruited for cyber roles In the army as a whole, and later sorted into the elite units, (c) – came from the geographic and social periphery, after all, today their rate reaches 40%.”
The programs that became the largest pool of cyber recruits
And it doesn’t happen just like that, in recent years a series of programs have been opened that have become the main training arena operated by Aman among candidates for service from the periphery. The Magashim program, for example, locates high school students with high potential for technological service and provides them with reinforcement classes. cyber and technology and 85% of them go on to academia or the high-tech industry after their release from the IDF. The army’s dependence on such programs is so great, in fact, that harming them could lead to a decrease in the number of recruits for the cyber units.
Magashim is currently operated by the IDF with partial funding from the Rashi Foundation (20%), it is currently headed by former Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi. It was founded back in the time of Nadav Tzafir, who was the commander of 8200 between 2009-2013, under the assumption that “L knows how to identify boys who have been very successful in computer science and mathematics, but misses those who have the potential to excel in these subjects. Zfarir thought (and in retrospect he was also right) that high school students from the periphery would agree to stay after graduation in order to take cyber classes, which are all taught by volunteer soldiers from the unit. Last year, 1,700 students graduated from the program, 35% of whom were accepted into the army’s cyber units.
Nadav Tzafrir, founding partner of the Team8 fund and former commander of 8200 / Photo: Adi Lam
After a decade of activity and in an attempt to open the program to more potential candidates, the “Bridges” program was established which currently operates in 35 local authorities including Tirat Carmel, Beit Shean, Nahariya, Yerka and Sderot. In the army, which finances about half of the program’s budget (the other half comes from the Rashi Fund), they are currently pointing to bridges as the largest manpower reserve for the cyber units in the coming years. The IDF predicts that the law of large numbers in the bridges program is the one that will bring change to the periphery: this year they will end the program 24 thousand students and by 2025 it is expected to include 50 thousand graduates in 50 local authorities.
All of these are joined by another program, “Atidim”, founded by the former Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi. A reservist program aimed at residents of the periphery. 28% of reservists in the IDF are Atidim graduates, a number that is expected to jump to 35% next year.
Portnoy predicts that all of these training programs, as well as additional programs promoted by the IDF, will within two to three years have approximately 100,000 graduates each year. Thus, if in 2022 only 18% of the soldiers of the technological units live in the periphery, army officials estimate today that by At the end of the year this figure will climb to 20%-25% and next year even up to 30%. These are figures that are much closer to the share of the residents of the periphery in the population – almost like their relative share in the population.
Gabi Portnoy, head of the national cyber system and former commander of 9900 / Photo: L.A.M.
“8200 and the technological units are not the problem, but the solution – one that the whole world is studying,” says Zafarir, who currently serves as a founding partner in the venture capital fund Team8. “This is probably the only program in the world to which you are accepted based on learning potential and not based on previous training, in particular with programs such as Magzhimim and Bridges that deal with increasing this potential in the periphery. In the unit, potential is identified in young people from all over the country, they are trained and placed in a place where they engage in the most advanced technology for the benefit of the goal The most worthy, until they are released and become entrepreneurs and technologists who lead Israeli high-tech.”
Within three years: tectonic changes also in the composition of the field units
The changes in the mix of servers do not stop at the technological units, which become more diverse. Tectonic changes are also felt in the field units and they reflect today more than in the past more parts of society.
Thus, for example, the Kafir Brigade, the largest infantry brigade in the IDF that operates in the territories of Judea and Samaria and was previously identified with the Alor Azaria case, fundamentally changed the mix of its recruits over the past three years; in November 2019, approximately 44% of its recruits came from socio-economic clusters Economic 4-6. In November 2022, the proportion of the middle deciles of all recruits was dramatically reduced to 32%, while the proportion of recruits from among the high clusters 9-10 doubled from 14% to 28%. Today, their proportion is almost the same as those recruited from among the lower clusters.
A similar process also went through the Golani and Givati divisions, which were previously considered “popular” units. After only three years, they can boast that a third of their recruits came from the two highest deciles.
But not all units succeeded in the reasoning process, some are still struggling with it. The Border Guard, for example, only slightly increased the proportion of recruits from the highest clusters, 9-10, from 10% to 14% over the past three years. The proportion of MP recruits from the ranks of the intermediate clusters, 4-6, actually increased from 45% to 48% at the expense of the lower deciles 1-3.
The situation among the fighters of the crossings even worsened: the proportion of recruits from among the established strata decreased from 20% to 15%, while the proportion of clusters 1-6 increased significantly.
Discrimination started mainly because of ignorance
One of the dramatic changes that the IDF had to make in order to recruit more candidates from the periphery for the technological units involved an extensive change in the method of locating its candidates. A change that first and foremost included the abolition of the KBA – the designation of the “quality groups” which included a widespread bias towards powerful population groups. Dr. Zeev Lerer, a former senior member of the IDF’s Behavioral Sciences Department and currently head of the Sociology Program at the Peres Academic Institute, believes that the KBA was used as a tool to build an elitist cultural identity in the army and that the way in which the candidates were sorted until then created discrimination on the basis of sect. The world constructs social identities in armies – today they understand that they need to be culturally fair and adapt to the characteristics and identities that differentiate them in order to be validated,” he says.
At the same time, Lerer states that as early as the 1980s, the Kabbalah lost its ability to separate Mizrahim from Ashkenazim in the land army. “At that time, there was an accelerated process of immigration from the Mizrahi ethnic group, and a large influx of them into the army after the Yom Kippur War,” he says. “The army felt that he was stuck with a 1948 Spitfire (obsolete AG plane), an outdated and mostly incorrect screening tool for its time. There was an understanding that the tool did not measure military success but reflected cultural characteristics – it caused many mediocre candidates to become officers and prevented candidates who could have been excellent officers from becoming to the officer”. And yet, according to Lehrer, the elitist structure remains: the Ashkenazi dominance, as defined, has moved from the special units and the officers’ courses to the technological units.
“It was not intentional discrimination and it did not stem from racism,” claims Lerer, who summarized his research in the field in his book “The Ethnic Code”. “It was mainly bureaucratic ignorance that the ACA officials did not really see through their own eyes, their definitions, the language and the practices that were customary.”
The army claims that the selection processes have been changed from end to end
Today, senior officials in the army claim, the selection processes have been changed from end to end in relation to the situation described by Lerer in his book: the Kabbalah has been abolished, the DPR tests have been refined and their weight in the final grade has been reduced, the Hebrew grade has been abolished as an exit to the military. In addition, recruitment candidates also began to go through the selection day, which until now only passed the nominations, the 100th day which also measures interpersonal skills such as command abilities, training and teamwork, performance indicators such as response speed, working with uncertainty and executive thinking.
Geographical accessibility has also improved: if in the past the candidates for the technological units were required to come to Tel Aviv, then today they can be conducted in Beer Sheva, Tiberias, Jerusalem and the Kiryat, and in two thirds of the cases they can also be conducted remotely from the home computer. It is possible to prepare for the DPR exams and the Day of the Maa through subsidized military studies and courses, and even request a second chance.
Despite the mistakes made by the IDF in the past in the selection of candidates for service, Lerer believes that politicians should not interfere in these processes: “The process should be carried out within the army by the army – after all, the situation is complex. It’s easiest to say that the Ashkenazim screwed up the Mizrahim, and that there are elites, but the reality is more complex, and it’s important to understand how institutional – not psychological – racism developed here. The processes were closed between officials in Tel Hashomer and the Kirya and they did not see social identities being violated. Today we have to understand that the inequality created in the technological units – to the extent that it is created – is much greater, because the jump of 8200 graduates in citizenship is much greater than anything a soldier has ever had.”
Zafarir also does not believe that there is any room for government intervention in the matter: “I am convinced that the Minister of Defense knows the data on programs such as bridges or fulfillment centers, so if he already wants to intervene, he will only have to intensify those programs. In order to continue to see results, you also need patience. It is impossible To take students who have not been exposed and trained, or those who are not suitable and place them in the force, but over time there is an opportunity for dramatic change here. I would be happy to see the Minister of Defense sit down with the Minister of Education, and both together present a plan for greater investment to bring the existing training courses to earlier ages and smaller classes.”