Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signaled a major shift in military doctrine Monday, one which would require a larger standing army.
The prime minister addressed a conference of the Forum of Senior IDF Reserve Commanders and said that the multi-front war which began on October 7th, 2023 – including hostilities in the Gaza Strip, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Iran – has forced Israel to reconsider the military paradigm of the preceding generation.
“We not only changed the Middle East, we also changed ourselves,” Netanyahu said.
The IDF, he continued, can no longer react to developments in the field and instead must take the “initiative.”
“There is no more containment. There is initiative and around-the-clock activity. And we are doing that because we know who you are, and we know what an amazing military we have. Not only the regular force – with everybody calling this ‘the TikTok generation’, and it’s obvious by now that that’s not the case – but our reserve force which mobilized again, contrary to everything that the enemy expected. They were wrong – wrong about us, wrong about you.”
Netanyahu emphasized that to confront new challenges, the Israeli military must expand both its regular, active-duty forces and its reserves. It is a hard truth, but one that must be faced and dealt with promptly.