Soviet Jew Chaim Laskov founded Israel's military
08/30/2022
Strike first - this is how Israel's military doctrine can be described in a nutshell. But first, try to keep the enemy out of the war, added its creator, General Khaim Laskov.
On August 5, 2022, the IDF announced the launch of an anti-terrorist operation in the Gaza Strip. It was named "Rassvet", and its purpose was observation posts, ammunition depots and positions for launching missiles of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group, an organization banned in Russia. "The operation is necessary to eliminate a specific threat against Israeli citizens and civilians living in the neighborhood of the Gaza Strip," Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid said. According to him, the terrorists placed rockets and snipers on the border with Gaza and were preparing to launch a series of attacks on the Israeli population and the military.
Operation "Dawn" lasted 66 hours - already on August 7, the militants announced their readiness for a truce and a ceasefire. During this time, the IDF Air Force hit about 170 targets, and also eliminated two leaders of the group - Taysir Jabari and Khaled Mansour. The preemptive attack is an important element of Israel's defense doctrine, which it has used since its founding. Its ideologue was Chaim Laskov, “a stubborn man the world has never seen,” as Ben-Gurion characterized him.
Khaim Laskov was born in 1919 in the city of Borisov, now Belarus, in the family of Moishe Laskov and Eta Girshfeld. In 1925, the family moved to Palestine and settled in Haifa, where his father soon died at the hands of the Arabs. The care of raising five children fell on the shoulders of the mother. Realizing how hard it was for her, the children tried to protect her from any experiences. Chaim, for example, decided that he would study perfectly - in order to remove at least this concern from his mother's shoulders. And he fulfilled his promise: after graduating from the Haifa real gymnasium, he was chosen among the first applicants to be sent to study at a foreign university. But Laskov already then showed a character that in the future would bring him the glory of a quarrelsome and sometimes harsh person. Instead of going abroad, he joined the Haganah, an underground militant Zionist organization in Palestine.
In general, Haganah activists fought the British in the Holy Land, but at the beginning of World War II they made an alliance with them. Chaim Laskov entered the so-called Jewish Brigade as part of the British troops - and fought in Libya, Egypt, Belgium, Holland and Italy. He was demobilized in 1945, but stayed in Europe for a while: he helped European Jews move illegally to Palestine, and he also hunted Nazis who had escaped justice.
Upon his return to Palestine, Laskov became the head of the first officer school on the territory of the future Israel - and played an important role in training personnel for the Israeli army, which was gradually created on the basis of the Haganah. During the War of Independence in 1948, Laskov distinguished himself in the battles for Latrun and Nazareth, as well as during the liberation of Galilee. A year later - already in the rank of major general - he headed the military training department of the General Staff. It was then that he was entrusted with the development of military doctrine.
Its main postulates were written by David Ben-Gurion, the country's first prime minister. They were as follows: Israel is obliged to the last to deter enemies from attack. If containment fails, Israel follows the path of early warning and launches a preemptive strike. If this did not stop the enemy, Israel is trying to move the theater of operations to enemy territory as quickly as possible.
However, Khaim Laskov developed an entire ideology from the "early warning theory". The country is too small to afford to fight defensive battles or, if necessary, to make a tactical retreat of troops, he believed. The experience of the War of Independence confirmed this. If not for the month-long truce in June-July 1948, initiated by the UN, the outcome of the conflict for the defending Israel could have been deplorable: a month of "respite" gave its army the opportunity to get new weapons and change tactics. “In the event of an imminent threat, Israel has no other option than a quick preemptive attack,” Laskov proclaimed. “Waiting for an attack is tantamount to digging your own grave!”
The most famous example of pre-emptive strikes was the destruction by the Israeli Air Force of Egyptian aviation right on its airfields in June 1967. Egyptian President Abdel Nasser called for "drowning all Jews in the Mediterranean." The armies of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt have concentrated near the borders of Israel. And although there were twice as many of them as the Israelis, and they had three times as many tanks and aircraft, this conflict ended very quickly. In favor of Israel, which launched a preemptive strike on airfields. As a result of this war, called the "six-day war", the Golan Heights, the Sinai Peninsula, the West Bank of the Jordan River and the Gaza Strip region near Egypt went to Israel.
By that time, Khaim Laskov himself, who for three years - from 1958 to 1961 - headed the IDF General Staff, had already retired. He became head of the Israel Ports Authority. In this post, he, among other things, built a port in Ashdod - one of the largest in the country. In addition to the “quick response” doctrine, two scandals are associated with the name of Laskov during his military service. The first of these happened in April 1959, when the IDF suddenly announced the mobilization of reservists. The purpose of this drill was to practice the deployment of reserve forces, but panic began in the cities - the Israelis thought that a new war had begun. Neighboring Arab countries also put their armies on alert - they decided that Israel was planning an attack. These teachings went down in history as the "night of the ducks." Laskov himself was not injured,
The second scandal was connected with the name of Laskov. In the late 40s, politicians began to massively change their surnames, shifting them to a "more Israeli" way. Laskov flatly refused to do so. Here is what Mikhail Alshansky, the head of the Belarusian community in Israel, recalled: “David Ben-Gurion three times demanded that General Khaim Laskov, a native of the Belarusian city of Borisov, change his surname, and three times the general refused. For the last time at a government meeting, the enraged Ben-Gurion asked Laskov to go out the door, think and return with a new surname. However, Laskov continued to persist. Returning to his place at the meeting table, he said: “I was born as a Tender and I will die as a Tender. I won’t even change the letters in my last name.” Struck by such persistence, the head of government remarked: “I see that you are as stubborn as I am. Well, stay Affectionate.”
Khaim Laskov died in December 1982. The Museum of Military Glory in Haifa is named after the ideologue of the "preemptive strike".