MKs pan IDF for failing to provide reservists with proper equipment

Members of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee accuse the army of failing to provide reservists with necessary equipment.

“There has recently been a wave of inquiries from reservists who pointed out deficiencies. This is a situation that cannot continue,” committee chair Yuli Edelstein says during a hearing.

“We in the committee have a major responsibility for the issue. We approve emergency call-ups each time, but we cannot continue to do so while receiving inquiries about the lack of basic equipment,” he says.

Even though the October 7 attack left the “IDF unprepared to properly equip the reserve soldiers, a year after the start of the war there are still no satisfactory solutions for soldiers” who receive emergency call-up orders, states Yesh Atid MK Moshe Tur-Paz. Reservists’ “blood is no less red” than those in mandatory service, he says.

Brigadier General Moti Mizrahi, who heads the IDF’s logistics division, tells the committee “we are learning, we are improving” and the army’s approach to this issue “is always evolving.”

“The common denominator for all of us is that we agree that the reservists deserve everything,” he says. “When there is a large amount of recruits, there will always be the few who do not receive [everything], but we address every request that we receive. We also opened a hotline that you can contact and receive an answer to any issue.”

No soldier out on maneuvers will go without ceramic body armor, another IDF representative adds.

Testifying before the committee, one reserve officer states that his troops have been fighting with the same protective gear that the IDF used in the First Lebanon War in 1982. “Comfort is treated as a privilege, but when you wear a helmet for four months, it is not a privilege,” he says.