The IDF

In his "Critical History of the Israeli Defense Force", The Sword and the Olive, historian Martin van Creveld suggested that "it is not impossible to imagine a day when a mainly right-wing, orthodox, nationalist officer corps will command an all volunteer rank and and file consisting, as tends to be the case in so many developed countries, primarily of the down-and-out. Should that come about, the handwriting clearly will be on the wall." [i.e. a higher potential for a secular-religious military showdown] (p. 318) He later goes on to say that should Israel "persist in its current course of trying to hold on to the Occupied Territories and their inhabitants, in the long run it very likely will come down to civil war, not only of Jew against Jew but of some Jews and some Arabs against some other Jews and some other Arabs." (p. 363)

Obviously, he was being somewhat hyperbolic (although he hasn't completely changed his views since; see Looming Gaza pullout sows division in Israeli army), but the point is that the Gaza disengagement has shown that, once again, the IDF has exceeded expectations. As the Jerusalem Post points out: "In recent years, the ethical record of the IDF has been unfairly under attack by the international community, which saw every method Israel used to fight terror as 'excessive,' and by internal critics who – sometimes rightly, often not – spotlighted how soldiers treated Palestinian civilians while trying to fight Palestinian terrorists. In these days, however, both Israelis and the world are seeing a new face of our security forces: the same police and soldiers who fought the last almost five years of terror war have become the psychologists, social workers and moving men of the Gush Katif settlers." It's a reminder that the soldiers are not random killers of Palestinian children, but ordinary people trying to do the best they can in difficult situations, ones which we here in North America cannot really relate to. We'll see how long that reminder lasts (I'm not putting any money down).