____________________________________________ 1 IICC Perspectives Today everyone knows: you can't go to battle without information from the CED, the Captured Enemy Documents unit ("AMSHAT"), Israel's intelligence "natural resource"… Interview April 2024 and publication: Dani Dor and Yossi Ben-Ari Interview with Colonel. D., commander of the Captured Enemy Documents unit On October 13, 2023, five years after it was disbanded, the CED Unit was re-established and has since become of supreme importance to commanders and fighters. Colonel D, commander of the unit, said, "Today everyone knows the CED saves lives, and every commander understands that before any mission he has to study the relevant CED materials." The vision is for every unit to have a CED team and every frontline fighter will know he has to search for enemy intelligence material. There is no IDF Intelligence Directorate debriefing that doesn't rely on CED materials. Also important is proactivity: that's the difference between the way the CED Unit operates today, and the way it operated in the past. Dr. B.G. (Ret.) Joseph (Yossi) Ben ari Danny Dor, auther, writer and editor Col. D., the unit commander, with a map of Hamas underground system, that was captured in Gaza. Intelligence saves lives. (source: IICC)
____________________________________________ 2 IICC Perspectives January 2024, just days before the ceasefire and the start of the hostage deal, was one of the IDF's most difficult months in the northern Gaza Strip. Within a few days during the second week of the month, ten IDF soldiers were killed in Beit Hanoun. Col. D., commander of the Captured Enemy Documents Unit (CED): "The last incident, in which five soldiers were killed, was on Saturday morning. That same evening, after the chief of staff's situational assessment, I got a call at home from the chief of staff's office asking to confirm that we had exhausted all available material on Beit Hanoun to make sure the fighting forces there were using CED materials to continue the operation. After 464 days of fighting, everyone knew that CED could guide maneuvers precisely and save lives. We often warned forces before they walked into traps or dangerous locations, or guided them to success in their missions." *** The CED Unit, responsible for collecting intelligence and technical materials, has existed in various forms since the establishment of the State of Israel. It moved from body to body, organization to organization, sometimes as a regular unit, sometimes as a reserve unit, in large and small versions. Sometimes it was a platoon, sometimes a company, sometimes a battalion, sometimes a company within a battalion. At times it was under Central Command, at other times under Military Intelligence, but most of the time, in its various forms, it was part of Unit 8200. Its activity expanded and contracted according to the situation on the ground. Before a major operation or during a war, the unit was activated and everyone was pleased. After a while, when the collected material had been exhausted and there was no operational friction, the unit's activity was frozen. That went on for years. "We often warned forces before they entered traps or dangerous locations, or guided them to success in their mission." The last time the CED Unit was activated before the Gaza Strip War was during Operation Protective Edge in 2014. When it ended the unit disintegrated. Personnel stopped being assigned to it, reserve call-ups ended, resources were no longer allocated and it was no longer integrated into training exercises. The message was clear, operational capabilities were lost and qualifications faded. The unit disappeared from the commanders and soldiers' consciousness, and more importantly and worse, Military Intelligence no longer recognized it as a source of intelligence. D.: "The IDF and Intelligence fell in love with cyber, fell in love with campaign-betweenwars operations, and the unit was completely shut down from 2018 to October 2023. Then we were hit with a scenario unlike anything in the history of the unit, or any CED unit in the world. In past deployments the unit would be sent with the forces into enemy territory to collect the documents and other materials., Most of the time it was maps, radios, sometimes documents, and only in rare cases did anyone recall how it really
____________________________________________ 3 IICC Perspectives influenced the campaign," but this time the situation was massively, completely different. *** In October 2023, D. was planning to end his military service and retire in November, after serving in his final role as the chief intelligence officer of the General Staff Exercises Directorate. On Saturday morning, immediately after the Hamas attack, he arrived at his base in Julis, in Israel's north. D.: "At one time I had been the intelligence officer for the 162nd Division, which was now mobilizing for combat near the Gaza Strip border. I summoned the current intelligence officer to Julis and gave him everything the division and its brigades needed to concentrate forces and begin fighting. "At that stage the division's mission was to take responsibility for a specific sector in the south and restore the status quo ante. Division 162 is one of the IDF's two spearhead divisions, trained for offensive missions to exert decisive force. That's what they know how to do, but this time it was a defensive mission, a mission to restore the status quo ante. No one had ever trained the division for such a scenario, and we had to improvise new intelligence processes. We instituted a new working method, not intelligence for decisive victory, intelligence for restoration. Enemy photo map of the Gaza Strip, that helped in saving lives of IDF soldiers. (source: IICC)
____________________________________________ 4 IICC Perspectives "Our objective was to contact trapped civilians and emergency squad members near the border and collect information about what was happening in the communities, where the enemy was, where the fighting was. That was to help the division direct forces to the specific hotspots in the towns and IDF bases, so they wouldn't just sweep through areas blindly... "To generate that intelligence, we had to establish contact with local community residents. There's no established protocol for that, it was all improvised. We went online to the social networks, pulled phone lists for the emergency teams of regional councils and communities, and started making calls. I introduced myself as the intelligence officer of Division 162. They didn't know what Division 162 was, all they knew was the Gaza Division... "I explained the situation and asked for phone numbers. I started reaching out to security coordinators, regional leaders and members, emergency squad members, and civilians in the middle of brutal fighting. The people who answered their phones didn't understand who I was or what I wanted. They didn't trust anyone, they were afraid I might be from Hamas. "I had to convince them I didn't have a foreign accent, give them my serial number, explain where I was from in Israel, where I went to high school, my military background, and some still hesitated before giving any information. They wanted to verify things. They wanted to talk to the local security officer, who was in the middle of fighting and not always able to answer... and all the while, I'm listening to screams and gunfire through radios and phones..." Picture taken from a computer, that helped to identify "Nuhba" terrorist , who participated in the October 7th massacre. (source: IICC)
____________________________________________ 5 IICC Perspectives "The IDF and Intelligence fell in love with cyber, fell in love with the situation between wars, and the unit was completely shut down from 2018 until October 2023." " I immediately passed all the information I collected to the division. I constructed a table and began entering details: whom I spoke to, from which community, where contact with the enemy was reported, here in this neighborhood, there on that street, here next to the chicken coops, there next to the children's houses. "All throughout that Saturday I was engaged in gathering intelligence. At the same time, there was a small group of CED personnel, just ten, who were trying to do something, mostly working with materials recovered from the bodies of terrorists in areas we had already secured. We understood almost immediately that there were tactical radios on the bodies, maps with invasion directions, other documents. The CED personnel managed military-issued cellphones to photograph of some of the items and relayed assessments to the units using a computerized operations log. Over the next two to three days, they realized it was an unprecedented find of intelligence material. D.: "To help the group, which had set itself up at my base in Julis, I connected them to the Intelligence Directorate leadership so they could get resources, like communications and equipment. I still didn't know that would become my role in the war, but I was involved with their activities from day one because I wanted to help." *** "I had many conversations with the group, and in one of them, on October 12 or 13, during a conference call with the Chief Intelligence Officer (CIO), in front of everyone he told me, 'Pack your things. Tomorrow morning you're starting a unit.' So I packed my things without asking my commanders in Julis, without informing my general, without anything, and the next morning I sat down in Glilot [an IDF base near Tel Aviv] to establish a unit. The CED Unit – the phoenix rises from its ashes... "In Glilot no one, nothing was waiting for us. There were no facilities, no assigned space, no combat assignment. No manpower, no trained professionals, no preparations. Nothing. We were given a key to a classroom in the cyber officer training compound and told that's where we'd be working from. After I politely asked, we were given a small adjoining room as well…" From the moment word spread that a unit had been established, anyone without a combat assignment in the IDF, or who wasn't a fighter, or any former intelligence personnel, or anyone who had been connected to CED in one way or another, showed up.
____________________________________________ 6 IICC Perspectives D.: "We also received a few people, officers from the Intelligence Directorate's communications branch, logistics officers, officers from the Glilot base, and folks from the earlier CED group. I didn't know everyone who showed up. They heard a unit was being formed and came as fast as they could to help get it off the ground. "That's how we started the unit: from nothing. They gave me a key, I opened the door and we set up desks and computer stations. We opened a WhatsApp group and tried to figure out who would be a good fit. Everyone had heard a unit was being formed. People from Unit 8200 started arriving. A few intel debriefers, some Arabists, some translators. Field Intelligence brought in a few intelligence officers. "And then something amazing happened: the first people who showed up started calling their family members, friends, spouses, their kids. People literally arrived in extended families. Some of them are still here today. People who had been exempt from reserve duty or weren't assigned to any unit or mission came entirely on their own. They heard there was a need. Volunteers, drawn to contact. Most of them didn't have an intelligence background. People from the Navy who worked on Mediterranean coastal defense, people from logistics units. Someone who knew someone and heard a unit was being set up. People from all age groups, from over 70 to young reservists who had just finished their service. "From the moment the word spread that a unit had been formed, anyone without a combat assignment or who wasn't a fighter in the IDF, or any former intelligence person or anyone who had ever been connected to CED in any way, started converging here, in what I called 'Corona model,' it spread exponentially… A translator came in, saw the volume of material and called everyone he knew. An Arabist came in and called all the old crew, 'We need you here.' And they showed up immediately. One person brought another, and we began working in a constantly evolving setup because we started with the war against Hamas in Gaza, but the next day Lebanon joined in, then Judea and Intelligence material seized in Lebanon. (source: IICC)
____________________________________________ 7 IICC Perspectives Samaria, then Syria. We began receiving captured material from many completely different fronts." The first to arrive called their family members, friends, spouses, and children. People simply showed up here in extended families... D.: "We're a reserve unit in Military Intelligence, operating since the very beginning of the war. A multi-front, multi-language unit. We haven't taken a break for a moment. We've been working non-stop from day one of the war. All the other intelligence centers have rotated, shut down temporarily or been moved from front to front. Combat brigades that move from line to line stop for rest periods. Our unit hasn't rested for a minute. From zero people at the start of the war, in three months we had more than 500 active personnel, working in shifts 24/7. "How many people in Israel have put their entire lives on hold for 464 days? Set aside spouses, family, business, academic degrees, and more. They stopped everything and put it on hold! "Recently, looking ahead and understanding that it takes time to build and institutionalize a functioning unit like this, I conducted a survey, asking the unit's reservists how it would be most convenient for them to continue working here in the future: scheduled shifts, where I notify them in advance that I'll need them for two weeks in a given month, and they can coordinate it with home or work, or to keep operating the way we are now, with an ad-hoc work plan tailored to each individual? "The overwhelming majority, around 95%, told me: 'D., we're with you. We understand what we're doing here. We love the mission and the unit, and even if you cancel our emergency call-up orders, we'll keep coming. We're here.' I don't know of any other unit like this in the army, not just in Military Intelligence…" In a conference call with the Chief Intelligence Officer, he said to me in front of everyone: "Pack your things. Tomorrow, you're starting a unit." *** The next mission for the unit commander would be to convince the army that something called CED even existed. If until now he had to convince the besieged civilians living near the Gaza Strip that he was from Division 162, from the moment the unit was established he had to convince the IDF that there was such a thing as the CED Unit, and that all battlefield-captured material needed to be centralized with it. D.: "It wasn't just about calling the army and speaking authoritatively. It was about calling everyone who had encountered or handled documents and other materials, emergency and rescue forces, police, the Shin Bet, local emergency teams and standby squads. Calling and convincing them not only that there actually was such a
____________________________________________ 8 IICC Perspectives unit and that I was authorized to receive the material, but also that it contained extremely valuable intelligence which we urgently needed. "They had never been told about the CED Unit. They didn't know it was important to document where items were taken from and what to do with them. Some loaded what they found into their vehicles, moved from kibbutz to kibbutz, and at some point, four or five days later, they were informed that a CED Unit had been formed and they needed to bring us whatever was sitting in their trunk." Slowly the shipments began arriving. First a single box, then a few bags, more boxes, then several duffels bags. The unit began to grasp the scale of the material, not only in terms of the sheer volume coming in (dozens of phones retrieved from terrorists' bodies, bodycams, maps, plans, diagrams, handwritten notes), but also the condition the items were in. D.: "In the first shipment, the material had been lying in the field for several days and arrived here filthy and reeking. Some of it came straight from combat zones and had been on the bodies of terrorists who were left to rot until they were checked for explosives and removed. The materials were stained with blood and bits of rotting tissue, and the stench was awful. "I'll never forget the smell, and I'm not the only one. It immediately triggered associations of the Holocaust. As children, we heard stories about the Holocaust, we read about it, watched films, went on school trips to the camps in Poland, concentration camps, forced labor camps, death camps, and all the time we heard about the smell. It's hard to imagine, but the smell that came with those boxes and bags brought all those associations flooding back. An indescribable, inconceivable and completely horrific stench. "And another thing: intelligence officers are used to coming into the office or war room in the morning, sitting down at a computer and getting to work. Suddenly we had to work with our hands and eyes, touch, see, and worse of all, the smell, and make logistical decisions alongside Col. D. points at a bullet-riddled map, found on a body of "Nuhba" terrorist who was eliminated on Israeli territory, in the western Negev. (source: IICC)
____________________________________________ 9 IICC Perspectives forensic logic. How do you handle items from a crime scene with no training, no gear? Nothing!" The next mission for the unit commander would be to convince the army that there was such a thing as the CED Unit. On the first night it rained, and everything had been left outside. The team rushed to open the bags and boxes, dropped to their knees and tried to understand what was inside and how urgent it was to identify items which could help the forces on the ground. The rain got worse and someone brought a wooden frame covered with a tarp which flew off in the wind within minutes. Most of the material got soaked, and there was no enclosed space to continue processing it. A tent was brought, then another, and as more material piled up, larger tents. Within a few days, the entire area looked like one big encampment, with sorting lines and filtering stations set up inside the tents to identify and direct items for further handling. Some of the material, soaked from the rain, stinking and contaminated, was clipped with clothes pins to dry on improvised laundry racks set up in the field. Others were thoroughly sprayed to get rid of the odor. At the same time, efforts began to organize and structure the unit. A former adjutant from Unit 8200 arrived, another from Field Intelligence and another officer from the IDF's personnel division. People showed up regardless of their civilian status, salary, former rank or military background. They simply arrived and slotted themselves into the chain of the mission, making sure everything ran smoothly. No ego, no posturing, no favoritism, just doing what needed to be done. In no time, an industrial-scale production line was set up to handle both the growing amount of material and the volunteers arriving. D.: "It was clear to me that to manage the operation and the growing number of people, we needed to expand. We began to appropriate space around Glilot, opened more offices, more classrooms, and not always through official channels… sometimes we broke down doors and did what had to be done. Most of the places were empty, everyone had rushed to the war, and we needed work space. Eventually, we started bringing in shipping containers. One after another. In the end, we had a container city where we stored everything we could. The IDF archive stores only paper. So what do we do with all the computers, hard drives, cameras, radios? Everything is still in the containers, secured, catalogued, and organized by front and by date." ***
____________________________________________ 10 IICC Perspectives "While we were processing materials taken from the terrorists who infiltrated the communities around Gaza, the divisions in the field began organizing for maneuver inside the Strip. The divisions had no awareness of the CED Unit, neither the commanders nor the fighters. Someone had to explain to them what to do with the intelligence that had landed in our hands, some of which was crucial for the start of the maneuver, especially in Division 162's sector, which was the first to enter Gaza from the north. "The commanders and soldiers were organizing their battle formations and preparing for war. They were not interested in the material that had been collected. No one, except us, understood how critical those materials were, and how they could save lives. I took the task upon myself. I loaded my vehicle with a range of items showing what CED looked like, what kind of terrain the forces were going to enter, and I drove to the headquarters of the two breakthrough divisions, 162 and 36. "I knew all the division and brigade commanders from my previous positions, so it was easy for me to get their attention. I arrived and laid out intelligence materials on the table, undeniably relevant to them. For example, a map that had been found in one of the terrorists' vehicles showing the southern Gaza City area, exactly where Division 36 was maneuvering. "I explained the map: in the open and built-up sites were pink areas. Each one, whether on buildings or in open fields, represented an enemy facility. It could have be anything, a rocket launch site, warehouse, command post, outpost, anything at all. "I brought additional items taken from terrorists' bodies, defense and attack plans, to help them understand what they were walking into. I told them they were going to confiscate a lot of material. I explained that we were setting up a unit, and if they were proactive and made sure to send me the material as quickly as possible, I could decipher, translate, and return it to them as operational intelligence, intelligence tailored for maneuvers at the right time and in sync with their needs." Col. D. points at a very detailed photo map of Hamas underground tunnels system. The photo map was captured in Gaza. Intelligence saves lives. (IICC)
____________________________________________ 11 IICC Perspectives In the divisions, there was no awareness of CED, neither among the commanders nor the soldiers. Someone now had to explain what to do with all the intelligence that had landed in our hands, some of which was crucial for the beginning of the maneuver. It's important to understand just how lacking the units, and especially the combat soldiers, were in CED awareness. It wasn't obvious to them. They're in battle. Tough, brutal battle. Fully focused on the enemy, not on documents or material they're supposed to send back. When there's no CED awareness, no one collects material. The soldier on the front line is fully focused on one thing, putting the terrorist in his sights. And suddenly someone tells him, "If you're in the room, check what's in the closet. Look under the bed, in the drawers." Why would he do that if he has no CED awareness? But if you're a battalion commander responsible for hundreds of fighters, or a brigade commander with thousands under your command, and some nut job shows up and drops this material on your desk, your first instinct is to say thank you, realizing you just received live intelligence, some of which you weren't even aware of. That kind of commander will immediately revise his maneuvering plan. He'll know to steer clear of the pink polygon. And the added value, that same commander will also teach the soldier at the edge that this, too, has to be done, it's part of the mission, and it has immediate benefits. This Hamas Theodolite allowed important intelligence describing the underground tunnels system. (source: IICC)
____________________________________________ 12 IICC Perspectives D.: "I don't come to them like a nudnik, the 'annoying intel officer' with rolled-up maps while everyone else is zeroing their weapons and sharpening knives. I come and say, 'Make the effort, send me a picture on WhatsApp, and I'll send it back to you translated, deciphered.' I explain again and again that CED intelligence saves lives. Simply put, it saves lives. "When the maneuver began and the commanders saw that CED really did save lives at Hamas outposts, in camps, at all the first targets they hit, they started sending us material, and we delivered on our promise, we translated and sent it back via WhatsApp, via radio, through every means we had. They got the meaning or interpretation of every image they sent, in real time. They saw that we paid our dues. They invested, they made the effort, they sent, and they got answers. That gave them motivation to keep doing it again and again, until it became routine. Commanders understood you can't fight without a CED Unit. "Suddenly a battalion commander, right before heading into a target, is willing to let some kid from intel come brief the fighters on what to do with CED. A brigade commander who received life-saving material from us, at first he says, 'You guys were lucky.' The second time, he says, 'These guys are saving my life.' Suddenly he understands the value of what I bring him. "And from the brigade and battalion commanders it trickles down to the troops, to the fighters in the combat teams. It didn't happen overnight, but it happened. We put everything we could into it, myself personally and my people, who moved between the command posts. Later on, we embedded people from in the in every division and brigade HQ. Not intelligence officers, but CED veterans from previous iterations of the unit with techno-operational understanding of how to handle confiscated materials, and they know how to talk to commanders, not just intelligence officers. "They know how to convince an operations officer or a brigade chief of staff to invest in material collection using the logistics convoy or a designated supply run. They also know how to coordinate CED efforts around special combat events. For example, we found an enemy server farm and placed people who knew how to handle it and the computers we found there, to disconnect them without losing the data they contained." "The maneuver began, and the commanders saw that CED really did save lives. They saw it at Hamas outposts, in camps, and at all the initial targets they struck." "That was the case for the forward effort. Our people were out there with the forces, collecting material, transporting it or to guiding and maintaining awareness. Awareness must constantly be maintained: commanders are killed, commanders rotate, fighters change, and each front behaves differently. What you see in Gaza looks completely different from Judea and Samaria, from Syria or Lebanon, because of the enemy, because of the terrain and because of the material itself. A phone from Gaza isn't a
____________________________________________ 13 IICC Perspectives phone from Judea and Samaria, and a phone from Syria isn't a phone from Lebanon. Each theater has its own unique apps and device types. "If we can't handle every app, every phone, every language that comes in, we won't be able to understand quickly enough what needs to be passed on to the field units. Once the material is located, there are four routes for getting it back to where it came from so it can be used. First, logistics convoys. If a convoy goes out, there's no excuse for it not to carry material collected in the last day or two. Second, medevac. Every time a wounded soldier is evacuated, a bag of material is sent along, and the unit will make sure to retrieve it. Third, a commander going out for a situational assessment. Fourth, a dedicated convoy, for example, you found a treasure trove, an entire underground archive or a launch site map. That justifies a dedicated effort because of its potential impact on the system, not just for one battalion commander's area. The material could hold answers to the worst problems facing the brigade, the division, or even Southern Command itself. D.: "We filled out daily reports noting which brigade extracted valuable material. We were essentially grading them, who did a good job and produced meaningful intelligence, which encouraged healthy competition among commanders. Everyone wanted his name to appear in the daily reports sent to the entire army as having gathered the most intel and done the best work." This is how we deal with the material: all material collected on a given day gets sorted at what we call the "captured material evacuation unit," the logistics unit of the Technological and Logistics Directorate. That includes not just material for CED, but weapons, including rockets, missiles, RPGs, bombs and mines. Everything is Propaganda materials seized in schools, in Southern Lebanon.(source: IICC)
____________________________________________ 14 IICC Perspectives cataloged and sent to the engineering unit at Julis, where all incoming items are scanned to ensure they are not booby-trapped or rigged. After the scan, the intelligence material is transferred to CED, where the sorting begins. It's very much like triage in a hospital. The shipment is opened, and each item is diagnosed: is it a radio? A phone? A computer? A memory card? A smartwatch? A sheet of paper? A map? A passport? Cash? Each item is treated in a specific way, with priority given to what is most important and urgent. If there's a file, map, diagram or page from a notebook with information linked to a location where forces are currently maneuvering, it receives immediate priority, as it could save lives. Cases like that occurred almost daily, nearly every week. Everyone wanted to be featured in the daily reports circulated throughout the army as those who had gathered the most intelligence and done the best job. Some of the items are transferred to civilian companies which provide services beyond military capabilities, like scanning large maps. Much like a hospital X-ray department, CED has its own X-ray lab, where trained soldiers look inside phones, computers and radios to see what's there. Just a peek makes it possible to determine if the device contains something that could support actions on the ground. *** D.: "One key word I'm very proud of is proactivity. That's the difference between how CED operates today and how it functioned in the past, back when it was unclear who was responsible for processing the material and what it actually contributed to the war effort. I saw it in Operation Defensive Shield, the Second Lebanon War, Operation Cast Lead. "But now it's different, we're the ones directing forces toward CED targets. At the beginning of the ground maneuver we learned which types of targets were providing the most valuable intelligence, and we gradually began sending forces there so that we wouldn't just be a passive by-product of the maneuver, but the maneuver would go to where we sent them. "That's exactly why I got that phone call from the Chief of Staff's office. In recent months, every time a plan is approved for a given force, whether in Gaza or in Lebanon, they check with the commanders to ensure they've fully utilized all the relevant CED materials for their area of operations. "That's something we're incredibly proud of, guiding the IDF to extract intelligence through methods that aren't just cyber or special ops. That, in my view, is one of the great lessons CED is teaching us in this war, that there are other ways to reveal the enemy's secrets without necessarily investing all our energy in cyber efforts or special operations, which take a long time to plan and are extremely complex to execute."
____________________________________________ 15 IICC Perspectives "The key word I'm very proud of is proactivity. That's the difference between how CED operates today and how it operated in the past." "The material that comes doesn't just provide for needs of the IDF, everyone comes hereto us. Shin Bet investigators use us for interrogations, police officers for preparing indictments, judicial advisors for building legal arguments, even Mossad personnel looking for evidence of activities and financial transfers of terrorist organizations abroad. And public diplomacy professionals use our materials to illustrate what the State of Israel faces, murderous terrorist organizations with no boundaries, moral or otherwise. "We're the weapon that loads the bullets into their guns. That's our proactivity. We push it in their faces in a way they can't ignore... For us, these things are secondary, we focus on saving lives, and on any information that can help regarding the hostages and the missing." Two reservists, H. and Y., who have served in the unit almost nonstop for a year, also participated in the interview: "There were so many reasons this whole CED operation could have failed. First, logistics. It would have been easy to say, 'There's nowhere to put all this.' Second, the conditions of the materials, 'We're not certified to handle it.' Third, transport. Who appointed us to move this stuff? How do you even move it? Can you use your own car? Fourth, classification, are you even allowed to tell a soldier or commander to send you something via WhatsApp? How did we overcome all of the above? By taking responsibility. "You could've just told soldiers and commanders, 'the Chief of Staff said to bring it here'... But honestly, would anyone has actually done anything with it after October 7 if people here hadn't stepped up? It happened thanks to people who were in the right place at the right time. Those two words that are so sorely lacking in this country, taking responsibility. How did it show? For example, no available real estate? No place to work? You don't complain. You knock down a wall, open a door. No way to securely transmit information? You send it via WhatsApp. Sure, a security officer from Military Intelligence could have said to D., 'Are you out of your mind? Commanders sending you maps via WhatsApp? What planet are you living on?' But he just said to shut up, send it on WhatsApp, and he'd explain to you why later. Oh, and who are you to say a convoy evacuating a wounded soldier should be delayed just to put a garbage bag on board? Who gave you that right? That's the story of this place. Taking full responsibility, end to end, for dozens of potential failure points.
____________________________________________ 16 IICC Perspectives The numbers speak for themselves: thirty percent of Military Intelligence's raw material today comes from CED. Thirty percent, and there isn't a single debriefing that doesn't rely on CED materials one hundred percent. And we, here in the unit, are still fighting a battle for survival, asking whether this source will be kept alive... whether it will really be shut down again after the war." There are two words to describe how to overcome every point of failure: taking responsibility. D.: "To wind this up I just want to say, right now we're waiting for the decision to formalize the unit, based on the debriefing I recently conducted. I'm getting signals that this is indeed the direction. Everyone understands that CED is an operational tool, even before it's an intelligence-gathering source. "We're going to train combat soldiers not to ignore maps, phones and computers they find in buildings and rooms they enter. I'll even teach them how to crack safes… Just like every unit has a medic and a radio operator, there will also be an CED team. Every soldier will have basic awareness of how important it is, and we'll build a skill set that will grow and become more sophisticated as we move up the pyramid, from the field all the way to General Staff level. And yes, I have a good indication that's the direction we're heading in." Military Intelligence award for Creative Thinking during "Iron Sword" War, given to the CED unit in January 2025. (source: IICC)
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