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armor and artillery. Non-combat soldiers, be it cooks or specialists a high-tech field, are derided as "jobniks".

Pilots are considered the "elite of the elite". If a youngster has any chance at all of becoming a pilot, he will be put on that track before he ever dons a uniform. That does not mean that he will succeed - only a small percentage do, but he may wind up as a navigator, in Air Traffic Control, or some other related field.

Unlike American military pilots, Israelis do not get their college degrees before they get their wings. They go through basic training, an officer's course, and flight training right out of high school. Indeed, a college degree never becomes a necessity for them - at least not unless they get to a much higher rank.

In fact, there is no Israeli equivalent of the American service academies or ROTC.

Instead, the potential young officer is earmarked as such before enlistment. He then goes through the same basic training as everyone else in his unit and spends some time as serving with it. His officers keep an eye on him to see if he has lived up to his promised potential and if the other soldiers in his unit respect him both as a man and as a soldier. Basically, they are looking to see if he is a natural leader. If so, he is sent to Officer Candidate School.

When he returns to his unit as a newly-minted second lieutenant, he doesn't need to earn the respect of his men. They know him and already hold him in high regard. This doesn't mean that they won't give him a hard time.

When he arranges a work detail, he is going to have complaints from just about everyone assigned to it. If he tells a soldier that he won't be getting a pass that weekend (Israeli soldiers are off almost every second week), he is certain to get an argument. When the inevitable happens and he tells some soldiers that they will be on duty during a holiday, he will be subjected to every curse in their vocabulary - and not just behind his back as he would be in the U.S. Army but right to his face and with all the anger that these soldiers feel.

No, they won't be given a court martial for this insubordination, nor will they be given any extra duty. He will listen and then tell them that they are still not going to get their way - but in the meantime they will have blown off some steam and still respect him.

Why is this necessary? Why not just enforce American-style military discipline?

For a start, good relations between officers and men are crucial. They are not going

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