The last post was about why soldiers in Israel rely on civilian donors. This one is about the flip side of that relationship. I am not going to pretend the soldier side of the equation is clean.
If donors are the logistics, soldiers have a responsibility to be honest about what they actually need. A lot of us are. Some of us are not. The longer this war has gone on, the easier it has become to confuse the two.
I am writing this from inside the system. I am a Rasap. I sign for gear. I also see what guys ask for and what they actually need. The gap between those two things is sometimes bigger than people realize.
Before I go any further, I want to put one thing on the table. None of what follows is about waste. Every dollar donated to soldiers ends up on a soldier. The point I am making is about how many soldiers each dollar can reach when the asks are honest.
The Leatherman Problem
The clearest example I can give you is the multitool.
There is a brand called Leatherman. It is the multitool most American donors recognize, because it is the one everyone sees on TV and in movies. A Leatherman runs about three hundred shekels each, sometimes more depending on the model.
There are other multitools that do the exact same job. Same blades. Same pliers. Same screwdrivers. Same build quality for the purposes a soldier actually uses one for in the field. They cost about fifty five shekels each. Almost one sixth of the price.
The other multitools work. I have used them. The guys in my unit use them. They open boxes, tighten gear, cut zip ties, and do everything else a multitool needs to do.
What happens anyway is that soldiers ask for Leathermans. By name. Because that is the brand everyone hears about. So a donor who wants to outfit a fifty five man unit ends up spending about sixteen thousand five hundred shekels on multitools, instead of about three thousand for the same functional outcome. The difference, thirteen thousand five hundred shekels, could have bought a fan for every trailer or shade structures for the guard posts or working vests for the men who do not have one.
That is real money. That money could have gone to a real gap.
Nothing Is Wasted
I want to be very clear before I go any further. Nothing donated is going to waste. The Leatherman gets used. The fancy headlamp does its job. The premium boots get worn. Every piece of gear ends up on a soldier and helps that soldier do his job. The donors who paid for it did a good thing.
The point is about reach.
For the price of a Porsche, you can buy three smaller cars. All four are real cars. All four will get a family from one place to another. The Porsche does it in style. The smaller cars do it without leather seats. Both work. The difference is that the price of one Porsche helped one family, and the price of three smaller cars helped three.
That is the whole argument. Every donor dollar is being used. The question is how many soldiers it reaches.
The Boots Story
I will tell you a story I saw at a donation center in Israel.
A soldier came in to request a free pair of boots. The donation center had two options. The best brand on the market, called LOWA, with a ten year warranty. And the second best brand, which is genuinely good gear, with a five year warranty. The center offered him the second best option.
The soldier said no. He needed the LOWA boots. Because the warranty was longer.
The guy running the donation center looked at him and said, "If we are still fighting this war in ten years and you need to replace your boots outside of warranty, we have much bigger problems."
That story stuck with me. It is the cleanest version of the wants versus needs problem I have ever heard.
The soldier walked out wanting the better brand. The donation center had perfectly good boots that would last five years of war. Five years of war is more war than anybody wants to imagine. But the soldier had already decided what he was supposed to get, and the second best was not good enough.
The Cycle
Here is the part nobody likes to say out loud.
Israeli soldiers have spent the last three years in a cycle where they know donors will buy them things. So they ask for things. The asks get bigger as the war goes on, not smaller. The bar for what a soldier feels entitled to request has moved.
I am not blaming individual guys. The system trained them. Donor groups arrived, asked what the unit needed, and the unit learned to make a list. Over time the lists got longer and the items got more expensive. A guy who was happy to get a working flashlight three years ago is now asking for a specific brand of headlamp at four times the price.
The result is that the guys who actually need things, in units that have real gear shortages, get crowded out. Donor money is finite. Every shekel spent on a Leatherman instead of a generic multitool is a shekel that did not buy a vest for a man at a checkpoint who is wearing equipment from the 1970s.
The Seventy Five Thousand Dollar Ask
Let me give you the worst example I have personally worked on.
I once helped evaluate a request from a soldier in Israel who wanted seventy five thousand dollars worth of gear for himself and his unit. The donors who came to me wanted to know if it was real.
So I looked into it. The soldier was in a unit that travels with the head commander of a region to visit bases. That unit has the most advanced gear in the army already, because of who it travels with. The soldier asking for the seventy five thousand dollars was not a tactical combat soldier. He was not in fighting. He just wanted to look the part.
I told the donors what I found. They thanked me. They took the seventy five thousand dollars and supported a different unit instead, one that actually had gear gaps.
That money went to the right place because someone in Israel looked at the ask honestly. Without that step, seventy five thousand dollars in donor goodwill would have gone to a guy who wanted to look like a special operator at a base he was visiting for the day.
How to Donate Smart
I get asked all the time how to donate to a unit and know it is being put to good use. Here is the short version.
Find someone who actually needs it. There are units with real gear gaps and units without. Both will ask. The first group is the one to support.
Find someone in Israel who can validate the ask. A name. A face. A person on the ground who can confirm the unit exists, the gear is missing, and the request is honest. If a donor group cannot tell you who validated the list, that is a problem.
Make sure you are getting the best pricing. The same gear can come in at very different prices depending on who is sourcing it. A donor who hands over a list and pays whatever the unit says it costs is often paying retail when the same item is available at half the cost through the right channel.
Do not pay just because the unit told you they need it. Wanting something is not the same as needing it. The job of a donor is to fund what the army cannot. The job of a Rasap, and the job of the people on the ground, is to make sure the list reflects that and nothing more.
If I am asking you for help, I owe you an honest list. That is the part of this relationship that does not get talked about enough.
Reach Out
If you are a donor trying to figure out whether an ask is real, or you want help finding a unit with a verified gap that has not been crowded out, get in touch. Email me at aron@smilesforthekids.com or message me on WhatsApp at +972 55 500 1689. I will give you an honest answer.