For the first time since October 7th, an Air Force officer admitted that the wave of army refusals encouraged by leftist organizations significantly damaged the competence of the Air Force and played a part in the lack of response on October 7th, Channel 12 News reported on Wednesday. According to the report, the commander of the Air and Flight Control School, Lt. Col. Yaniv Even, revealed this week that many reservists in sensitive positions in the Air Force were not properly trained on October 7th. “As soon as some time passes, you realize that the training needs to happen quickly,” Even said at a technology conference in Holon. “In fact, after October 7th, we started teaching something we never did before – competence. Until then, we only did training. We took a person who didn’t know the profession and taught him. At the time of the social protests, we had quite a few reservists who were unfit for the mission. And we very quickly had to build a training kit for them, based on the knowledge we learned n the war, and put them in one after the other.” Even added that “the starting point for learning a lesson is failure. We as an army unequivocally failed.” Channel 12 journalist Amit Segal, who revealed Even’s words, noted that the commander of the Palmachim Air Force base already admitted in the first months of the war that there were pilots who suffered from a loss of competence on October 7th but the IDF denied it. (YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)