A number of Israel Defense Forces reserves officers complained Thursday that they had been forced to undergo five days of training in the intense Negev heat without proper food supplies.
The reservists, who serve in an artillery corps, recently completed their training at the Tse'lim base. They said that the army did not provide them with enough food during the training, adding that the little that was supplies had to be divided among seven teams of 11 soldiers each.
"It was embarrassing, like there wasn't a war, like there wasn't the Winograd Commission, like the system wasn't shaken up," one reservist told Haaretz.
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"Each team received one container of canned corn, black olives, a few slices of dry challah and two or three cans of tuna. That's it. When we started complaining that there wasn't enough food and that we were hungry, we were told that we were far away from the base," he said.
According to the same reservist, the training he and his comrades underwent took place about 15 kilometers away from the Tse'elim army base. Their practice included live munitions fire and exercises requiring physical exertion.
"We were worn out. How can you train with minimal amounts of food?" wondered another of the reservists.
"When I complained, they did us a favor and brought seven green peppers that were divided among the seven teams. Did someone expect that 11 fighters would split one green pepper?"
The soldier said that they were told multiple times that there is a problem with the food supply because of their distance from the base.
One of the soldiers in the battalion said that their protests went unheeded by their commanding officers, who did little to solve the problem.
Only Thursday, after the completion of their training did the reservists get a proper meal. "We got to the base and they prepared a spread with pita and hummus for us. We were simply hungry," he said.
According to the reservists, a senior officer who met with them after the training ended told them that the army learned its lessons during the [Second Lebanon] war and that there is no food supply shortage in the army reserves.
But the reservists paint a different picture, claiming there were too few mattresses and supplies and, most importantly, too little food.
An army spokesperson said: "The matter is being looked into by support unit commanders and will be taken care of immediately. The mishap appears to have stemmed from human error in the distribution of food in the field."
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