"Almost unnoticed alongside the hectic life of the average Israeli and the frenetic political pace in Israel, the clock of the Israeli Defense Forces ticks minute by minute, 24 hours a day.

The IDF never stops. Without break... without letup... one activity runs into another. We could not encompass all the IDF branches and units, and we have had to omit more than our keyboard could input into this book. The army acronyms, abbreviations and unit numbers are almost as numerous as the cells of a human body, for indeed the IDF is a living organism, and thus we have had to be selective. Some omissions were necessitated due to considerations of confidentiality, and others due to space limitations. If we simply had listed all the acronyms and sub-units by name, we would have filled a thick volume and not been able to accomplish our purpose: to describe a day in the life of the Israeli Defense Forces."