The Israeli Generals Who Shoot and Cry and Shoot Again
It’s nice that some of Israel’s most senior commanders are sounding the moral alarm, but what are they doing to change anything?
Gideon Levy, Haaretz, May 08, 2016 2:42 AM
▻http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.718435
And here they come, those new-old sensitive heroes, soldiers who shoot but cry over it, a 2016 version of the Six-Day War soldiers featured in “The Seventh Day: Soldiers Talk about the Six-Day War.” In the Six-Day War, they were soldiers who shot and cried and were therefore considered moral. After the second intifada that broke out in 2000, there were the old-boy “gatekeepers,” (the former Shin Bet security service directors) who suddenly sobered up and were deemed men of conscience.
Now it’s the turn of the most senior commanders in office who are sobering up and sounding the alarm, the threesome of Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot and Deputy Chief of Staff Yair Golan. It could have impressed and inspired respect had it not been for one tiny problem. The three aren’t doing a thing to change the situation that they are taking exception to.
These nice and principled military figures are beloved on the center-left, which has always dreamed about ethical generals who make eloquent Holocaust Remembrance Day speeches, but they are nothing more than empty salves to the conscience of the purportedly enlightened tribe.
Ya’alon, Eisenkot and Golan said some things that are correct and resounding. Ya’alon warned against the army becoming bestial. For his part, Eisenkot doesn’t want soldiers to empty their ammunition cartridges on 13-year-old girls. And last week on Holocaust Day, Golan said he saw concerning signs reminiscent of pre-Holocaust Germany in Israel.
It’s hard not to appreciate their courage, but we cannot ignore the fact that these are not three observers from the sidelines. All three bear direct and heavy responsibility for the situation that they are criticizing and have contributed for years to bringing it about.
They head the IDF, which is one of the most major agents of damage to Israeli society. They are in charge of an army most of whose operations consist of maintaining the occupation through brutal force. And anyone who heads an occupation army, who has commanded some of its worst military operations, lacks the necessary moral authority to preach morality — unless they have truly changed.
Ya’alon is warning about the army becoming bestialized? But it is he who has been in charge of it, first as IDF chief of staff and currently as defense minister. Who can change it, if not him? Eisenkot doesn’t want soldiers emptying their bullets into a girl? He can prevent that. Golan sees signs causing him concern? Some of them originated in the army in which he serves as deputy chief of staff.
So here’s a short reminder of the pasts of these new prophets of doom of Israel. Ya’alon, the former clarinetist and farmer, was IDF chief of staff during the Defensive Shield offensive in the West Bank in 2002 and for Operation Days of Penitence in Gaza in 2004, operations that sowed horrifying death and destruction. Perhaps it was then that the bestialization of the IDF began. A few days before his comments of rebuke, Ya’alon set upon the veterans group Breaking the Silence, accusing it of treason. Even if he then retracted the accusation, his comments did not counter the bestialization, but rather contributed to it.
Both Eisenkot and Golan are former commanders of the IDF’s West Bank division. They are well aware of what the occupation looks like and the harm it causes the occupied and the occupier. That same Eisenkot who now doesn’t want soldiers emptying a magazine into a girl was one of the fathers of the so-called Dahiya doctrine, through which the IDF emptied a lot more than magazines into many boys and girls in Lebanon. So why shouldn’t his troops continue to apply the doctrine in Hebron in the West Bank too?
So why shouldn’t his troops continue to apply the doctrine in Hebron in the West Bank too?