The 'Renegade Jews' Running Israel's Military

The more the Israeli right struggles to smear them, the clearer it becomes that the warnings sounded by senior commanders are of enormously profound moral importance. What part of 'Your house is on fire' does Netanyahu not get?

I am, by birth and temperament, an American. You know what that means. A person of volcanic anger who smiles a lot.

And who doesn't like to be told what to think. Even by other Americans.

By Sheldon Adelson, for example, whose newspaper Israel Hayom spells out for Israelis exactly What To Think Today in red, white and blue banner headlines.

Or by outspoken Donald Trump supporter David Horowitz, who this week branded his fellow prominent rightist media figure Bill Kristol a "renegade Jew" for opposing the Trump candidacy.

Or by Caroline Glick.

Last week, discussing policies and actions of the Israel Defense Forces, conservative columnist Glick wrote the following:

"The General Staff is the Left’s representative, and has in recent months served as its surrogate government, taking steps that advance the Left’s agenda against the wishes of the government and the public that elected it."

Glick singled out for particular condemnation the words of IDF Deputy Chief of Staff Yair Golan, who, she said in a colossal oversimplification, compared Israeli society to the Nazis on Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Golan's speech, read in full, is a passionate and moving plea to safeguard democracy in Israel, and to bolster standards of conduct governing the behavior of soldiers in the field.

The Glick column joined a broad offensive by the right – orchestrated in part by the Prime Minister's Office – to discredit and smear Golan and his superiors, army chief Gadi Eisenkot and Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon.

But that's where the campaign begins to run aground. The more the right in Israel struggles to smear the three, the clearer it becomes that the message and the warnings of the leaders of the military are of enormously profound moral importance.

A telling example was the calculated leak of the recording of a talk which Golan, then commander of the army's primary division in the West Bank, gave 10 years ago to a group of young people prior to their induction into the army. The subject: limiting the use of military force toward a civilian population in a combat zone.

Whether leaked, as some speculated, by the Prime Minister's Office, or by others, the content of the Golan speech returned the focus to an incident at the core of the dispute, the March 24 killing by IDF medic Elor Azaria of a supine, wounded Palestinian assailant following the knifing of another soldier. Azaria is on trial for manslaughter.

After initially supporting army leaders in their emphasis on stricter observance of rules of engagement, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – sensing a groundswell of hard right support for the medic's actions – has signaled repeatedly that his heart is with the soldier.

The 2006 recording of Golan's talk, as transcribed by Yedioth Ahronoth, begins:

"Facing civilians, yes, we take risks upon ourselves, and rightly so. It's unacceptable that, for the sake of avoiding danger, we should now decide to whack down apartment houses, killing women, children, and the uninvolved there. It is unbearable that we should take human lives without justification."

Asked by one of the youths whether he would give preference to civilians or to one of his soldiers, Golan replied without hesitation: "Civilians – you will not kill a 60-year-old woman, even if she is an Arab. Not in every combat situation is everyone immediately threatened, nor is a terrorist hiding behind every Arab woman."

Golan added that in some areas, use of firearms contrary to army orders has constituted "simply criminal behavior."

He cited a particularly grievous incident, in which four soldiers stationed at a checkpoint encountered an approaching Palestinian. "One of the soldiers was checking a Palestinian woman. It seems to me that it appeared to the Palestinian man that he [the soldier] was groping her."

The Palestinian man then charged the soldiers, Golan continued. "He ran toward them like a madman, to beat them. There are four soldiers standing there, facing one Palestinian. What do they do? They shoot him. Why take a life? What do they want – for us to justify that? Is that the nation in which you would want to live?"

Israel under Benjamin Netanyahu has never truly examined and confronted the circumstances and consequences of the mounting IDF toll of Palestinian civilian casualties in war and unrest.

Instead, far-right politicians and extremist activists have called for ever more killing, even of disarmed and wounded suspects.

Last February, a month before the Hebron killing, Eisenkot ignited a firestorm on the right in a talk with high school students, similar to Golan's a decade before.

Defending stricter rules of engagement, Eisenkot declared "The IDF cannot speak in slogans, such as 'if someone comes to kill you, arise to kill them first,' or 'everyone who carries scissors should be killed.'"

Rather, troops can only open fire when there is a direct threat to life, he said, adding, in a reference to a police killing of a young Palestinian teen, "I don't want a soldier to empty a [gun ammunition] magazine on a girl with scissors."

Rightist members of the government led by Transportation and Road Safety Minister Yisrael Katz and Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely attacked Eisenkot for the statement. Netanyahu stayed mum, waiting for days and days and days before issuing a perfunctory and somewhat disengaged statement of support for his army chief.

As friction has increased, Netanyahu has signaled time and again, in every speech, whether at a Moroccan Jewish Mimouna feast or at Holocaust Remembrance observances, that he is with "the soldiers, the soldiers" – including the medic who executed a disarmed assailant – and not the generals and the defense minister who are their superiors.

The leak of Golan's 2006 speech – intended to discredit him, but actually, in many quarters, achieving the opposite – was clearly designed to undermine a speech on Sunday by Ya'alon at the Defense Ministry.

Ya'alon, whose wide-ranging address in favor of liberal and democratic values included support for the rights of gays and victims of sexual harassment, sparked Netanyahu's ire by encouraging army officers to speak their minds – to see themselves as educators as well as military leaders – even if their views are at variance with the senior command and the country's political leadership. 

This week, a new voice lent additional weight and breadth to the argument.  In a closed-door Sunday briefing to reservist soldiers, Hebron Brigade Commander Col. Yariv Ben-Ezra severely criticized Azaria's actions as "a serious failure" carried out at a time when there was no danger to those present, and that the shooting actually endangered the soldiers in the area.

In the remarks, a recording of which led Israeli TV Channel 10's Tuesday night news program, Ben-Ezra said that politicians and rabbis should not call for altered rules of engagement mandating the killing of all terrorists, thereby confusing troops in the field.

Ben-Ezra was also heard to hint that in the absence of a strategic diplomatic initiative by the government, the current intifada would escalate in intensity.

On Wednesday, Netanyahu delivered his comprehensive response to the moral positions of his senior military: The worst slap in the face he could think of. He let it be known that he would replace Ya'alon with Avigdor Lieberman, perhaps Israel's foremost exponent of summary executions, anti-democratic legislation, and full-on anti-Arab racism.

Mr. Prime Minister, what part of 'Your house is on fire' do you not get?


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