Yesterday, some 200 former top Israeli military and other security officials issued a policy paper proposing making peace with the Palestinians, including concessions that even the “center-left” political opposition would never dare to articulate.
This is just the latest salvo in a growing war of words between an Israel that is shifting dramatically rightward, and a military that not only isn’t going along for the ride, but increasingly willing, past and present, to dissent from the nationalist line.
Army Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot has come under growing criticism for saying the military needs to have moral standards, and many political officials have repudiated his comment that he would not want an Israeli soldier to empty a magazine into a Palestinian girl with a pair of scissors.
His deputy, Maj. Gen. Yair Golan, sparked an even bigger uproar soon thereafter, when during a speech at one of Israel’s many Holocaust commemorations he warned that he saw similar developments in modern Israel to those which took place in Europe during the rise of fascism.
Maj. Gen. Golan’s comments sparked a flurry of furious condemnations from Israeli officials, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warning that it was inappropriate for military officials to express such opinions. Golan was defended by then-Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, which was seen as the “last straw” in the Israeli far-right government’s ouster of Ya’alon.
The Israeli military has tended toward relatively pragmatic hawkishness over the years, and that used to be enough to keep them in the good graces of right-wing governments. The rightward shift has gone so far, however, that it can no longer brook any expression of pragmatism as it runs afoul of the ultra-nationalist, ultra-hawkish consensus.
What they right is asking the army to do is overlook violation of the chain of command. Not only did the medic commit murder, he violated clear orders. If an army accepts that, you no longer have an army; you have a rabble.
Good for them. But governments everywhere know to purge the military of people who don’t go along.
If I was in the Israel military I would not support people who will get me killed for profit. It is the soldier who will enter harms way. It is not the loud mouths like lieberman who only military experience is he was once a bar bouncer at a low life night club. I have watch my friends bury their kids in the wars that the loud mouths in the USA have gotten us into. I believe the Israel Military to be very professional and dedicated. I do not believe them to be dumb.