According to the well-rehearsed adage, the Israeli Army is the most moral in the world. According to many of the soldiers on the ground, this is far from the truth. How is it, then, that this contradiction is so blatant and also hard to resolve? Either the IDF is indeed morally a cut above everyone else’s army, or someone is not telling the truth.
A few months before the war of October 7, our eldest grandson was inducted into the army. After a few weeks, I asked him to tell us about the tank unit into which he was sworn. What was the soldiers’ most obvious characteristic? Did they talk about their political leanings? “Oh,” he said, “about 85% of them support Itamar Ben-Gvir.”
Apart from the shock this presented to his grandparents, it also helped solve the contradiction outlined above. In theory, the IDF puts up a show of a compassionate, morally pure unit. But in practice, the guys on the ground tell a different story. There are stories of looting, harassment, and even murder of unarmed civilians. Then there is a question of airplanes raining down unstoppable bombs on highly questionable targets like hospitals and schools. This is where Hamas hides, is the official line; they’re using human shields to distract us from the military hardware that they stock in these facilities. Who can tell which side is right? Where is the proof?
So how does the contradiction end? On the one hand, we have the official line: We are a morally superior outfit compared to any other army in the world. On the other hand, we have devotees of Ben-Gvir, a member of the government and self-confessed follower of Rabbi Meir Kahane, who couldn’t care less for the immoral goyim; it’s in their nature to be barbaric. If proof is needed, see what happened on October 7.
Not all the soldiers are to be tarred with the same brush. The group under the rubric of Breaking the Silence is incensed by this behavior and publishes many a tale of cruelty and immoral behavior on the part of their fellow soldiers. Is this a case of losing the narrative? We are no longer following any national line that brings unity, stability, and moral strength. The politicians – especially those in power – seem to think more in terms of their own future than that of the country. The foremost example of this is surely that of Justice Minster Yariv Levin, whose obsession with the High Court is a cover for his own personal advancement. Not that the High Court does not need to be reformed. How is it that it allowed Mr. Ben-Gvir to enter the Knesset in the first place? However, there is a distinction to be drawn between changing parts of the structure to be more in line with current realities and wanting to replace it with some untested fundamentalist application that benefits only the incumbent coalition.
The basic flaw with Israel’s governance is something that needs repeating. The way we appoint members of the Knesset is anachronistic and indeed anti-democratic. Instead of voting for an individual, Israeli voters are asked to vote for a party. The candidates themselves do not have to prove themselves before the public but only have to please their fellow party members. So when the prime minister talks to “the public,” he is essentially talking to his party members or those of his coalition. In fact, the current incumbent of the prime minister’s post has never been interviewed by one of the three TV stations that represent the broad mass of voters and are overwhelmingly critical of the government’s policies. He has turned instead to the channel he himself helped set up, which has been, from the very first, a mere outlet for the coalition’s propaganda machine. Unless this system changes, little can be done to ameliorate the dire situation. The problem is that at the moment, no one, Left or Right, seems to want to make the change, even though it is urgently needed. Are they trying to protect something? Are they satisfied with the present arrangement?
The rational way
A while back, Prof. Robert Aumann, a Nobel Prize winner in his field of game theory, proposed the following possibility for prisoner swaps. Each imprisoned person should be released for one other imprisoned person on the other side of the conflict. This swap of one-for-one would be based on purely rational criteria instead of some number that has no basis in any equation but is prompted by some other criteria, typically some political dimension. In Israel, the most famous example of this irrational release was the case of Gilad Schalit in 2011, where the government of Benjamin Netanyahu saw it as expedient to give back over 1,000 Palestinians – including Mr. Sinwar, the leader of the October 7 massacre – to secure the release of a simple foot soldier.
Aumann’s suggestion has much going for it. It elevates the enemy’s value. This means that they are also considered to be on the same level as our men. The alternative of releasing many in return for one or a few of our prisoners gives the impression that our people are worth more, possibly much more, than their people, thus perpetuating the assumption that Israeli Jews think of themselves as worth much more than others.
Aumann’s suggestion is, as we have said, a purely rational idea, and that is its weak point. War, which Aumann himself states elsewhere, has logic going for it but has little place for rational decision-making. Every military decision is based on an “if” factor – i.e., on the assumption that the enemy will do such and such or will react in a certain way, which they may or may not do. It’s a question of chance, a gamble in which typically human lives are at stake.
In this case, too, Israel’s reputation is very much at stake. Like it or not, the State of Israel is expected to be better than other nations, a light unto the nations. Unfortunately, at this moment in time Israel is often cast internationally as a blight unto the nations.
Car graveyard
For the past few months, on every Thursday, I have joined a busload of fellow volunteers to journey south to the settlements surrounding Gaza to help as much as we can to harvest the crops of fruit and vegetables. Without foreign workers, the crops would remain unpicked, and the farmers, already under tremendous economic pressure, would lose any income they might have gained from their hard work. So our efforts, as small as they are (most of the volunteers are pensioners), are highly appreciated.
This past week, however, we made a slight detour on our way back to Jerusalem. We stopped off at a new memorial. Called simply a graveyard for cars damaged in the October 7 massacre, it has become one of the most visited spots in Israel, which already has enough graveyards and memorials. This one is unique in that nobody is buried there. It is literally a site full of cars – bashed in, windows broken, twisted metal parts, burnt.
The reason for retaining these broken shards of automobiles is not aesthetic. They are there to act as a reminder in the most graphic way of what happened on October 7. A member of our bus of volunteers, Shimon, led us to his car, and then told us how it came there. It was his car but borrowed for the occasion by his son and his friends. They needed it for the ride to the Supernova music festival, which was about to be held on the very edge of the Gaza Strip, close to a number of settlements – kibbutzim, moshavim, and so forth. What happened instead was an explosion of mayhem, cruelty, and horrific events, which was made worse by the fact that it was totally unexpected and found Israel’s formidable army unprepared as never before. The government had over-estimated its own strength and under-estimated its enemies’ determination against the “Zionist entity.” The fact that the current government could not admit that they had been out-foxed and out-gunned by their ever-present enemy led to the disastrous overreaction, which so far has seen the deaths of over 40,000 Palestinians and 700 Israelis, mainly soldiers. The graveyard is a standing testament to these failures and to the enormous loss of life as a consequence of these failures.
When our group of volunteers had finished its tour of this surrealistic cemetery, we recited Kaddish, the mourner’s prayer. There was little else we could do.■
Jesus Christ is King
