"Most Moral Army" and Other IDF Myths

You could hear the livid tone in the latest by Gideon Levy, the Haaretz columnist and editorial board member of the Israeli newspaper, as he heard an Israel Defense Force spokesman defend Israeli soldiers against accusations of atrocities and possible war crimes by pulling out an old standard: that "the IDF is the most moral army in the world."

Don't tell that to Palestinians and Lebanese who've been experiencing the lead of that "moral army" since 1982. Don't tell that to Levy, for that matter. And he has a cushy office in Tel Aviv.

"All these propagandistic and ridiculous responses are meant not only to deceive the public, but also to offer shameless lies," Levy writes. "The IDF knew very well what its soldiers did in Gaza. It has long ceased to be the most moral army in the world. Far from it - it will not seriously investigate anything."

The more salient point is that Gaza was not an aberration. It was a concentrate of a policy of long date, a multiplication of loathes that have been dished out on the Palestinian population in the Occupied Territories for years. Levy continues:

The soldiers' transgressions are an inevitable result of the orders given during this brutal operation, and they are the natural continuation of the last nine years, when soldiers killed nearly 5,000 Palestinians, at least half of them innocent civilians, nearly 1,000 of them children and teenagers.

Everything the soldiers described from Gaza, everything, occurred during these blood-soaked years as if they were routine events. It was the context, not the principle, that was different. An army whose armored corps has yet to encounter an enemy tank and whose pilots have yet to face an enemy combat jet in 36 years has been trained to think that the only function of a tank is to crush civilian cars and that a pilot's job is to bomb residential neighborhoods.

Levy doesn't--nor should anyone--single out the Israeli soldier as somehow more predisposed than, say, the American or Arab or Persian or Russian soldier to pull off atrocities. We well know that atrocities in war are one of those rare universals that binds inhumanity across cultures and geography and history. As Levy writes, "Most of the soldiers who took part in the assault on Gaza are youths with morals." It's the situation that turns an otherwise good man into a murderer, a war criminal, something as inhuman, in fact, as the dehumanized targets he's predisposed, by training and propaganda, to destroy.

"These," levy writes, "are not instances of 'errant fire,' but of deliberate fire resulting from an order. These are not 'a few bad apples,' but rather the spirit of the commander, and this spirit has been bad and corrupt for quite some time."

Which virtually dooms hope, for now.

Change will not come without a major change in mindset. Until we recognize the Palestinians as human beings, just as we are, nothing will change. But then, the occupation would collapse, God forbid. In the meantime, prepare for the next war and the horrific testimonies about the most moral army in the world.

Not surprisingly, Haaretz often loses subscribers over Levy's writings. Not surprisingly, Haaretz also remains Israel's best newspapers (it was Haaretz that broke the story of the Israeli soldiers' testimonies about their own atrocities in Gaza) , challenging assumptions about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict more courageously and consistently than any newspaper in the United States.