Morally Complicated
It is like they are saying: The Chief-of-Staff Eyal Zamir must restore discipline to the IDF so that it can carry out its war crimes in the most optimal way. ■ Mangle your own face, and you will end up with a mangled face.
By Yonatan Englender • Translated by Sol Salbe
Only Chief-of-Staff Eyal Zamir knows which of the many troubling incidents in the IDF that got him over the edge and made him speak out. Was it the looting in Lebanon, the shattered statue of Jesus, or perhaps the punishment of a discharged female soldier for immodest appearance? But everyone knows which incidents did not cause this stern-mouthed person to open up — not the death of three children in the courtyard of a mosque from an IDF attack two days ago, not the settlers who broke into homes in the area of the village of Duma while escorted by security forces three days ago, not the shooting death of a Palestinian family last month. “This is not a small incident, but a huge event,” the Chief of Staff said of the looting in Lebanon. The man is worried. Dead Palestinians? They’re less worrying.
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Idit Shafran [Gittleman] and Ofer Shelah [of the institute for National Security Studies] are also concerned, and in an opinion column they call on Zamir to act decisively against the ongoing violation of the IDF’s moral standards. They are perturbed by the rampant violence in the [Occupied] Territories, the looting, and the reinstatement of the Force 100 soldiers accused of sexually abusing a detainee in Sde Teiman. This is similar to someone worrying about the furniture getting all dusty after the entire house has collapsed on its occupants. For months, the Air Force has been pulverising civilians indiscriminately in Gaza, soldiers have stood guard to prevent aid trucks with food from entering while people starved there. For years, the generals, officers, and ordinary soldiers have made the abuse, humiliation, and killing of Palestinians a routine matter, barely worthy of attention. In February of this year, a 14-year-old bled to death for 45 minutes while soldiers stood over him and refused to help, as Amira Hass reported.
Shafran and Shelah impose an impossible task on the Chief of Staff: “Reinforce the moral backbone of the army, which is the basis for its strength and success in carrying out its missions.” The IDF cannot be moral when it is tasked with immoral missions. There is no moral way to take revenge on the Palestinians in Gaza for the October 7 massacre. There is no ethical way to maintain the violent ongoing oppression of the civilian population in the Occupied Territories. Worse than impossible, Shafran and Shelah’s demand is itself immoral. It is like they are saying: Zamir must restore discipline to the IDF so that it can carry out its war crimes in the most optimal way.
“An army that abandons discipline and standards becomes an armed gang, whose soldiers lose their humanity, and will end up being defeated in battle as well. The responsibility of the commander-in-chief of the army for maintaining discipline and the moral standards of those wearing the uniform is absolute,” they reason — and completely miss the reason and the context. The rot in the army is not the result of the commander-in-chief’s abandonment of procedures, but the inevitable continuation of the missions that the army and its soldiers have been taking on every day for years. These are “morally complicated” missions, as they write; euphemistic language that is part of the problem and comes to cover up despicable malicious missions that inevitably create “morally complex” people. In other words, send an 18-year-old soldier to block a 60-year-old Palestinian from accessing his olive grove — and you will get exactly that, casual and permanent cruelty. Send a pilot with a family to destroy an entire neighbourhood upon its inhabitants — and you will get exactly that, indifference to killing. Mangle your own face, and you will end up with a mangled face.
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