Arnon Dgani
Soldiers are not guilty
Troops deployed in West Bank must put moral considerations aside to do their job
Another case of soldiers abusing Palestinians was published Sunday under the headline “soldiers charged with beating Palestinian senseless.” As could be expected, the story included the usual IDF response, expressing regret for the incident but also making sure to remind us that “the number of cases that reveal normative failures is small and we are working to prevent them altogether."
To me it is clear that anyone who writes such talkback has never served in the territories and simply has no idea of what goes on there on a daily basis.
I wonder when a “small” number becomes “large,” but I am not angry at the IDF’s Spokesperson’s Office. I am more angered by readers responding to the article, like those who think that it is “simply terrible to hear such things,” that we should “put these soldiers in jail for five years at least so everyone learns their lesson,” and the most infuriating one: “We should start screening the people recruited to the army.”
Moral Corruption
Hanan Greenberg
Three IDF combatants indicted for severely abusing Palestinian taxi station dispatcher in Hebron. Defendants allegedly forced their victim to strip naked and then hit him with their rifles until he lost consciousness. Troops deny allegations against them
The responders remind me of a conversation I had with my reserve duty platoon commander during operational service about a year ago. While I was walking on base, my commander wanted to score some points with me, the platoon’s “leftist” soldier, and in order to prove what kind of a good person he is and what sort of values he imparts, he turned to me and said: “Arnon, you would be proud of me. You should know that I reprimanded soldier X for what he did with the stone throwers.” My response to him is what I would tell all the talkback writers now: I’m not sure that soldier could have acted any other way.
The investigation into the latest affair involving Kfir Brigade soldiers will reveal that the Palestinian in question looked suspicious to them, refused to cooperate, and possibly even swore at them. It is very likely that these soldiers were already after eight straight hours of a shift where someone may shoot them at any given moment. The soldiers’ cruelty had the logic that guides any soldier who ever told a Palestinian what to do: Next time a cab driver will be ordered to step out of his vehicle, he will do it immediately.
We can’t do it the nice way
We have been controlling the territories, through our military, for more than 40 years now, and the people who happen to live there don’t quite want us there. If we want to continue holding on to this territory, we cannot do it the nice way. We need to force neighbors to approach the houses of Palestinian suspects, we need to keep detaining the distant cousins of wanted Palestinians, we need to show our presence through two roadblocks that do not block a thing situated between two Palestinian villages (for your attention, Condoleezza Rice,) and we need to perpetrate all sorts of other unpleasant things.
Those who act “morally” under such circumstances are worse soldiers.
Everyone who thinks the solution lies with longer prison terms for troops should be looking for someone else to punish. The guilty parties are those who send them to exercise our sovereignty in the West Bank and then become angry when this job doesn’t look good in photographs. The commanders are not at the fault either, and neither is the government. We are at fault.
Perhaps we will understand it the day the IDF issues a response that represents IDF troops and not their image. Something like: “By beating the Palestinians the soldiers did exactly what reality on the ground required them to do, as all IDF soldiers do while carrying out their missions in Judea and Samaria, in line with the decisions of the political leadership, which acts by virtue of Israeli democracy.”
Arnon Dagni, a Middle Eastern history master’s student, is a member of the Breaking the Silence organization
