Michael Mankin
Photo: Yael Levy
Why are we fooling ourselves?
Army inquiry into recent Gaza operation presents fictitious reality
It is difficult to contend with such cynical inquiry as the one published by the IDF regarding its conduct during Operation Cast Lead.
Many questions emerge on the first reading, and any logical person – and certainly any civilian who was ever a party to an internal military inquiry – could not help but to smile sadly when reading the conclusions of this “inquiry.”
After all, how can one seriously address a decisive conclusion that prompts us to feel good because the IDF hit “only” a few UN buildings? Should we cheer the surprising results showing that we killed innocents (as if this information is new to us)? And besides, is it appropriate for the deputy army chief to praise the “courage” of an inquiry which he himself led in respect to acts he himself was responsible for?
Army Probe
Hanan Greenberg
Deputy Chief of Staff Maj-Gen Dan Harel presents media with initial results of military's probe into civilian death cases during Operation Cast Lead, says no Israeli soldier ever deliberately targeted Palestinian civilians
And if the findings of this “inquiry” are so unequivocal, and the establishment comes out of them clean (after all, the offenders are always a few rotten apples who committed disciplinary offences,) how could it be that there is such great gap between the official IDF version and any other version of any independent group or journalist who examined the IDF’s conduct in the war?
So we conducted ourselves in line with international law? But the very same report says that we fired at UN buildings! After all, every Israeli with a television set can see the results of the white prosperous bombs fired into populated areas. At the pace the IDF is going at, an inquiry by its people will reveal this information to us in another five years at least.
Moreover, how could it be that the great IDF needed only a week and a half to rule that the shocking testimonials of soldiers at a religious school are deceptive, but three months were needed to realize that innocents were killed? Worst of all, is it possible that we, as a society, take this inquiry seriously?
At this point I am not interested in justifying or rejecting our acts during Operation Cast Lead. It is possible that everything we did there, including acts that would clearly hurt innocent casualties, was completely justified. Yes, artillery fire into Gaza would necessarily lead to that – ask anyone who served in a combat unit in the past decades. It is possible that the talkbackers are right, that there is no other way to fight terrorism, and that in the Mideastern jungle there is no choice but to conduct ourselves like animals. Perhaps the IDF conducted itself as could be expected of a state that has sustained Qassam rockets for eight years now.
Yet what’s infuriating is that the IDF doesn’t admit to it. After all, we all know that this entire inquiry is a sham, which is part of a fundamentally groundless PR campaign aimed at showing the world, and showing us too, that we act in line with moral criteria that are wholly different than what everyone thinks. The IDF claims that we are a model of adhering to international conventions, while all of us know that most Israelis, as well as the IDF itself, believe these criteria are completely detached from the Mideastern reality. So why do we keep fooling ourselves?
No, the IDF inquiry isn’t courageous. It is cowardly and insults the intelligence of every Israeli citizen. Its objective is no more than to provide various bloggers and “international PR consultants” with information they can use in debates.
The meaningful question is whether we are willing to look at ourselves in the mirror and say that what truly happened during Cast Lead is necessary and perhaps even desirable in our region today. Are we willing to bear with the international consequences, and particularly the conclusion that at this time we can’t quite serve as a “light unto the nations”? At this time we live in the jungle, and the word “morality” is a luxury reserved to states such as Denmark and Finland. This is what the deputy chief of staff really thinks, after all. This is what the army thinks. It is possible that this is what all of us think. So why not just say it?
In my view, the answer to this question is an optimistic one. Perhaps we do not think like that, or at least not completely so. Perhaps there is still a voice within us, a repressed one, which whispers that we can build a different society here; that perhaps we did not come here just to survive, but rather, in order to build something positive here, something we can take pride in.
Our society must engage in this moral discourse openly and fearlessly. We need to let the secret out. We need to talk about what really happened in Gaza. And if we end up justifying Cast Lead, at least we’ll be justifying a reality that truly happened, rather than the fictitious reality presented by the inquiry.
Michael Mankin is a member of Breaking the Silence
