March 26, 2009

Allegations that Israeli soldiers diverged from their military’s high moral and ethical standards have provided a grim coda to Israel’s January offensive to silence Hamas rocket fire from Gaza. Reports in Israel, picked up in the United States, quote the head of a military college’s training program, who took down soldiers’ accounts of what he called a “serious moral failure in the IDF” in its treatment of civilians and Palestinian property.

The reports led to soul-searching in Israel and the Diaspora, and a heated backlash from those who felt the charges were ideological in nature. But as Israelis and Jews around the world assimilate the reports, a few things should be kept in mind:

• The allegations come not from foreign groups or the Palestinian side, but from Israelis themselves. The Israeli military’s advocate general ordered an immediate investigation. Israel’s robust nonprofit sector called for an independent investigation. Even a reliable hawk like Moshe Arens, a former defense minister, wrote that the allegations “need, of course, to be investigated.”
• Israel’s enemies gloat over such reports, even though they abide by no moral code, target Israeli civilians as a matter of policy, and regularly put their own civilian populations at risk. That they would claim the moral high ground is beyond obscene.
• Whether the allegations prove to be isolated or systemic, Israel in no way deserves the disproportionate prejudgment of the world’s hypocrites, in the press or among the NGOs, who have hardly a word to say about atrocities elsewhere. Only Israel’s nationalist enterprise is declared to be illegitimate. Only Israel’s actions are seen as the root cause of the Mideast conflict. Only Israel bears comparison to apartheid South Africa or, worse, Nazi Germany.

Israel has the will and the means to police its own defense forces. We trust they will, and trust its critics not at all.

Comment: comments@njjewishnews.com

--TOP--