This should get as much media and blog coverage as the scurrilous war crimes accusations it refutes but it probably won’t….
Jerusalem Post: ‘Isolated vandalism isn’t a war crime’
Operation Cast Lead was completely justified, isolated acts of vandalism do not make the IDF an army of war criminals, and religious graduates of the military preparatory programs add to the morality of the IDF, Danny Zamir, the head of the Rabin Pre-Military Academy in Kiryat Tivon, told The Jerusalem Post on Monday.
Zamir’s comments came after the Post obtained a copy of an article he wrote for circulation abroad, in which he tried to put into context the brouhaha that resulted from publication of a discussion among nine graduates of his program after Operation Cast Lead. The discussion
included allegations of two instances in which soldiers deliberately shot and killed innocent Palestinians, and of wanton vandalism.“The whole story spun out of control,” Zamir said. “From an internal discussion where soldiers talked about what was difficult and painful in the war, and which I took to the army because I expected them to deal with the issues raised, the international media turned the IDF into war criminals.”
The transcript of the soldiers’ comments, which appeared in an internal newsletter that was posted on the Internet, led to a media sensation, with numerous articles using the soldiers’ comments to substantiate allegations of Israeli war crimes in Gaza.
DANNY ZAMIR in the Jerusalem Post – Personal code of IDF soldier: ‘May our camp be pure’
A number of articles published recently in The New York Times quoted or were based on words spoken by myself and by graduates of the pre-army leadership development program which I head (the “Rabin Mechina”) – graduates who participated as combat soldiers in Operation Cast Lead and who met recently to process personal experiences from the battlefield.
Both explicitly and by insinuation, the articles claim a decline in the IDF’s commitment to its moral code of conduct in combat, and moreover, that this decline stems from a specific increase in the prominence of religious soldiers and commanders in the IDF in general, and from the strengthening of the position of IDF Chief Rabbi Avichai Ronsky in particular.
It was as if the media were altogether so eager to find reason to criticize the IDF that they pounced on one discussion by nine soldiers who met after returning from the battlefield to share their experiences and subjective feelings with each other, using that one episode to draw conclusions that felt more like an indictment. Dogma
replaced balance and led to a dangerous misunderstanding of the depth and complexity of Israeli reality. The individual accounts were never intended to serve as a basis for broad generalizations and summary conclusions by the media; they were published internally, intended for program graduates and their parents as a tool to be used in the process of educating and guiding the next generation.[major snip]
IF IT’S possible to learn something from the real Israel – and not that which the media (including Israeli media) makes such efforts to portray – it would be from the uproar of emotions and the frank discussions that have taken place within Israeli society in the wake of the soldiers’ accounts. It is out of their commitment to the moral code that the soldiers spoke and their accounts were submitted; purity of arms requires continuous examination of our actions and intentions.
“May our camp be pure.” This is the watchword borne by my soldiers in the IDF, not only because this is how they’ve been educated by their commanders and their officers, but because this is the essence of their belief and their national heritage, a belief and heritage shared by and uniting us all: secular and religious, right and left, in the IDF and outside it. It is a source of pride and of confidence in our way, even in times of venomous attacks from every quarter – such as transforming a sensitive, personal discussion among combat soldiers back from the battlefield to mendacious claims of policies that involve so-called war crimes.
And so may it be.
[Gen. Gabi] Ashkenazi: Allegations of IDF war crimes in Gaza ‘unfounded’
IDF chief says “disturbing ‘testimonies'” exhaustively investigated; army’s “source of strength” the determination to safeguard its “ethical image.”