Trying to make sense of a new, unethical Israeli army

The Rabbi needs to learn her facts before slamming Israel and her defense forces. Her rush to judgment resulted in an erroneous retelling of falsehoods. As we are now learning, there is ZERO evidence to back up her claims. The IDF repeatedly said that it would investigate and publish its findings…and now that it has, and finds that the allegations were based on heresay, and bad heresay at that, will she spend another four hundred words apologizing for her libel? Her compulsion to jump to give credence to the worst possible scenario makes me believe that she’s always been a critic of Israel and its need to defend itself. She makes me sick.

How ironic that I finally sat down with my latest J yesterday, the same day I saw the results of the inquiry commission on the Israeli soldiers’ claims referenced in Rabbi Eilberg’s article. I shook my head reading about the hunger strike of her colleague. How noble.
Somewhere along the way they seem to have forgotten the innocent until proven guilty. I am a supporter of peace, believe in a 2 state solution and was at the peace rally the night Rabin was assassinated by a right wing fanatic nutcase.
But what disappointed me about this article was that a Jewish paper was joining the bandwagon of bombastic, public accusations, trial and conviction - just like we saw with the alleged UN School bombing in Gaza. Try to find the retraction in the world press when the same UNWRA guy admitted that the school wasn’t hit. It is buried in one canadian newspaper deep inside. I would expect more from the J to wait for the investigation, report it as news that the accusations happened and that investigative results are not yet available. Save the hunger strikes for someone who deserves them. Someone should tell that rabbi that the claims were not substantiated, lest the retraction be buried and he’ll continue his hunger strike out of continued ignorance of the facts!

Shame shame shame on the Rabbi for not directly acknowledging that she has and continues to repeat falsehoods. Is she so intent on disseminating her propoganda that the truth must be avoided? As it turns out to be, At a pre military college a number of soldiers made unsubstantiated allegations concerning acts of indiscriminate killing and vandalism perpetrated against Palestinian civilians. It subsequently transpired that the key “witnesses” were relying entirely on gossip they had heard and had not even served in Gaza. They even confessed that although they were unaware that they were being taped, they had exaggerated rumors in order to “make an impact” and convey their message “powerfully”. The allegations were neither verified nor considered within the context of threats such as suicide bombers. Nor was the IDF granted advance notice to provide a response. As Isi Leibler wrote, IDF Advocate General Brigadier General Avihai Mandelblit in closing the case said “It will be difficult to estimate the damage done to the image and morals of the IDF and its soldiers in Israel and throughout the world by these statements”. It is surely obscene that this “Rabbie” has yet seen fit to apologize or express remorse for the untold damage she inflicted on Israel. Who needs enemies when, at a time when every anti-Semite is salivating to find means to demonize the Jewish state, we have a Rabbi exploiting freedom of expression not to expose injustice but to disseminate unsubstantiated and false allegations, providing ammunition to all who seek to harm if not to destroy us?

Shorty after reading Rabbi Eilberg’s op-ed piece I read an article in the Jewish Chronicle of London (March 20th issue) titled “The Gaza Story They Won’t Print” about an ex-barrister who witnessed at first hand the effects of Operation Cast Lead.  The report reviled that “widespread Palestinian suffering have been greatly exaggerated.” 

From this far away, viewing the conflict through the media, it is very hard to know what is true. I’m not saying that the Israeli Army is guilt free, no army is. 

I know Rabbi Eilberg will get many outraged responses from those who believe it is wrong to criticize Israel.  It is interesting to note that the writter in the Jewish Chronicle was widely condemned for her article as in England, supporting Israel gets more negative responses.

I hope we can discuss these challenging issues with respect for each other.

The IDF fog machine at work

Apr. 1

Larry Derfner
JERUSALEM POST

Now that the IDF says there was nothing to those soldiers’ stories about women and children getting shot to death deliberately, on orders, during the war in Gaza, I want to update what I wrote a week ago.

Then, I presumed the soldiers from the Rabin pre-military academy knew what they were talking about. Now I’m not sure. It’s very possible the two shooting incidents described by “Aviv” and “Ram” never happened and were based on unfounded rumors, as the IDF’s internal investigation concluded.

But it’s also possible there was something to them.

Still, neither I nor any other journalist who presumed that the soldiers’ stories were accurate have anything to apologize for or retract. If I had it to do over again, knowing only what I knew before the IDF investigation came out, I’d write the same column I wrote last week.

More importantly, though, even if the old woman, the mother and the two children in question never were shot, it would hardly alter the big picture emerging from Operation Cast Lead - that Israel, in the main, acted callously toward civilian life.

I DON’T WRITE off the army’s probe. I don’t think IDF internal investigators would tell bald-face lies; I don’t think they would calculatedly turn black into white. But neither, of course, can this be considered an impartial probe. Those soldiers claimed their comrades shot and killed two women and two children who’d entered a no-go zone, and did so under orders.

I think the IDF might be willing to expose a couple of loose cannons who’d done such a thing, but to find that they were acting under orders would be catastrophic for this country. I don’t believe IDF internal investigators could reach such a conclusion even if it were true.

That’s why in-house investigations of purported scandals are inherently suspect - because the investigators are inherently biased.

But again, even if those shootings never took place, what does it say that at least some IDF soldiers evidently thought that those were their orders? In the excerpts of the discussion published in Haaretz, the soldiers disagreed over whether it was right to shoot Palestinians in such circumstances, but there was no disagreement that those were their orders.

After Aviv talks about how his comrades shot an old, unarmed woman (“The order was to take that woman out, the moment you see her…”) his comrade “Zvi” says the following: “Aviv’s descriptions are accurate, but it’s possible to understand where this is coming from. And that woman, you don’t know whether she’s… She wasn’t supposed to be there, because there were warnings and there were bombings. Logic says she shouldn’t be there. The way you describe it, as murder in cold blood, that isn’t right. It’s known that they have lookouts and that sort of thing.”

ZVI ISN’T saying they weren’t ordered to shoot Palestinians

—see part 1—-

PART TWO

in the no-go area on sight, he’s not saying such killings didn’t take place - he’s saying they were ordered, they did shoot and it was all justified.

This is what’s so hypocritical about the public’s outrage over the coverage of the soldiers’ statements and the public sense of vindication from the IDF probe: People were angry that Israel was made to look bad, but as for the morality of what those soldiers described, most of the outraged public had no problem with it. Read the talkbacks. Ask around.

Regarding the media’s widespread assumption that the soldiers’ recollections were credible, why shouldn’t the media, especially here, have assumed that? Journalists, certainly here, publish IDF soldiers’ war stories all the time. They believe them as a matter of course, and so does the public. I’ve written up accounts by IDF soldiers about being attacked by the enemy, about being tortured by the enemy, and I believed them and I’m sure readers did, too.

I believed and still believe the stories told by soldiers from Operation Cast Lead about being ordered not to shoot civilians, about going out of their way to help them. The IDF isn’t a monolith; different units, different commanders and different soldiers behave in different ways.

There cannot be one journalistic standard for the treatment of “positive” war stories and another for “negative” war stories, yet that’s what the public seems to demand. Well, too bad for the public.

But beyond the automatic credibility that goes to IDF soldiers, there’s another reason why these particular stories rang true, and why even conclusive proof that they were false shouldn’t make any Israeli feel vindicated - because you don’t need Aviv’s, or Ram’s or Zvi’s accounts to know that Operation Cast Lead was a travesty.

Even if you assume that every single Gazan, human rights NGO and foreign journalist was telling nothing but pure lies, what we know from military and government officials themselves is bad enough.

We bombed any number of Gazan government buildings and courthouses because they were “symbols of Hamas power.” We bombed a graduation ceremony for traffic police. We bombed Islamic University because weapons were being developed there. We fired white phosphorous, which burns flesh to the bone, that hit densely-populated areas.

And this is just what the IDF acknowledges; it doesn’t include the destroyed families, homes, schools and hospitals which it says were either used by Hamas as “human shields” or ended up as “collateral damage.” That’s the big picture from Gaza. The statements by the soldiers from the Rabin pre-military academy fit in. Now the IDF investigation casts doubt on those statements. But it doesn’t change the big picture.

The Eilberg affair is a treasury of bizarre rhetoric from several parties. Consider the following:
“I am concerned because some Israeli soldiers reported that some other Israeli soldiers reported that bad deeds were committed.”
The reports were investigated. The bad deeds did not happen.
“Even though the bad deeds did not actually happen, I am concerned that people felt that they had to report that they happened.”
The report was false.
“Even though this particular report was false,  other, unreported, bad things may have happened.”
There is no credible evidence that other bad things happened.
“Yes, but there is no credible evidence that they did not happen. Until such evidence is presented, I must believe that other bad things happened.”
These false reports come from two soldiers out of an entire country.
“Yes, but I am concerned about a country that drives some of its soldiers to make false reports about bad things happening.”
But two soldiers speaking on their own do not represent an entire country. And there is no evidence of their report of bad deeds.
“Your answer makes me concerned about those whose desire to defend Israel is so strong that they require evidence of bad deeds before blaming Israel for committing them.”