By pointing to intolerant trends in Israeli society, the deputy army commander deviated from the accepted script of Jews as eternal victims.
Chemi Shalev May 06, 2016
I’ve never met the IDF Deputy Chief of Staff with the quintessentially Israeli name Yair Golan, so it’s hard for me to tell whether he’s brave or stupid or possibly both. Golan spent much of his military career in elite paratrooper units and participated in every major IDF campaign since the 1982 war, including house to house combat against Palestinian terrorists as the head of an infantry brigade in the 2002 Operation Defensive Shield, so I suppose his courage is self-evident, though battlefield daring doesn’t always include courage of convictions as well.
Golan’s foolhardiness has become obvious since his bracing Holocaust Day speech on Wednesday at Kibbutz Tel Yitzhak, in which he refrained from casting Israeli society as an eternal victim but warned against the increasing intolerance that could turn it into a potential perpetrator as well. I am assuming that Golan knew that his words would be made public, that he was cognizant of the tremors of shock they would send throughout Israel and parts of the Jewish world, especially on such a sensitive day, and that he was fully aware that within the space of a few hours he would become public enemy no. 1 for Israeli right wingers and self-styled Jewish patriots abroad. If he didn’t know, he’s an idiot, if he did and went ahead nonetheless then he’s a fool, career-wise at least, but more of a hero as well.
Within minutes of Golan’s speech, the right wing spin machine leaped into action, inflating his words, taking them out of context, blowing them up to diabolical proportions. Rather than challenging Golan’s assertion that disturbing trends in Israeli society evoke associations to Germany and Europe in the 1930’s, which is what he actually said, his words were twisted to suggest that he had compared the IDF to the Wehrmacht, Israel to the Nazis and Palestinians, by logical extension, to persecuted Jews about to be carted off to concentration camps. With the ground thus prepared, politicians started piling up on Golan, accusing him of defiling his own IDF, defaming the state and aiding and abetting BDS. The self-induced mass hysteria quickly turned into a virtual witch-hunt, which I can only assume Golan was also prepared for, because it is part and parcel of the ominous trends that he was warning against.
Once again, it was left to Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon to defend the honor of the IDF against hotheaded right wing politicians, as he had in the recent public storm that followed the Hebron killing of a wounded terrorist by an IDF medic. Along with President Reuben Rivlin, Ya'alon is one of the last Israeli politicians who still believe that hawkishness and continued occupation do not have to contradict democracy and a commitment to the rule of law. It is a position that has always been fiercely contested by the left but is now increasingly rejected by the right, for diametrically-opposed reasons:
universal human rights and democratic principles are increasingly viewed and portrayed by right wing leaders as subversive concepts used by Israel’s enemies to weaken its hold on its historic homeland. That also sounds familiar to students of mid-twentieth century Europe, but let’s skip that for now.
Golan’s main message, as Netanyahu probably knows, was that the kind of inflamed nationalistic rumble that erupted from the demonstrations in favor of Sgt. Elor Azaria, the soldier who shot the terrorist – which Netanyahu, at best, did nothing to quell – were ugly and dangerous and, yes, reminiscent of darker times. That such rallies, as well as statements made by irresponsible politicians, carry an implicit and often explicit message that killing Palestinian terrorists, no matter what the circumstances, is not only excusable but also desirable (and they’re all terrorists in the end, as everyone knows). And that the IDF’s anachronistic efforts to cling to its old-time leftist and defeatist values of “purity of arms” and to adhere as much as possible to the commonly accepted laws of war and rules of engagement have no place in today’s all-out battle to the death against Israel’s enemies.
Continued @
http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.718231
See also :
I'm a Friend of the IDF. And I Am Worried.
As a former combat medic, I'm dismayed to find the Israeli army under attack and vulnerable from a direction in which its defenses are being stripped weak: the Israeli right.
Bradley Burston Apr 26, 2016
read more:
http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.716500
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