[R-G] A farewell to 'the purity of arms'

[Sid Shniad]

Globe and Mail March 21, 2009 

THE GAZA WAR 

A farewell to 'the purity of arms' 

Generations of Israeli soldiers have been taught to respect the lives of innocent civilians. Some say they found a different code in Gaza 

Patrick Martin 
pmartin at globeandmail.com 

Jerusalem -- When Ram went to war, he thought he knew the difference between enemy forces and innocent civilians. What he found in Israel's invasion of Gaza in January, he said, was the routine killing of obviously innocent civilians in order to completely safeguard Israeli soldiers' lives. 

Whereas generations of Israeli soldiers have been taught the principle of tohar ha neshek, the "purity of arms" that forbids the indiscriminate use of weapons against the unarmed, Ram found a different code in Gaza: "The lives of Palestinians, let's say, are something much, much less important than the lives of our soldiers," he said. 

That code, Ram said, is what justified soldiers taking careful aim and firing at a woman and her two children as they walked away from the home where Israeli snipers had taken up positions. 

The testimony of Ram (not his real name), along with that of half a dozen other soldiers who fought in Gaza, emerged this week when the director of an Israeli premilitary program published the comments in the program's journal and gave them to some Israeli media. 

Besides the deliberate shooting of the woman and two children, other statements spoke of the killing of an old woman as she approached too close to an IDF-occupied house, and the routine desecration of homes the soldiers occupied. 

"Inside Gaza, you are allowed to do anything you want, to break down doors of houses for no reason other than that it's cool," said another soldier. "From above, they said it was permissible, because anyone who remained in the sector and inside Gaza City was, in effect, incriminated, a terrorist, because they hadn't fled." 

What emerged from this testimony was a picture of a military force that has not only been taught to hate its enemy - perhaps a prerequisite to effective warfare - but also to disregard the sanctity of other life. 

"While the line between combatant and civilian is blurred in unconventional urban war, it is still incumbent on the soldier to make every effort to distinguish between the two," said Stuart Hendin, a specialist on the law of war at the University of Ottawa. "Just following standing orders [to open fire on anyone within a certain radius] is not an adequate defence to the killing of innocents. 

"The fundamental principle [of the law of war] is the protection of civilians." 

The Israeli army announced on Thursday that it will conduct inquiries into the alleged incidents. 

However, such behaviour is found in almost every military force (think Serbs in Bosnia, Americans at Abu Ghraib and Canadians in Somalia) and has existed as long as there has been war. 

"The important thing to determine is: Were these isolated incidents or widespread behaviour?" said Dow Marmur, emeritus rabbi at Toronto's Holy Blossom Temple, and resident in Jerusalem. 

"Unfortunately," Mr. Marmur said, "it seems the principle of tohar ha neshek ceased to predominate ever since the First Lebanon War," from 1982 to 2000. 

Indeed, there is a scene in the popularly acclaimed Israeli novel Beaufort in which a religious soldier, part of a force occupying the Beaufort castle in southern Lebanon, takes off the skull cap he has always worn, never to don it again in that war. Even the non-religious men in the platoon are saddened by the gesture, as if he is declaring: What we're doing here has nothing to do with Judaism. 

"That's exactly right," said Mr. Marmur. 

Avraham Burg, a former Speaker of the Knesset and head of the Jewish Agency, has argued that excessive concentration on the Holocaust is to blame. Determined that "never again" shall there be another Holocaust, Israelis tend to view all their opponents as potential Nazis, he argues - even unarmed Palestinians. 

"That's too simplistic," said Mr. Marmur. "It makes it too easy for people to say this behaviour is a Jewish thing. It's more than that." 

Mr. Marmur said he blames the army chaplaincy for the shortcomings. "They don't do enough to instill Jewish values." 

Yet soldiers this week were quoted saying they were fed lots of religion before going into battle and flooded with psalms while in Gaza. "We could have filled a room with the psalms they sent us," one soldier said. 

"That's not what it takes," Mr. Marmur said. "Any sacred text can be subverted." 

"These chaplains - all Orthodox - are infected with right-wing nationalism." 

Mr. Marmur, a Reform rabbi, argues that it is healthier to have differing points of view. 

"Irving Greenberg said it's incumbent on us Jews to exercise power with a memory of powerlessness," Mr. Marmur said, "otherwise the history of Judaism will be invalidated. 

"That is something these soldiers should be told." 

"But, instead," said Mr. Marmur, "we are sending these young people into wars they can't win; putting enormous pressure on them to finish the job." 

It's no wonder they shoot to kill everyone, he said. 

"It's up to Jewish leadership to guard against this."