On message: 'whenever the army says something, just oppose it'


December 9, 2015
Sarah Benton

The article from +972 is followed by one from Jewish Forward


PM Netanyahu and defence minister Ya’alon share a security briefing – but not a political judgment – with IDF Generals, July 18, 2014. Photo by Haim Zach/GPO

What does it say when the IDF is the sanest voice in Israel?

When members of the opposition are trying to outflank Netanyahu on the right, even the IDF seems like a saner alternative to Israeli politicians.

By Yoni Mendel, +972
December 04, 2015

“A nation in uniform,” “an army that has a state,” “a democracy of army bases.” In academic research of the critical kind, Israel is understood as a militaristic state.

This, among other things, is what the sociologist Baruch Kimmerling meant when he said, “whether we want it or not — we are a clearly militaristic society, and this militarism is also a central principle around which Israeli society is organized.” Uri Ben Eliezer wrote about Israel as a “nation in uniform,” researching the military characteristics of Israeli society. Oren Barak analyzed the development of “Israeli security networks” and their social and political role in the country.

In other words, much academic research has been dedicated to the topic. It is not difficult to find quotes from Israeli policymakers, most of them (unsurprisingly) Jewish men who served in high-ranking positions in the IDF — men who straddle the line between military and civil society in Israel. This begins with IDF Chief of Staff Yigal Yadin’s declaration in the 1940s that “the Israeli civilian is a soldier with 11 months leave” and continues with Prime Minister Netanyahu’s remarks that Israel must “forever live by the sword.”

Lapid vs. Abbas and the security establishment

On the backdrop of Israel’s militarism, it is important to say a few things about the security establishment. This past month has seen a great number of examples that show how this establishment, and specifically the IDF, has begun to be viewed by the Israeli leadership — both by the government as well as by both the coalition and what, for some reason, is deemed the “opposition” in the Knesset — as outdated, irrelevant, ignorant, and deceitful.

This began with the violence and stabbings in October 2015. The propagandists of the Israeli government announced openly that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ incitement was behind the uprising. The demagoguery quickly became the prominent message, with the media quickly adopting the words “incitement” and “Abbas” as inseparable. Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Tzipi Hotovely went as far as to organize a training for senior members of the ministry focusing on “incitement,” which included talks by researchers who support her worldview. The same happened with Culture Minister Miri Regev, Energy and Water Resources Yuval Steinitz, Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, and others.

What did the “opposition” do in the meanwhile? It isn’t hard to guess. MK Yair Lapid fell into line, stating that “Abbas is continuing with his crusade of incitement,” adding his own bit of militarism and claiming that “anyone who harms us will bear responsible for the outcome.”

On the other hand, we have an organization called the IDF’s Intelligence Corps. As opposed to the incitement of the right and the left, the corps released the following two professional assessments: “Abbas is not inciting in order to harm Israelis,” and “Abbas is considered a very moderating force in Judea and Samaria.” How did Education Minister Naftali Bennett respond? “The security establishment is wrong.”

This continued with the banning of the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement; a movement that has the support of one-third of Muslims in Israel, that has a network of schools and restaurants, and which has its own newspaper. This movement, we must remember, has existed in a reality in which “Israel’s Arab citizens have been discriminated against since 1948 because they are Arab,” according to the government-appointed Or Commission. The cabinet, however, decided to outlaw the group, as opposed to outlawing discrimination and those who support it. After all, some of them hold high-ranking positions among the Israeli leadership.

There is no reason to provide a stage for the remarks coming from government ministers, who all sang the same tune against the Islamic Movement. Not a single one of them actually knows the movement, aside from a few choice quotes provided by a “research organization” whose ideas match up with theirs. But let’s see what those in the “opposition” thought about the decision. There, the leader of the “opposition,” Isaac Herzog, described the ban as the “first step in protecting democracy.” His co-leader, Tzipi Livni, added that she supports the ban. When asked why she didn’t take the same step when she was justice minister, she responded that the Shin Bet didn’t support it.


The head of Military Intelligence, Maj. General Herzl Halevi [above], said at Sunday’s weekly cabinet meeting [November 1st, 2015] that feelings of rage and frustration, especially among younger Palestinians, are part of the reason for the wave of terror attacks in Jerusalem and the West Bank.’ Barak Ravid, Haaretz, Nov. 3rd.

Had Livni maintained the same security-oriented stance she held back then, she would discover that the Shin Bet actually did publish a response to the ban. It turns out that the Shin Bet expressed doubts about banning the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement. In fact, the Shin Bet believed that doing so will only lead to more unrest among Israel’s Arab citizens. This is not a new position. It was presented to the government in 2014, when the Shin Bet wrote that “there is no intelligence that connects the Islamic Movement to real violent activity,” and that it opposes banning the group. Netanyahu, Livni, Herzog and others didn’t seem to care. Yair Lapid did not disappoint and praised the move.

Jewish Home vs. the IDF

The same phenomenon continued and reached the Israeli street. Over the last few days, as the violence in the West Bank has continued to flare up, and protests have begun to take place primarily in refugee camps, the same voices could be heard from the benches of the government. But there is no real need to give a stage to the extreme remarks by government ministers about what is happening in the West Bank. We must give the right to respond to the representatives of the “oppositional right” of Herzog-Livni-Lapid, and only after that give the IDF a chance to respond.


The ‘opposition’ – Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni of the Zionist Union – fully supports the government’s hardline position. Photo, 2014, Flash90.

The representatives of the Zionist Union have already proposed it all. Herzog has already proposed that Netanyahu’s coalition put the West Bank on lockdown, place all the Palestinian neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem under closure, and consider calling up a large number of reserve soldiers. Chairman of the Council of Judea and Samaria (Yesha Council) Avi Ro’e, saw eye to eye with Herzog, stating that the opposition head would “do a much better job at dealing with Palestinian terror.”

As opposed to the hawkish views of Herzog, Netanyahu, Livni, Shaked, Lapid, Regev, Bennett and others, the IDF Central Command provided a different perspective. The commander of the Central Command stated that the terror attacks are not the result of institutionalized incitement or work of a terrorist organization, but rather part of a “limited uprising… and the attacks are inspired by other attacks, not by a centralized leadership… the terrorists are young, desperate, and frustrated, some of them are unemployed.”

Moti Yogev, Jewish Home, believes that stating military truths is ‘irresponsible’

 

 

 

According to Central Command, the violence can be stopped through easing restrictions: “economic relief, including providing more permits to work inside Israel, providing building permits in Area C, releasing prisoners, and approving the supply of weapons to the Palestinian Authority.” The government’s disdain for the IDF recommendations was difficult to hide. MK Moti Yogev (Jewish Home) toed the line of his friends from the right, stating that the army’s assessments were, put simply, “irresponsible.”

The swan song?

It is difficult to belittle the phenomenon we see before our eyes. It is also difficult to write these things, when considering the military’s involvement in our daily lives — an organization that deals with security, that has a clear preference for men, that excludes Arab citizens and is seen by many of them as the enemy for fighting their brothers — is a process that Israeli civil society must limit, not to mention refrain from celebrating.

The latest phenomenon reveals that both the army and the security establishment know that while the gut thinking of people like Netanyahu and Herzog might win elections, it is not good for the citizens of Israel. Palestinians live under occupation, and there is nobody who knows this better than the power that occupies them: the commanders of the Central Command, which has been in control of the West Bank since 1967. They know that Palestinians in Al-Fawar refugee camp are desperate and frustrated.


Israeli soldiers on look-out at the site where an Israeli was run over by a vehicle and killed when he got out of his car on a West Bank road near the Al-Fawar refugee camp, south of Hebron, after Palestinians threw stones towards it, the army said on October 20, 2015. Details of the incident were unclear, including why the man stopped and got out, and whether any stones had actually struck his car. AFP caption, photo by Hazem Bader/ AFP

We are also coming to terms with the political shallowness in which we are living: an extreme right-wing government that wins the support of the “opposition” for every violent step it takes, even if the price is rejecting assessments by state security experts. These are members of Knesset who think only of the next primaries, of how to give the public what it wants, as long as it is viewed as “relevant.” In reality, this translates to thinking of solutions that promote Netanyahu’s theory of living by the sword.

Perhaps this is the swan song. No one can promise that this kind of thinking will not eventually permeate the IDF. Perhaps soon the army will not abide solely by security-based thinking — which in itself is limited and limiting — but will start taking cues from the legislative and executive branches of the government.

Forget for a moment about stopping the attacks, forget about granting freedom to a nation we have been controlling for nearly 50 years. What’s really important is whether the candidate will be viewed as more nationalist than the nationalists. The recipe is simple, and the dish is being cooked up daily in the Israeli political kitchen: for everything Netanyahu says, say something even more extreme. And whenever the army says something, just oppose it and say that the security establishment is wrong and misleading the public.

Woe to us that we are resigned to put our trust in human rights, clearheaded thinking, and restraint in the hands of an army. An organization that is, first and foremost, dedicated to security. But as the Jewish sages said, “in a place where there are no men, strive to be a man.” And today, more than ever, it seems that both the opposition and coalition are bereft of decent people.

Yoni Mendel is the projects manager of the Mediterranean Unit at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, and co-editor of the book review section of the Journal of Levantine Studies (JLS).


Generals Split With Benjamin Netanyahu on Roots of Terror Wave

By J.J. Goldberg, Jewish Forward
November 03, 2015

Benjamin Netanyahu probably thinks he got the last laugh after the international uproar he touched off with his “Hitler didn’t want to exterminate the Jews” speech on October 20. But he just might have opened up a whole new can of worms.

The Israeli prime minister was bombarded with criticism by everyone from Knesset opposition leader Isaac Herzog to German Chancellor Angela Merkel over his claim that the extermination idea was first proposed to Hitler by the Palestinian leader Haj Amin al-Husseini, the grand mufti of Jerusalem. The critics all said it was a historical untruth, a distortion of the Holocaust and a diminishment of the evil of Nazism. Merkel went as far as to rebuke Netanyahu and insist that Germans, not someone else, bore responsibility for the Holocaust.

Netanyahu, it turned out, was quick to concede the main point. He never meant to suggest that Hitler wasn’t responsible for the Holocaust, he said the next day. A week later he conceded further that the genocide idea hadn’t come from the mufti. He said he merely wanted to point out that Husseini, a founding father of Palestinian nationalism, was an enthusiastic accomplice of Hitler’s and that genocidal, Nazi-style anti-Semitism was the primary motivating force in his opposition to Zionism. And that today’s Palestinian leadership continues to revere Husseini and his legacy.

And with that, the subject was more or less closed. Critics around the world, it seems, were satisfied that Netanyahu understood the magnitude of Hitler’s crime. All he was really trying to say was that Palestinian nationalism traces its roots to genocidal anti-Semitism. And to world opinion such an imputation apparently isn’t a problem. So Netanyahu came out a winner from the seeming embarrassment. He discredited the current Palestinian leadership under Mahmoud Abbas as being politically descended from those who admired genocide. A good day’s work.

Coincidentally or not, however, voices have been raised in a most unlikely corner to insist that Palestinian hostility to Israel — including Palestinian terrorist violence — is at least partly a response to Israeli actions and policies, and not simply a deep-seated hatred of Jews. That corner is the Israel Defense Forces.

In the days after Netanyahu’s speech, two active-duty IDF generals who are among the army’s top experts on Palestinian affairs spoke out publicly to state that Palestinian violence is driven to a considerable degree by anger at Israeli actions. One of the two went a step further, warning that only a serious Israeli diplomatic re-engagement with the Palestinians will help to quell such violence over the long term.

This might seem like more of the same-old, same-old that we’ve been hearing for several years now: questioning of Netanyahu’s policies by senior figures in the Israeli defense establishment. But it’s not. This is something new.

Up to now, almost all public pushback from the security community has come from retired ex-service chiefs who are now private citizens and free to speak their minds. Their unanimity may well tell us something important about Israeli defense doctrine, as I’ve argued before. And indeed, many of them remain in close touch and intimately involved as reservists in current military and intelligence activity.

But there’s a difference when active-duty generals speak out. IDF generals — unlike, say, Israeli cabinet ministers — are not free to spout off publicly with opinions that contradict their immediate bosses. When they do speak out, therefore, their views can be assumed to reflect those of the IDF command. Accordingly, for a high-ranking, active-duty general to voice a view that’s at odds with strongly held views of the prime minister is nothing less than shocking, because it’s the voice of the IDF. And that’s what has started happening now.

Some of the motivation of the Palestinians to carry out terror attacks is due to the violence of right-wing elements in the West Bank,” Maj.Gen. Alon [L] told a court

 

 

The first general to speak out was Major General Nitzan Alon,  [L] currently chief of the General Staff Operations Directorate.  He  moved up last May after nearly a decade as commander of  Israel’s military presence in the West Bank — first as  commander of the Judea-Samaria Division, then as chief of  Central Command. Alon testified on October 22 in a trial  involving two settlers accused of incitement for publishing the Kahanist-leaning Jewish Voice website.

“Some of the motivation of the Palestinians to carry out terror attacks is due to the violence of right-wing elements in the West Bank,” Alon told the court, according to Haaretz and numerous other news sources.

“In my understanding there are many reasons for Palestinian violence, some of them related to the murderous behavior of the terrorists, some related to religious and nationalistic motives, and a certain part, not the main part, that is related to revenge activity due to the activity of Israelis against Palestinians,” Alon was quoted as saying.

He also said that “a significant part of Israeli violence against Palestinians stems from Palestinian violence against Israelis. Some of the incidents are revenge for terror or violence.” In other words, we are witnessing what’s known in the West — much to the displeasure of the Israeli and pro-Israel right — as a cycle of violence.

The second general to cause waves was Brigadier General Guy Goldstein, deputy chief of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories. That’s the IDF unit in charge of maintaining relations between the military, as legal sovereign in the territories (under Israeli law, the territories aren’t annexed to Israel but rather are held by the army), and Palestinian civil authorities.

Speaking October 28 at an academic conference in Netanya on rehabilitation of Gaza, Goldstein said that the wave of Palestinian terrorist violence plaguing Israel would not disappear — though it might rise and fall in intensity — “unless there is some significant change, partly if not mostly on the diplomatic front.”

“What Israel is facing is not a wave of escalation,” Goldstein was quoted as saying. “but a confrontation that is expected to continue if not intensify and bring changes in the Palestinian arena. Even if there’s a certain calming in terrorism and disturbances, without a diplomatic process all the conditions for a continuation of the confrontation will remain and are expected to erupt again. The central challenge: the ability of the Palestinian Authority to control the confrontation. Over time the risk grows that it will lose control and stability will be undermined.”

Of the two generals’ comments, Goldstein’s caused the greater public uproar. As deputy chief of the Coordinator’s office, he can only say what his bosses say — his immediate superior, chief coordinator Major General Yoav “Paulie” Mordechai, and above him the chief of staff, Lieutenant General Gadi Eizenkot.

What Goldstein did was to give the public a rare peek at what the military and intelligence chiefs are telling the prime minister and the cabinet in closed sessions. Now we know exactly what the Netanyahu government is hearing from the people whom it pays to read and understand the events on the ground. Hearing — yet ignoring.

Rephrased in plain English (the comments above are my translation from Goldstein’s Hebrew), Goldstein is saying that force alone, the government’s current response to the unrest, will not bring calm. And by implication, that there are diplomatic options — viable options from the standpoint of Israeli security as the army reads it — that the government is choosing not to pursue.

But while Goldstein’s comments are more sweeping, Nitzan Alon’s may be more telling, if only because they signal the return one of the IDF’s fastest rising stars to the public eye for a moment. During his long tenure as the IDF’s chief face to the West Bank, he was enormously unpopular among the settlers. He was considered a leftist, hostile to the settlers, overly sympathetic to Palestinian rights. They grumbled, correctly, that his wife, Mor Nitzan, was active in the left-wing women’s peace group Machsom Watch. Settler activists occasionally held protest demonstrations outside his home.

When he was promoted from commander of the Judea-Samaria Division to chief of Central Command in December 2011 by then-chief of staff Benny Gantz, it evoked howls of protest. Commentators on the Israeli right viewed it, again correctly, as something of a declaration of independence, if not downright defiance, by Gantz, who had become chief of staff the previous February.

Gantz had been a compromise appointee, chosen after the army’s recommendation for chief of staff, Gadi Eizenkot, was vetoed by Netanyahu and then-defense minister Ehud Barak, and their own favorite was then disqualified over a minor real estate scandal. In appointing Alon, Gantz was laying down an early marker that he was part of the IDF consensus.

Last February Eizenkot, now 55, became chief of staff. In May he appointed Alon, 50, to be chief of operations, one of the top positions at General Staff headquarters. Alon is one of several young up-and-comers being groomed for the top spot in the next round or two. The other top name being talked about is Aviv Kochavi, 51, currently chief of Northern Command and previously chief of military intelligence — and chief of operations before that. What they all share is a reading of Israel’s security situation that’s at odds with the Likud consensus.

That reading starts with the knowledge, which they experience daily and share with the government, that cooperation between the IDF and the Palestinian security services under Mahmoud Abbas’s command continues unabated. And that Abbas is doing his best to calm the current unrest. They know from their daily contact with their Palestinian counterparts that the steady diet of insults hurled at Abbas by Israel’s political leaders — from accusations of incitement to implications of Nazism — weakens him and makes their job harder.

They know that the Palestinian security services, from the leadership on down, cooperate with Israeli security in the hope and expectation that it will lead to Palestinian independence. And that removal of that hope — as Netanyahu seemed to do when he told a Knesset committee on October 26 that Israel needs to maintain full control of the territory “for the foreseeable future” — will lead to a breakdown of cooperation and threaten Israeli security.

Nobody but the most paranoid conspiracy theorists thinks the Israeli military would ever consider disobeying the orders of Israel’s democratically elected civilian government. But neither are its leaders planning to ignore the realities on the ground and pretend black is white and up is down in order to feed someone else’s fantasies. And as things on the ground get more and more out of hand, they’re less and less inclined to keep the facts secret.

 

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