Israel’s military leaders are not ‘only obeying orders.’ They could have stopped the Gaza massacre
Palestinians gather at a food distribution point in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza on 21 May 2025
Gideon Levy writes in Haaretz on 22 May 2025:
The Israel Defense Forces has killed thousands of children and babies in the Gaza Strip. Whether as a hobby or purposefully, as a profession, or whether intentionally or by mistake, the IDF is an army responsible for the mass killing of children, women and the elderly, and no one in the world can deny this.
Thus, one should be grateful to Yair Golan, the leader of Israel’s Democrats party, for the truth he expressed, even though this truth should have been plainly evident. The outcries he elicited, from opposition leader Yair Lapid to extremist right-wing Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, only attested to the fact that truth itself has become a controversial issue in Israel.
However, in the wake of the commotion, former IDF general Golan, a supposedly courageous and honest man, rushed to convene a press conference to “explain” his self-evident statement, thereby burying part of the truth he had exposed and burying the courage he had demonstrated. Golan hurried to absolve the army of any blame. Once a general always a general; once a leftist Zionist always a leftist Zionist: Golan’s heart and integrity only reach as far as pinning responsibility on the government. Blaming the army for killing children was beyond his capabilities. He is not a true leftist leader. Any hope for that, if it ever existed, was dispelled.
“I want to make myself clear. My criticism is not directed at the army in any way. I repeat: my criticism was addressed to the government, not the IDF,” said Golan at the press conference, and the sacred cow remained undefiled. In contrast to the right, which has long mustered the courage to assail the army and defile its repugnant sanctity, the left is not there. It still believes in generals. The left teems with generals and is suffused with the army’s sanctity.
The thousands of Gazan children who died were killed by the government. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with his “holy cannon,” Defense Minister Israel Katz in the cockpit of an F-35I, Transportation Minister Miri Regev operating a suicide drone, Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar in an attack helicopter and Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi in a mobile artillery vehicle. They bombed those children mercilessly. According to Golan, only they are to blame. The pilots’ hands are clean, as are the hands of the artillerymen. Even the hands of the general staff are as pure as the virgin snow. This is a cowardly deception. It also exhibits a high-handed attitude towards the IDF, turning it into an army of robotic and zombies soldiers, who only carry out government orders automatically.
No, Yair Golan. The children of Gaza were killed by your colleagues and friends, the soldiers and the pilots. They are the ones committing these crimes. They’ve been doing this for 19 months with no show of insubordination, some of them with obvious enthusiasm, others with blind obedience. They may be only subcontractors carrying out the mission – and it’s doubtful that this is the situation – but their hands are covered in blood. They cannot be absolved of the blame.
Without the IDF, the massacre in Gaza would not have taken place, even if the government wanted it to. The combat orders for this operation include war crimes, formulated by the army as part of its objectives. It wasn’t National Missions Minister Orit Strock who determined that “concentrating and moving the population” was one of the operation’s missions. Regional Cooperation Minister David Amsalem is not Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir, who boasted that “we will continue until we break Hamas’ fighting abilities,” when the enemy’s fighting abilities have long been vanquished. The IDF is operating against walking skeletons, moving among the ruins.
The government bears the responsibility and the blame, which are unforgivable. But absolving the military just because of a lack of courage to tell the truth? Only because your friends are killing children? Only because the goal of toppling Netanyahu overshadows everything in your view?
One cannot claim that the army is only obeying orders and that the chief of staff is only a cog in the machine. The chief of staff and the air force commander are not cogs. Neither are the people under their command.
They are the ones leading the campaign aimed at destroying the Gaza Strip and they could stop it, if they thought a black flag was flying over this campaign. They are waging a criminal and purposeless war against the remnants of Gaza’s population, which has no safe place to turn to. Exonerating them of culpability is cowardly or mendacious, or both of these.
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