Even the former Israeli army chief deserves some mercy – after ethnic cleansing statement
A woman carries the body of her child killed during an Israeli strike on the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza on 4 December 2024
Gideon Levy writes in in Haaretz on 5 December 2024:
Hatred for Benjamin Netanyahu works wonders. It drives people crazy. Its effect is like alchemy, turning people responsible for war crimes into opponents of war crimes. Nevertheless, they should be welcomed, whatever their motives. Anyone who suddenly discovers the truth about what Israel is doing to the Palestinians and dares to publicly denounce it is making an important contribution to the desperate struggle against apartheid and the occupation.
Even Moshe Ya’alon should be lauded for his remarks about ethnic cleansing in the northern Gaza Strip. When the former chief of staff and defense minister, the ultimate hawk, talks about ethnic cleansing, it is sensational. He cannot easily be dismissed as a traitor, but the propaganda machine is already doing so.
But Israel doesn’t need them: Even President Isaac Herzog and opposition chairman Yair Lapid were trotted out to insist there is no expulsion underway in Gaza. Ethnic cleansing? What are you talking about?
In fact, hundreds of thousands of people are being forced into endless convoys of displaced persons and ministers declare that they will never return to their homes, which have been systematically destroyed, anyway – but there is no ethnic cleansing. Blood is water and the ruins are a mirage.
Whether it is because he has nothing to lose politically, because his disgust of Netanyahu has driven him crazy or because he is genuinely shocked by what is happening in Gaza, Ya’alon’s brief act of bravery only went halfway.
He quickly clarified that he was not accusing the military of ethnic cleansing. Ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich and right-wing activist Daniella Weiss are the guilty parties. Expulsion belongs to them, not the military.
He even wrote that “the government has the right to decide to evacuate Arabs from Gaza and settle it with Jews.” Ya’alon is the last of the old boys, whose values have not changed: the government has the right to commit crimes against humanity.
That is how it is for someone whose career was founded on war crimes and violations of international law. A man who was commander of the Judea and Samaria Division and head of the military’s Central Command – roles whose purpose is to preserve and strengthen an occupation that is criminal at its core – and later the chief of staff and minister of defense of an occupation army cannot free himself from his past.
That doesn’t change even when he dares to say that “the IDF is not the most moral army today.” Suddenly, the IDF has dropped in Ya’alon’s moral rankings. But that means it was the most moral until Smotrich and Ben-Gvir came along and changed it. What a shame.
A displaced Palestinian woman carries her cat from Beit Lahia to Jabalya in Gaza, on 4 December 2024
In 2015, when Ya’alon was defense minister, he banned the activities of the NGO Breaking the Silence in the military. It means that soldiers were no longer allowed to hear accounts of war crimes from their peers. The road from there to ethnic cleansing is a short one. Ya’alon, who admits that ethnic cleansing exists, blames the extreme right. No, Ya’alon, the military is not innocent. Not for a moment.
The Smotriches are pushing it, but the military is cheerfully carrying it out, without hesitation, without question, orders that are unethical. But this isn’t just the case today or yesterday. It occurred under Yaalon’s command in 2002’s Operation Defensive Shield, and both before and after that.
It is true that the scope of the crimes this time has risen to levels unprecedented since at least the first Nakba. But the moral essence, which holds that we are allowed to do anything to the Palestinians, is the same. Ya’alon did anything to them even without Smotrich, and the military did anything to them before Netanyahu.
You can no longer claim that there is no way to separate the responsibility of the civilian leadership from the military. This is a refuge for people who foolishly lie to themselves and others. When soldiers routinely abuse innocent Palestinians in Hebron, as was revealed in a recent B’Tselem report, and military commanders allow this, the entire military bears responsibility, not just Smotrich. And who is carrying out the expulsion that Ya’alon discovered? Soldiers.
God is merciful to those who repent. Ya’alon owned up to a little of the guilt and denied more, and therefore, he will be forgiven a little. His hands will remain stained with the blood of the occupation, unless he musters the courage to understand that nothing started with Smotrich.
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