Israel Matzav: The IDF's witch hunt

The IDF's witch hunt

I'm back in Israel, still jet lagged but hopefully the Sabbath will take care of that. On top of everything else, my replacement flight from London arrived nearly two hours late, which was why I did not post last night.

The IDF has embarked on a witch hunt against combat soldiers who express support for settlers revenants. The witch hunt follows an incident last month in which IDF soldiers from the Shimshon Brigade raised signs supporting the expelled Jews of Homesh at the Brigade's swearing in ceremony.

An act of insubordination was thwarted at the last minute in the Kfir Brigade's training base on Thursday when commanders discovered a sign reading "Kfir does not expel Jews" drying in the sun, moments before soldiers planned to hang it from a nearby building.

The sign was the third prepared by soldiers from the Kfir Brigade. Earlier this week, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu warned that insubordination in the IDF was a threat to all of Israeli society.

On Monday, four soldiers hung a banner reading "Nahshon also does not expel" from the roof of a building at their base to protest the razing of two illegal structures near the Negohot settlement. Two of the soldiers were sentenced to 20 and 14 days in the brig, respectively, while two others were sentenced to four-week confinement.

Insubordination means refusing to follow orders and ought not to affect freedom of speech.

The IDF is concerned that these signs represent a 'new trend.' Apparently, it is concerned that the next time the IDF is ordered to expel revenants, many soldiers will refuse to play along. The real question is why these signs are being displayed in the IDF and not in Israeli society in general. Are we all asleep?

The picture at the top is of IDF soldier Avi Bieber (who made aliya from the same town in the US as I did) who was sentenced to the maximum prison sentence for refusing to follow an order to expel Jews from Gaza. For those who say "he ought to have been sentenced because you have to follow orders in the army," please consider that the IDF has a rule that one is forbidden to follow patently illegal orders. Was the order to expel Jews 'illegal'? The courts have concluded that they were not, but a lot of people here feel that there's room for debate on that issue.

Israel Matzav: The IDF's witch hunt