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The IDF's Slippery Moral SlopeSunday 09 Feb 2003
author: Neve Gordon
summary
Following the lecture, the soldiers contested my analysis concerning
IDF leadership.
they argued that the IDF’s primary objective is to protect
Israeli citizens, and in order to accomplish this goal it must, at times,
violate human rights and international law.
Published in In These Times, January 31, www.inthesetimes.com
Jerusalem: Following my last military reserve duty, I was kicked out of
my unit, the Israeli Defense Force’s (IDF) educational corps.
There was a surrealistic dimension to the whole experience. I had
driven a few hours to a base located near the Egyptian border after having
been asked to lecture about “Leadership” to 60 soldiers of the Givati
infantry brigade who were about to begin officers’ training course.
These young men are the military’s future commanders, its elite.
I decided to concentrate, in the lecture’s first part, on the
relationship between leadership and moral virtue, examining the characteristics
distinguishing leaders such as Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot from others
like Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King. In the
discussion that followed, the soldiers concluded that all of the leaders
mentioned possessed charisma, intelligence, and rhetorical skills, but
only the latter three were guided by universal moral values -- the
equality of all people.
The second part of the presentation focused on leadership within the
IDF. My main contention was that so long as the occupation of
Palestinian territories continues, the Israeli military will not produce worthy
leaders. The argument was mainly structural, namely that within the
context of the occupation even the most humane officers would find
themselves trampling human dignity. To substantiate my claim I offered several
examples in which IDF soldiers committed war crimes in the Gaza Strip,
an area well known to my audience.
Following the lecture, the soldiers contested my analysis concerning
IDF leadership, raising two major objections.
First they argued that the IDF’s primary objective is to protect
Israeli citizens, and in order to accomplish this goal it must, at times,
violate human rights and international law.
“In order to save lives in Tel-Aviv, I have to detain Palestinians at a
checkpoint,” one soldier exclaimed, and then added: “If, for example,
in the process an infant dies because of delayed access to a hospital,
then so be it.” When I asked if the same rationale applied to two,
three, or more babies, he replied in the affirmative, without batting an
eye.
The soldiers then went on to claim that the “IDF is the most moral army
in the world.” While several thought this to be axiomatic, others felt
it necessary to offer evidence.
“Several months ago we entered a refugee camp to apprehend a ‘wanted’
Palestinian,” one said. “We could have ordered a helicopter to bomb the
house where the suspect was hiding, but we decided that the platoon
would enter the camp despite possible risk to our soldiers; we did not
want to harm innocent people,” he explained.
Other soldiers also presented examples to show how on numerous
occasions the IDF could have employed more brutal means, but refrained from
doing so in order to minimize the number of innocent Palestinians
casualties. Theirs was the voice of the military establishment, and while these
two arguments are powerful, both suffer from a common fallacy of moral
relativism.
Regarding the logic underlying the first claim -- the hypothetical
death of the child at the checkpoint -- Jewish political philosopher Hannah
Arendt once said that when the end justifies the means, then everything
is permitted. And indeed, during the past two years we have seen the
dangerous and devastating implications of a moral position that lacks an
anchor.
It began with the unremitting curfews, followed by reports of babies
dying at checkpoints and snipers shooting children. This was just the
beginning; the military continued its moral slide as soldiers demolished
homes with their residents still inside, and Israeli pilots bombed
populated buildings located in town centers.
The soldiers’ second claim suffers from a similar error of moral
relativism, simply because there is no limit to human cruelty, and it will
always be possible to argue that the IDF could have behaved more brutally
in a given situation.
The soldier who detained a sick woman for seven hours at the checkpoint
could have beaten her and prevented her from passing through at all;
yet this in no way justifies a seven-hour delay. The pilot who dropped
the one-ton bomb on the populated houses, killing nine children, could
have destroyed an entire neighborhood, but the “mercy” he showed does
not in any way make his act moral.
The chain of events since the outbreak of the second Intifada suggests
that the IDF has employed more and more force against a primarily
civilian population, and that every action is justified by comparing it to
more brutal actions the IDF could, theoretically, have carried out.
In the absence of a universal moral approach -- whereby there are
things that one simply does not do, regardless -- one is left with a tribal
or relativistic worldview. Here the right to human dignity is
contingent on national, ethnic, or religious affiliation, rather than on
membership of the human species.
Because the IDF has rejected the notion that human beings are created
equal, every young commander who follows its codes will inevitably slide
down the slippery moral slope. And as the soldiers themselves seemed to
understand at the outset of the lecture, universal moral values are
what distinguish corrupt from worthy leaders -- an axiom that must be
applied to the IDF too.
Neve Gordon teaches politics at Ben-Gurion University and is a
contributor to The Other Israel: Voices of Refusal and Dissent (New Press
2002). He can be reached at ngordon@bgumail.bgu.ac.il