Has the IDF Become the Army of Chelm?

Has the IDF Become the Army of Chelm?

by Lee Kaplan
Arutz Sheva http://www.israelnationalnews.com/article.php3?id=6216
May 07, 2006

I've written before about the lunacy going on in Israel, or as my Israeli friends and people there I interview all say, "Israel is confused."

Now, another example of Israel as the Village of Chelm emerges with the suspension of Sergeant Hananel Dayan by his brigade commander for refusing to shake the hand of Lt. General Dan Halutz at a ceremony where Dayan, and fellow fighters, were being honored as outstanding soldiers. Dayan, who had relatives forcibly evicted from Gush Katif, adhered to military protocol and saluted the good general, but he refused to shake his hand out of personal annoyance over the Gaza Disengagement.

Dayan was making a personal statement, but not outside army regulations.

In some fairness to General Halutz, as a military leader he must carry out orders given him by civilian politicians, the political leadership in Chelm. But at the same time, Dayan, as an Israeli soldier, also should have some rights of personal expression without being suspended. Israel certainly extends those rights to the leftists and college radicals in the army that make up the so-called "refuseniks". Had Dayan been one of the one-tenth of one percent of a speck of dust that composes the Israeli army "refuseniks", instead of an outstanding soldier, he'd probably have been treated better for expressing himself.

Dayan has laid his life on the line for Israel. But then again, nowadays an Israeli soldier is just a cipher, a tool for political policy, even if it includes deporting Jews from their homes for the sake of Arabs.

The common soldiers and border policemen have become nothing but political playthings for a leadership that affords them no consideration and allows them to be treated like fools. The International Solidarity Movement this June will hold "training sessions" all over the United States for college students and old dried-out American leftist radicals to go to Judea and Samaria and interfere with the IDF. One of their instructions are that if an IDF soldier in a closed military zone orders them to leave, they should demand to see his orders in writing. Another is to photocopy their passport, so that if a soldier requests it, they can run away after handing over the copy while the Arabs distract him. Still another is if an Arab throws a rock at an Israeli soldier, they are to block the soldier's view so the Arab can get away. If the Arab is caught, then they are to demand to be arrested with the Ar ab and refuse to leave jail (as foreigners, they know they'll be let out soon) unless the Arab stone thrower is released with you. Then, you can start all over again.

The ISM activists know the Israeli soldiers act responsibly and with respect, which is why they don't fear them. But they tell everyone over here in America that soldiers use Arab children for target practice like a sport, rape Arab women, demolish homes for no reason at all and that every armed terrorist or suicide bomber they kill was an unarmed civilian. One ISM report once even claimed that an IDF soldier defecated into an Arab's refrigerator.

The IDF captain who was supervising weapons tunnel demolitions when ISM anarchist Rachel Corrie (that's right, she was an American anarchist, not a "peace activist") was killed recounted in an interview how that day the ISM activists were standing in front of tanks and motioning with their hands to their chests and yelling, "Shoot me! Shoot me!" The army should have grabbed them all and, as we say in the US, hauled them off to the hoosegow for a long, long time.

But no, the IDF even allowed one of them who was in the country under a false identity after being banned for ten years to be a "witness" against the Bedouin marksman Idier Wahid Taysir who shot ISM anarchist Tom Hurndall. That "witness" is running all over the USA now claiming he and Hurndall were in Rafah that day because an IDF tank, a part of an armored brigade like the one Dayan was just suspended from, was "machine-gunning children" for no reason at all. The "witness" Joseph Smith, renamed Joseph Carr to enter Israel, tells a tale over here how Hurndall antagonized the IDF soldiers in their bunker before he was shot because he "wanted to be in the middle of the action," but then was shot "rescuing some children from the line of fire." I'll bet.

Summer is approaching and the ISM is gearing up again to harass the IDF and border police. Maybe the IDF this time can concern itself more with getting the shlemiels in the government to ban the ISM and declare it an illegal organization - as it fronts for Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Al-Aksa Martyrs Brigades, by its own leadership's admission - than whether a sergeant expressed his personal animus about the Disengagement of his family. Unlike Sgt. Dayan, ISM leaders would no doubt shake Halutz's hand, but then hold onto it while some terrorist plunged a knife into the general's back. Meanwhile, Dayan, the outstanding soldier, would be away on suspension, unable to stop it.

Israel, we have an expression here in the US: "Get a grip." Before it's too late.

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