Last weekend we were granted a fascinating and revealing account of what it was like to serve in the IDF during the 2014 Gaza War.
Naftali Gross and Rafael Wein gave moving accounts of patrolling the borders of Gaza, whilst working within the IDF’s ethical framework, which is in turn an expression of Jewish traditional values.
What is prominent throughout the evening was the idea of loving your enemies.
What other nation on earth would provide food, construction materials, electricity, medical aid and fuel to its enemies, knowing that that enemy will use those materials to advance their deadly cause against their provider?
Who would give medical assistance even as your enemies attack you and berate you for being there?
In aspiring to meet such lofty ideals the price is much personal sacrifice and loss.
Gross and Wein gave a personal, poignant and intimate testimony of their experiences. Their talk doesn’t cover the role of Dabla, the IDF ‘s international law department and how they sign off on every target card to ensure that it complies with the world’s laws of military conduct.
They don’t talk about the findings of the multinational High Level Military Group who reported to the UN that:
“In the air, on the front and at sea , Israel not only met a reasonable international standard of observance of the laws of armed conflict, but in many cases significantly exceeded that standard… A measure of the seriousness with which Israel took its moral duties and its responsibilities under the laws of armed conflict is that in some cases Israel’s scrupulous a dherence to the laws of war cost Israeli soldiers. and civilians their lives…”
No, they didn’t talk of these things, instead they gave a deeply personal memoir that has left an indelible impression in our souls.
A recording of their address can be downloaded from here: http://1drv.ms/1O2neQR
Interesting that this group wants to raise anti-racial awareness, overlooking the fact that they continue to turn Arabs into refugees. I lived next to and worked with amazing Palestinian women who were never allowed to return to their homes – the land had been confiscated and made into setllements for Israelis. I think Jews need to walk the talk before they start telling others about anti-racism.
@chubby41: No one is perfect but I think you will find that on Human Rights, Israel leads in this area when compared to its peers within the region. Do the ethnic minorities of Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Syria honestly think they are treated more fairly?
With regard to refugees: Every armed conflict of scale results in refugees. This is a tragedy. War results in displaced persons. On both sides.
We note that your comment doesn’t address the Jewish refugees created by the Middle Eastern conflict. Have you ever wondered why the Palestinians are the only multigenerational refugees of the 20th Century? What ever happened to the refugees of WW1, WW2, Vietnam, Korea, Serbo-Croatian and Wars? When you find out the reason why the Arab refugee problem persists after so many years then you will understand the key drivers behind the Middle Eastern conflict. Why do the Arab refugees in Gaza and the West Bank get their very own branch of the UN to manage their welfare? Why is there no discussion about the right of return for 100,000s of Jewish people who were expelled from Arab countries since 1948? Why? How did the world deal with other ethnic divides? What happened with the Greeks and the Turks? What happened with the Pakistanis and Indians? Why were these methods applied there and not in the Middle East? Why? Why do Arabs serve in the Knesset but no Jew serves in any Arab or Muslim government of the modern world? Why are there mosques in Israel but no synagogues in the West Bank or Gaza? Why does the question sound absurd? Why?
I applaud NZFOI for promoting and sponsoring the two Israeli students. We mostly hear just one side of the Israeli-Arab conflict, so it’s refreshing to hear another perspective from the two reservists. Israeli soldiers are often demonized by the world Press. This is not surprising, given that the media of the west has fallen victim over many years to a very clever Palestinian propaganda machine. Those two young men reminded us of a few facts that are often overlooked – that over 4,000 rockets were fired from Gaza into civilian areas in Israel; that Israel eventually had to respond by taking out the rocket launchers; that rockets were fired from schools and hospitals in Gaza; that Israel warned the residents of impending aerial strikes; that Hamas often prevented residents from leaving their homes on the point of death; that half of the ‘civilian’ deaths in Gaza were Hamas operatives; that a multinational panel of military generals found the Israeli Defense Force had acted far beyond what is considered reasonable to avoid civilian deaths.