Lang artikkel i Haaretz 15. april, der en religiøs IDF-soldat bli intervjuet om sine opplevelser i Gaza under krigen der. Han forteller om dilemmaer og utskeielser.
Tydelig peker han på den rollen og de oppfordringer såkalte "IDF-rabbinere" formidler om oppførsel under kampene.
Hvordan soldatene stjeler i private hus i Gaza, og brenner de etterpå blir formidlet.
Som sagt, lang artikkel.
Men den gir skremmende innsikt.
HELE intervjuet nederst under Kilde.
Skudeneshavn 17. april 2024
Jan Marton Jensen
På Twitter:
17. april 2024
https://twitter.com/janmarton/status/1780653242898121027
Kilde:
15. april 2024
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-04-15/ty-article-magazine/.premium/resisting-the-ecstasy-of-war-gaza-through-the-eyes-of-religious-leftist-israeli-soldiers/0000018e-ce86-d283-a5ee-fe9ff47e0000?lts=1713370216541
HELE artikkelen i Haaretz 15. april 2024
David Issacharoff
15. april 2024
Resisting the 'Ecstasy of War': Gaza Through the Eyes of Religious, Left-wing Israeli Soldiers
For religious left-wingers, the moral complexity surrounding their
military orders created a unique battle within them during their time as
reservists in Gaza – especially when witnessing 'disgraceful acts' that
contradict Jewish values.
Of
the 11 discussion groups held at a conference organized by religious
left-wing Israelis in Jerusalem this February, only one required advance
registration and was conducted behind closed doors.
Thirteen
religious reservists who served either in Gaza, on the Lebanese border
or in the West Bank came from all over the country to the Faithful Left
confab, in the hope that someone would listen to them. The meeting
attracted participants who wouldn't consider themselves on the political
left: There were also mainstream religious Zionists, including
settlers, and one ultra-Orthodox Jew. The moral complexity accompanying
their military duties had stirred a unique battle within them.
It's possible that the event was the first organized "combatants' circle" of the Israel-Hamas war
that was not under the direct oversight of the Israeli army. It was led
by Ariel Schwartz, a 30-year-old social worker and lawyer from
Jerusalem who completed several months of reserve duty on the Lebanese
border as an artilleryman. He knew on October 7 that he would enlist as the country faced "a sense of existential threat."
"I'm glad I was called up to the north this time," says the veteran of the 2014 Gaza war, "because things are clearer there and you're not within a civilian population."
Schwartz comes from a right-wing, religious Zionist (what Americans
would call Modern Orthodox) family in the political heartland of
extremist ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich. He studied at
Yeshivat Otniel in the South Hebron Hills in the West Bank, and during
his compulsory service, in settlements, he questioned his absolute power
over Palestinian civilians.
He
says that led him to become politically active on the left. Today, as a
social worker, he spends his days in Jerusalem hotels filled with evacuees from Israel's north and south who were displaced following the events of October 7.
He
describes feeling alone during the war. "On the one hand," he says,
"friends on the far left didn't enlist. And on the other hand, I heard
right-wingers say that 'no one is innocent' [in Gaza] and justified
expulsion and total destruction."
He says he saw reservists armed with pamphlets from extremist rabbis
such as Yigal Levinstein and Zvi Tau, distributed by rabbis in uniform
sent by the Israel Defense Forces' department of Jewish education.
War
"shouldn't be treated as a 'mistake' or 'error' that we would prefer to
avoid. War is a great thing," Levinstein wrote. These words echoed what
an IDF rabbi, Amichai Friedman,
said a month after the Israeli military response to the Hamas massacre
began: "I imagine in these days there are no murdered people, no
hostages and no wounded. And then, I am left with perhaps the happiest
month of my life."
Schwartz
shared that on the front lines, rabbis in IDF uniforms came to lecture
the soldiers. "Once, a rabbi from Kiryat Arba in the West Bank said we
need to destroy and shoot everyone, and that the IDF's [rules of
engagement] ethics are a 'distorted Western morality.'"
 |
Social worker and IDF reservist Ariel Schwartz.Credit: Olivier Fitoussi |
Asked
about these incidents, the IDF spokesperson said: "The statements
mentioned do not align with the values of the IDF, its commands and
strict guidelines on the matter. If it is indeed confirmed that such
events occurred, the issue will be investigated and addressed
accordingly."
Schwartz
felt what he describes as a complete and painful theft: "They take away
from me what is precious to me, my faith, and direct it against me,"
adding that he "witnessed people feeling joy about this war."
Calls to "restore Jewish honor" through intense military action weren't only heard among rabbis or far-right politicians. On October
7, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised to "avenge" Hamas and was
quoted on social media citing the biblical verse "God, to whom
vengeance belongs." Days after the ground invasion of Gaza at the end of
October, in a letter to soldiers, Netanyahu invoked a biblical
commandment for Israelites to decimate their nemesis: "
Remember what Amalek did to you."
The
main question that arose in the combatants' circle, Schwartz says, was:
"How can we maintain our image as Jews, who want to be ethical in the
battlefield, when we are ordered otherwise?"
"We
as religious people know what Amalek means," the reservist says. But
"we are religious people who believe that our morality requires a
different ethical stance, to restrain the war instead of fueling it."
Late at night on his iPhone, Schwartz wrote an essay titled "There are no lights in war: we need a different religious language,"
in which he detailed how ethical conduct during war is "at the heart of
Jewish tradition." He quoted Jewish rabbis and scholars like David
Cohen ("HaNazir"), the foremost student of Religious Zionism titan Rabbi
Abraham Isaac Kook, who wrote: "War is the plague of affliction of
humanity … in all the generations ever," and that fighting it is
possible only after humanity's "enslavement to the evil inclination."
After
publishing the article on Yashar, an online journal for Orthodox
thought, Schwartz recounts that religious soldiers who read the text
thanked him for managing to encapsulate their thoughts.
Dilemmas over military orders
The Faithful Left movement
emerged about 18 months ago as a collective response from left-wing
intellectuals, rabbis and activists to the establishment of the
far-right, religious Netanyahu government, including Smotrich and
Ben-Gvir's Jewish supremacists and Haredi parties.
When
the organizers began to arrange the second conference this February,
they knew there would need to be a space for soldiers and reservists who
had just returned from the front.
"The
talk was very intense and moving," Schwartz recalls. "We all felt a
sense of loneliness. People had dilemmas about military orders and also
questions related to the purpose of the war." For most, he says, it was
unclear if they were even advancing the war's declared goals of
"destroying Hamas" and returning evacuees to their homes.
He
asked not share with Haaretz or publish any of the testimonies from
that Faithful Left meeting. The main question that arose, he says, was:
How can we maintain our image as Jews, who want to be ethical in the
battlefield, when we are ordered otherwise? He adds that the combatants'
circle was a discussion about "what our role is in society – like the
1967 one [following the Six-Day War], which had a significant impact on
the day after."
 |
Graffitied Hebrew writing on a destroyed building in Gaza earlier this year: "Eyal was here."Credit: Olivier Fitoussi |
Indeed, the concept of combatants' circles is integral to the Israeli left, kibbutznik ethos, exemplified in the book "The Seventh Day: Soldiers' Reflections on the Six-Day War,"
where soldiers gave raw testimonies of what they witnessed and did in
June 1967. Haaretz revealed in 2002 that, ironically, the testimonies of
religious soldiers were excluded due to their positive view of war and
occupation, a decision the editor justified as "moral."
"The
arrogance of the yeshiva students seemed to us … power-drunk … with
messianic rhetoric, ethnocentric … apocalyptic and, in a word, inhumane.
Also not Jewish," wrote Amos Oz, one of the book's prominent editors.
The six censored soldiers became central figures in the educational and
settlement enterprise, three of them establishing the extremist Gush
Emunim settler movement.
Indeed, the concept of combatants' circles is integral to the Israeli left, kibbutznik ethos, exemplified in the book "The Seventh Day: Soldiers' Reflections on the Six-Day War,"
where soldiers gave raw testimonies of what they witnessed and did in
June 1967. Haaretz revealed in 2002 that, ironically, the testimonies of
religious soldiers were excluded due to their positive view of war and
occupation, a decision the editor justified as "moral."
"The
arrogance of the yeshiva students seemed to us … power-drunk … with
messianic rhetoric, ethnocentric … apocalyptic and, in a word, inhumane.
Also not Jewish," wrote Amos Oz, one of the book's prominent editors.
The six censored soldiers became central figures in the educational and
settlement enterprise, three of them establishing the extremist Gush
Emunim settler movement.
Indeed, the concept of combatants' circles is integral to the Israeli left, kibbutznik ethos, exemplified in the book "The Seventh Day: Soldiers' Reflections on the Six-Day War,"
where soldiers gave raw testimonies of what they witnessed and did in
June 1967. Haaretz revealed in 2002 that, ironically, the testimonies of
religious soldiers were excluded due to their positive view of war and
occupation, a decision the editor justified as "moral."
"The
arrogance of the yeshiva students seemed to us … power-drunk … with
messianic rhetoric, ethnocentric … apocalyptic and, in a word, inhumane.
Also not Jewish," wrote Amos Oz, one of the book's prominent editors.
The six censored soldiers became central figures in the educational and
settlement enterprise, three of them establishing the extremist Gush
Emunim settler movement.
Now,
57 years after the Six-Day War, Schwartz finds himself "30 years old,
and fighting in my second war." So, he says, "I want to create a
solution."
'I never thought I'd be in this situation'
This
was A.'s first war. He grew up in West Bank settlements and in central
Israel, and studied in national-Haredi schools – a sect that represents a
strict interpretation of religious Zionism that sanctifies the Land of
Israel. He also studied at a religious Zionist yeshiva prior to the IDF.
He is in his late twenties, married and studying for his master's
degree. He enlisted because he too felt the need to protect his country
from an existential threat. But October 7 was also personal for A.: Very
close family members were kidnapped by Hamas and taken to the Gaza Strip.
He served for over two months in Gaza. He says he saw the experience of
fighting through a conflicted prism of "human sensitivity," noting that
many people experienced the same feelings. "The fact that I define
myself as left-wing does not mean people who aren't lefties didn't feel
it," he says. He did not attend the combatants' circle in Jerusalem.
A
couple of weeks into the fighting in Gaza, A. and his team moved into
local people's homes. "It was surreal," he says. "Everything is still
there, including their pictures. It was the house they lived in, and we
used it." When a house becomes a space that is occupied by the IDF, the
soldiers leave behind "intelligence markings" – and therefore "there are
instructions not to leave the house as we found it."
"So we burned houses," A. says. "It disgusted me."
 |
Religious soldiers carrying a Torah scroll while serving in Gaza during the war (illustrative).Credit: Olivier Fitoussi |
"It
felt difficult using other people's things, like the sofa and the
refrigerator," he adds. "It was also complicated by people taking things
home. They often took misbaha prayer beads. I have
to mention my officer positively: he is a staunch right-wing settler who
opposed looting. It disgusted me that others took other people's
property, knowing that they would burn the house... And you have no one
to argue with. It's Gaza. Everyone does whatever they want."
Sometimes,
he recalls, "we drove over graveyards – and I tried to avoid it. They
found a central tunnel underneath one and said there were hostages
there. That infuriated me more, thinking of Hamas, who knew it would
cause people to desecrate graves."
A.
recalls an encounter with a terrorist, which was also his first
encounter with death in Gaza. "Even if it's silly to say it, there is
the honor of the dead. And we leave them there, since there are orders
not to approach them for fear that the body has an explosive device on
it. And all I feared was that I'd accidentally run him over with the
tank after he was killed."
"I never thought I'd be in this situation," he admits.
What
is the role of religion in all of this, in a war we did not enter as a
religious one, even if we are fighting against a murderous group using
religious ideas?
Yagil LevyA
few weeks later, he found himself in southern Gaza – in a completely
new situation: face-to-face with civilians, mostly refugees. Before
that, the army said "the people we saw were Hamas spotters. This time,
they were just civilians," A. recounts.
"We
took over an area that was very important to Hamas, and we discovered
that there were hundreds of civilians there. We fired shells at the
place and, fortunately, we fired ones that are not designed to blow up
behind walls… I made sure I could see the civilians to make sure they
weren't approaching us. I wanted to see it. It broke my heart.
"After we took control of the area, we had to send refugees further
south in the middle of the night," he continues. "Only then did I see
the extent of the destruction. I saw elderly women bent over with canes,
and children, and disabled people, and I felt bad in my heart. I didn't
feel like we were trying to be cruel to them. An officer who knew
Arabic tried to explain the situation to them. It was not a political
situation but a terrible one for everyone, and we tried our best. But it
was cruel to see them going to the unknown.
"On
the first day, a friend of mine from the crew, who is very right-wing,
was angry that I gave [the Gazans] water and bread. On the second day,
he broke down and gave out bread and water too.
"And
then we occupied a house again. But this time, there were people
physically there and we had to kick them out. When we saw their
belongings, their food and water, that they lived here just a second ago
– at this point people started to break down."
 |
IDF
soldiers with an Israeli flag that states "Nitsanit, we have returned,"
referring to the settlement in northern Gaza that was evacuated in 2005.Credit: Olivier Fitoussi |
However, A. says, as they were now in the homes of more affluent Gazans, there was even more looting.
'Cut the bullshit'
A.
says he couldn't bear listening to military rabbis preaching that "we
need to kill everyone," because it angered him so much "that they
supposedly represent our religion." He describes seeing IDF rabbis in
Gaza in an ecstatic state, and understood that for many people, the
mission went far beyond defending Israel. "Rather, it was the joy of war
for them."
However,
A. says his commanders spoke against looting or burning down houses in
cases where it wasn't necessary. He did not feel an inherent conflict
between the orders he received and his religious values. "I felt I was
listened to. I discovered that it was difficult for right-wingers too,"
he notes.
Gaza,
A. says, "gives you a different perspective: you realize how people
live there, and how they lived before. You feel empathy and compassion
for people because of the lack of water or basic means of existence, but
also anger and hatred. It does leave a mark on the soldiers. Some deny
it, others acknowledge it."
During a notorious "Return to Gaza" conference
in late January in which far-right government ministers, joined by
thousands of Israeli civilians, called to resettle Jews in the Strip, A.
was on the ground in Gaza. He had no idea that extremist politicians
were causing international uproar with their promise to reoccupy the
land.
 |
Attendees at the "Return to Gaza" conference in Jerusalem. calling for Israel to resettle the Gaza Strip.Credit: Ronen Zvulun/Reuters |
A. says this was never a stated goal of the war from his commanders.
"When we arrived at a deserted settlement [that was evacuated
unilaterally by Israel in 2005] and saw its synagogue and town hall, it
seemed like an illusion that Jews had once lived here. Some soldiers
talked about returning. At the command level, they mainly spoke about
aiming for a better hostage deal with Hamas – though that never
happened. As long as it was about the hostages, it was easier for me.
"We felt we were representing Israelis and not the government, who
failed us," he adds. So, even if Netanyahu tweeted something, "that was
not what inspired us." When a military rabbi came to the unit, mentioned
Amalek and blew a shofar, "many people were cynical about it," A.
recounts. "We had guys in our platoon whose homes were under attack on
October 7. Our friends were killed in combat. Cut the bullshit."
Shifting tectonic plates
Open
University Prof. Yagil Levy is widely recognized as Israel's top
researcher on the impact of the IDF on Israeli society. He says that in
order to challenge religious Zionism from within, "you need even more
courage" than when confronting other parts of Israeli society.
Levy
believes the religious Zionist public, deeply entrenched in an internal
struggle for its narrative, is going to have to a reckoning following
the Gaza war. However, there is a long road ahead. "We really know
nothing" about the war's long-term effects, he says, adding that "it's
such a powerful experience that it shifts tectonic plates – and
therefore it cannot end with marginal debates in society."
 |
Prof. Yagil Levy.Credit: Hadas Parush |
Levy
chooses to focus on the feelings of isolation that for him characterize
the essence of ex-combat soldiers. Some reveal the moral complexities
of their service in the West Bank and Gaza through testimonies to the
anti-occupation Breaking the Silence organization.
"If it weren't for loneliness, there wouldn't be the Breaking the
Silence group and a critical mass of soldiers with a conscience code
influencing real-time orders," he argues.
He says there was a significant presence of young religious people in Breaking the Silence, people like Yehuda Shaul and Mikhael Manekin – the latter being one of the founders of the Faithful Left movement.
However, the lonely isolation is even more challenging for religious
soldiers. "It's deeper than that of a secular soldier," since religious
leftists must "dare to challenge the entire religious establishment"
and, in many cases, the educators and rabbis in their yeshivas. "It also
challenges the position of the religious IDF officer, which has become
the community's status symbol," says Levy. "It shows us what barriers
there are until an alternative movement forms among religious soldiers."
Levy says that contrary to its weak position in society, the
national-Haredi stream is very influential in the army and has used the
war to strengthen its hawkish positions. The so-called Hardalim
are eager to say "We told you so: This war proves that our ethos is
right, that we have warned for years against territorial concessions or
the impulse to accept [the notion of] 'innocent'" Palestinians, he
notes.
When a military rabbi came to the unit, mentioned Amalek and blew a
shofar, "many people were cynical about it," A. recounts. "We had guys
in our platoon whose homes were under attack on October 7. Our friends
were killed in combat. Cut the bullshit."
But
the professor also sees a potential backlash within the religious
community against the national-Haredi dominance. The biggest test for
the community, he says, is whether it manages to push back against these
extremist forces on the margins. These have become a dominant voice in
Israeli society, setting the tone even among secular IDF commanders
during the war.
"It's
not about an abstract 'debate' that develops on the righteousness of
the war, its logic and ethics," Levy says, since "we're aware of how
directives on the rules of engagement aren't upheld, and how shots are
fired at innocent people just because they're in an area they shouldn't
be in – alongside the disgraceful acts that contradict Jewish values,
like eating [someone else's] food without operational justification, or
destruction of property."
Breaking
the Silence is now embarking on the daunting task of collecting and
verifying soldiers' testimonies from Gaza, and it goes even further than
Levy. A spokesperson for the organization says that religious acts by
IDF soldiers in Gaza, such as placing mezuzahs on the homes of displaced
Palestinians or signs reading in Hebrew "Returning to Gaza," are not
acts stemming from "security" but are open, politically motivated
statements. The organization decries the senior military command for
"not even attempting to pretend it stops this."
The
spokesperson adds that this complacency only reinforces Israel's
"complete disregard" for Gaza, facilitated by a group of extremist
settlers who "see the disaster of October 7 as an opportunity to
entrench us all in perpetual occupation" of the Strip.
Schwartz,
A. and others illustrate an emerging alternative interpretation of
religious Zionism, amplified by the events of the Gaza war. This is why
Levy proposes that one of the most effective arenas for discussing these
traumatic experiences is precisely within combatants' circles. "You
don't have to be hard leftists," he says, "just people with basic
morals."
While
a secular soldier may struggle to morally interpret any traumatic
wartime experience, Levy believes religious soldiers can "filter" them
through ethical values.
He
suggests listening to the soldiers with a wider question in mind: "What
is the role of religion in all of this, in a war we did not enter as a
religious one, even if we are fighting against a murderous group [Hamas]
that uses religious ideas?"
 |
Destroyed buildings in the Gaza Strip as seen from southern Israel, last November.Credit: Leo Correa/AP |
A revolutionary struggle
Is
Israel actually fighting a religious war? The conscription of religious
language into the war, from the top of the government to rabbis in
uniform, shows how blurred the lines have become. And even if that
wasn't the stated aim of the war, one cannot deny how the religious
discourse was cited at the International Court of Justice,
with the South African indictment explicitly quoting
Biblically-inspired calls for revenge and destruction of Gaza and its
civilians.
"The more violent and the more you believe in war, the more authentic a
Jew you are; when you talk about peace, you become Westernized,"
Schwartz says of perceptions in his military milieu. "However, there are
prominent voices and rabbis in Jewish literature and thought that offer
a completely different view." Today, the establishment sees the Amalek
affair as one in which every Arab is guilty and no one is innocent, "as
the language that continues Jewish tradition." And then the Jewish
canon, Schwartz painfully says, turns into "semi-Hamas."
Many religious reservists, like Schwartz and A., enlisted to protect
their homes and families, and in the hope of freeing the more than 250
Israelis who were initially abducted to Gaza. They did not embark on a
journey of revenge and destruction. Their battle, when they return to
their old lives, is twofold: against the religious community that
rejects peace, and against the leftist camp that rejects faith.
The struggle of religious leftists is perhaps the most revolutionary one
in Israel today, as it reveals the complexity of Jewish power, and
demands an answer to it. After 75 years of independence, including five
decades of occupation, Israel doesn't know what to do with its power
over the land: Whether to strengthen it at the expense of repressing
millions of Palestinians, who will never be deterred and will resist
violently; to use it for restraint; to create a horizon for peace or any
reality that deviates from the present one.
They have an opportunity to offer a genuine alternative to
Israeli-Jewish supremacy – exactly because they use religious language
to debunk and expose the lie of a religious far-right ideology. They
could be the only effective challengers to the idea that Israel's
existence can only be interpreted as an oppressive apartheid regime,
paving a new route away from war, death and never-ending pain.
