Israels Forsvarsstyrker er onde, og de begår krigsforbrydelser hele tiden, part II

I går kiggede jeg på Politikens sidste dødssejler og problemerne med dens indhold og forfatteren. Idag er det tid til at se på bagmanden bag hele historien. For de af os der ikke har læst gårsdagens artikel er historien kort, at Politiken er hoppet med på en medie-hypet historie om at israelske soldater skulle have myrdet løs i Gaza. Substansen i historien viste sig at være to soldater fra en venstredrejet skole, der fortalte rygter videre.

Har man læst gårsdagens indlæg har man formentlig ikke engang bidt mærke i historiens bagmand. I Politikens artikel optræder han nemlig kun i én sætning, sådan lidt henkastet:

Forstanderen for skolen, Danny Zamir, siger til Haaretz, at han »er chokeret over soldaternes udsagn«.

Hvem er Danny Zamir så? Jo, ud over at han er forstander for skolen hvor soldaterne var kaldt sammen til en gang gruppe-terapi, så har han også en noget kedelig fortid på den israelske venstrefløj.

Til at starte med kan man stille sig skeptisk over for hans "chok" over soldaternes "udsagn". Israel National News har således gravet lidt og fundet ud af at han allerede kort efter Gaza-krigens slutning propagerede dens frygtelighed, dengang også i digtform:

It was the justest of wars, the leaders said with serious faces
It was the justest of wars, the wounded soldiers mumbled
It was the justest of wars, the parents thought as they watched the flickering screens It was the justest of wars, and in Gaza they piled the corpses of dead children atop each other.

Digtet fandt INN på en hjemmeside der - passende nok - hedder "På venstre side". Lidt længere tilbage kan Herb Keinon i Jerusalem Post bidrage med følgende detaljer:

Zamir himself appears in a 2004 book titled Refusnik, Israel's Soldiers of Conscience, compiled and edited by Peretz Kidron, with a forward by Susan Sontag. The book, which earned commendation from no less a personage than Noam Chomsky (Noam Chomsky er en mand der siden 1960erne har skabt sig et navn ved at angribe alt, der bare smager af positivt ved den vestlige verden - Henrik), includes a section by Zamir, described as "an officer in the reserves from Kibbutz Ayelet Hashahar who was sentenced to 28 days for refusal to serve in Nablus and now heads the Kibbutz Movement's preparatory seminary for youngsters ahead of their induction in the army."

Seminariet er selvfølgelig den ultra-sekulære skole, hvor hans elever samledes for at fortælle rygter, hvorefter han lækkede dem til den venstredrejede israelske avis Haaretz. Irael National News har lidt flere detaljer om hans fængselsdom under den første arabisk-palæstinensiske intifada:

...Zamir....was court martialled and jailed in 1990 for refusing to provide security, as a reserve officer, for a ceremony in which a Torah scroll was donated to Joseph’s Tomb in Shechem.

Shechem er det oprindelige, hebraiske navn for en by der idag er omgivet af den arabiske bosættelse Nablus, og her ligger den jødiske helligdom Josefs Gravmæle. Den Josef der er tale om vil kristne måske huske som knægten der blev solgt som slave af sine brødre, kom til Egypten, og der spåede Faraoh at der ville komme syv fede og syv magre år.

Hvis vi vender tilbage til Herb Keinon i Jerusalem Post, så har han uddrag af Zamir´s udgydelser til sit forsvar for sin lydighedsnægtelse:

"Accordingly, collaboration with a regime or government that forces or orders me to be part of an anti-democratic apparatus that leads to self-destruction, disintegration and national decay, along with the utter denial of its own foundations, is illegitimate, unjust and immoral, and will remain so as long as the state does not take one of only two feasible actions: annexation of all or most of the territories conquered in 1967 and granting full civil rights to those residing there; or withdrawal from densely populated areas and a settlement that will release us of responsibility for the residents of those areas, who will chose for themselves whatever regime they desire (of course with security arrangements included)."

That was what Zamir wrote in 1990, reprinted in 2004. The testimonies of the soldiers that he brought to the public's attention seem to corroborate - what a coincidence - his thesis.

Det er nu ikke den store tilfældighed. Hvad der generelt i pressen refereres til som et "møde" eller enddog "gruppeterapi" lader mere til at have været en lejlighed for Zamir til at presse de historier han gad høre ud af sine tidligere elever. Dem han ikke gad høre blev der ikke lavet store overskrifter ud af. En mindre kontrovers mellem Zamir og piloten "Gideon":

Zamir: "Among the pilots, is there also talk or thoughts of remorse? For example, I was terribly surprised by the enthusiasm surrounding the killing of the Gaza traffic police on the first day of the operation: They took out 180 traffic cops. As a pilot, I would have questioned that."

Gideon: "There are two parts to this. Tactically speaking, you call them 'police.' In any case, they are armed and belong to Hamas ... During better times, they take Fatah people and throw them off the roofs and see what happens.

"Gideon" hentyder til et tilfælde, hvor Hamas´"politifolk" kastede en mand fra Fatah ud fra en 15 etager høj bygning, så han blev knust mod fortovet neden for bygningen. Video af mordet kan ses her. Andre gange kom det til længere diskussioner, hvis eks-eleverne ikke fulgte parti-linien, her soldaten "Yossi":

Yossi: "I am a platoon sergeant in an operations company of the Paratroops Brigade. We were in a house and discovered a family inside that wasn't supposed to be there. We assembled them all in the basement, posted two guards at all times and made sure they didn't make any trouble. Gradually, the emotional distance between us broke down - we had cigarettes with them, we drank coffee with them, we talked about the meaning of life and the fighting in Gaza. After very many conversations the owner of the house, a man of 70-plus, was saying it's good we are in Gaza and it's good that the IDF is doing what it is doing.

"The next day we sent the owner of the house and his son, a man of 40 or 50, for questioning. The day after that, we received an answer: We found out that both are political activists in Hamas. That was a little annoying - that they tell you how fine it is that you're here and good for you and blah-blah-blah, and then you find out that they were lying to your face the whole time.

"What annoyed me was that in the end, after we understood that the members of this family weren't exactly our good friends and they pretty much deserved to be forcibly ejected from there, my platoon commander suggested that when we left the house, we should clean up all the stuff, pick up and collect all the garbage in bags, sweep and wash the floor, fold up the blankets we used, make a pile of the mattresses and put them back on the beds."

Zamir: "What do you mean? Didn't every IDF unit that left a house do that?"

Yossi: "No. Not at all. On the contrary: In most of the houses graffiti was left behind and things like that."

Zamir: "That's simply behaving like animals."

Yossi: "You aren't supposed to be concentrating on folding blankets when you're being shot at."

Zamir: "I haven't heard all that much about you being shot at. It's not that I'm complaining, but if you've spent a week in a home, clean up your filth." ...

Yossi: "There was one day when a Katyusha, a Grad, landed in Be'er Sheva and a mother and her baby were moderately to seriously injured. They were neighbors of one of my soldiers. We heard the whole story on the radio, and he didn't take it lightly - that his neighbors were seriously hurt. So the guy was a bit antsy, and you can understand him. To tell a person like that, 'Come on, let's wash the floor of the house of a political activist in Hamas, who has just fired a Katyusha at your neighbors that has amputated one of their legs' - this isn't easy to do, especially if you don't agree with it at all. When my platoon commander said, 'Okay, tell everyone to fold up blankets and pile up mattresses,' it wasn't easy for me to take. There was lot of shouting. In the end I was convinced and realized it really was the right thing to do. Today I appreciate and even admire him, the platoon commander, for what happened there.

In the end I don't think that any army, the Syrian army, the Afghani army, would wash the floor of its enemy's houses, and it certainly wouldn't fold blankets and put them back in the closets."

Zamir: "I think it would be important for parents to sit here and hear this discussion. I think it would be an instructive discussion, and also very dismaying and depressing. You are describing an army with very low value norms, that's the truth.."

....og så kommer motivationen for hele balladen:

"It is quite possible that Hamas and the Syrian army would behave differently from me. The point is that we aren't Hamas and we aren't the Syrian army or the Egyptian army, and if clerics are anointing us with oil and sticking holy books in our hands, and if the soldiers in these units aren't representative of the whole spectrum in the Jewish people, but rather of certain segments of the population - what are we expecting? To whom are we complaining?

Der er altså tale om simpel brødnid, al den tid at Zamirs med-kibbutznikker ikke længere kan dominere de væbnede styrker så meget som de har gjort før. Som Israel National News kunne rapportere fra udnævnelses-ceremonien efter et officers-kursus i februar:

A senior officer present at the graduation ceremony, which took place on Tuesday in the Bahad-1 training camp in the Negev, said, “The religious are the kibbutzniks of today.” The reference was to the disproportionately high contribution made by kibbutz members to the IDF in the early decades of the State of Israel.

The fact that the religious comprise a high proportion of IDF officers is not new. Between 30-40% of graduates in recent officers’ courses have been religious - well more than twice as much as their proportion in the general population.

“The national-religious are replacing the kibbutzniks in the ranks of combat and command,” the officer said. “They learn at home the importance of sacrifice for the nation and of giving of themselves for the State.”

Hvad der er tale om er, at de sekulære israelere, som kibbutznikkere som Zamir hører til, i højere og højere grad søger til de grene af militæret der holder dem ude af frontlinien - forsyning, artilleri, efterretning, luftvåben og flåde, mens de national-religiøse vælger at træde ind i de huller de efterlader i kamp-enhederne.

Som sådan intet problem, da de sekulære for en stor dels vedkommende stadig sidder i chefstillingerne i forsvaret, men dette er truet af at de israelske forsvarsstyrker altid i meget stor grad har rekrutteret deres højere officerer fra kampenhederne - hvor de national-religiøse udgør en større og større del af de potentielle officers-emner.

Da man ikke bare sådan kan tvinge andelen af sekulære i kampenhederne i vejret må man altså gå en anden vej for at minimere antallet af de national-religiøse der kommer i topstillinger i militæret, nemlig ved på forhånd at miskreditere dem som officers-materiale.

En anden mulighed er at sørge for, at kampenhederne ikke får mulighed for at brillere, som for eksempel da den ultra-sekulære premierminister Ehud Olmert (der i sin tid som borgmester i Jerusalem lod araberne bygge titusindvis af illegale boliger i deres bosættelser) under krigen i Libanon i 2006 valgte at lade det sekulært-dominerede luftvåben gå i front. Det viste sig at være umuligt for luftvåbnet at stoppe strømmen af missiler fra Hezbollah i nord, så man i en panik-redning i sidste øjeblik istedet beordrede fuldstændigt uforberedte kamptropper in på landjorden.

Eller, sagt meget kort: motiveringen for det hele er simpel institutionel krigsførsel fra sekulær side.