It seems to me that the army needs to take a much more robust position when it comes to the creeping religious fundamentalization of the army. The fact that kibbutznik officer cadre is being replaced by the kippa serga officer cadre is no reason to pander to the increasing extremism of the national religious camp. If we want our army to be the people's army then there are several sensitivities to weigh up – the need to integrate women into the army, the need to maintain a status quo that maximizes the number of people who feel not only comfortable with the army but familiar with its values, the need to balance what may be offensive to some but what is important for others. Right now – that balance is swinging worryingly in favor of the extremist elements of Jewish society. If we are to maintain a people's army, that obeys the orders of its officers who in turn obey the orders of the civilian politicians (unless those orders are patently illegal) – there is no room for those who only obey orders that are approved first by Rabbis, there is no room for those who will not attend a ceremony that they are ordered to attend where women will be singing, there is no room for those who will not take orders from a female officer or receive instruction from a female trainer. The only framework for anything close to this are the charedi units that cater specifically for charedim, but even that is a thin line – and was only created to try and include a part of society that had hitherto remained isolated, ignorant and untrained in anything. It cannot be used as a basis for creating an alternative army. There is no real need to create "kippa seruga units" – they do not need special inclusion, there is no greater need to ensure their inclusion in society. The army needs to create a set of basic principles and anyone who is unable to keep them, should be prohibited from joining the army with all that that carries with it.
In the long run, the army will be doing itself a favour. No one is indispensable and a new officer cadre will emerge and it won't be one that will threaten to disobey orders that its self appointed prophets claim their God has forbidden.

The Tamil Tigers and Hama

We learned today that an anonymous UN report has blamed the Sri Lankan government of killing 10's of 1000's of civilians through indiscriminate shelling in the final phase of its war against the Tamil Tigers. Anyone remember that particular war? Will anyone remember this particular report (within less than 12 hours, it's already been relegated off the front page of the BBC News website; you'd have to look up S.Asian news to find anything on it)? Well, apparently this particular war took place between January and May 2009. Strange, if you think that Israel's Cast Lead Operation (war, if you like, massacre if you are so inclined) took place in December 2008 and January 2009 - lot's of TV coverage, UN resolutions and a very high profile UN report commissioned by the UN Human Rights Council. Funnily enough, the Beeb tells us that the chances of this new report being adopted by the UNHRC are remote, since it has many friends and allies (you know, Bahrain, Qatar, Russia, Cuba, Pakistan and China - oh and Libya (whose current membership is suspended (at least until the noise dies down)). Reminds me of another parallel in time - anyone who knows anything about the middle-east knows that Sabra and Shatila was a terrible massacre of Palestinians in Lebanon in 1982 for which Israel was responsible - people tend to forget it wasn't actually the Israelis that carried out the killing of between 700 and 3,500 people - but you know what? it was bad and Israel had a moral responsibility to prevent the attack. There were mass demonstrations in Israel afterwards and a national commission of enquiry that lead to Ariel Sharon resigning from government. What our journeyman liberal middle-east experts are only now starting to hear about, albeit tangentially, is that in the same year Hafiz Al Assad of Syria flattened on entire quarter of one of Syria's major cities following an uprising by the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria. He killed between 10,000-50,000 people. Who knew? Just might help explain something of why Syria traditionally scores higher than Israel in international popularity surveys.

The Arab Spring - The End of Hypocrisy?

If the Arab League, the OIC and Turkey just admitted that what troubles them about Israel is not its policies on a Palestinian State or its actions against Palestinians, but the fact of Israel's existence, then at least there would be some honesty in their indignation over certain acts or policies of the Israeli government. But their fury is framed in terms of their horror at Israeli actions in Gaza and the West Bank (or Lebanon during the last war), and that is ridiculous nonsense. If only the liberal west had screamed "Hypocrites" as loud as the screams from the Arab street today, then perhaps something of the current awfulness could have been avoided. But the condemnation by the Arab world was accepted with great understanding and seriousness by the west.

By framing their condemnation of Israel in terms of human rights abuses, the Arab League, Turkey and the OIC used a tool that resonated with western democracies and more particularly with journeyman liberals (that is, for future reference, those who believe that if someone had been given half an hour in a room with Hitler, they could have made him see the error of his ways, or in today's currency - those who think that if the West just treated Ahmadinejad with a little more respect and understanding, he wouldn't be quite so nasty, or to put it a third way, those who keep being surprised by acts of vicious suppression by their working class heroes in Caracas and Tehran). But while every now and again small side-bar news stories illustrate the hypocrisy of those that condemn Israel at every turn, I wonder whether, recent events in Syria (and much of the Arab world this 2011), have generated enough heat and energy to sear a permanent realization of the hypocrisy of the Arab world into the minds of thinking people. The fact that the eyes of Human Rights Watch (among others) were focused almost exclusively on Israel, was not because there was nothing to report from much of the Arab world, but because nothing could be reported! I have not heard a whisper from that honest broker of the Middle East, Recep Tayyip Ergodan, about what is happening every day in Syria, but he's certainly not lost his voice on Israel (I believe it was just last week that he condemned Israel when 12 Palestinians were killed by Israel following Gazan bombardment of Israel, and where the majority of those killed (by Palestinian admission) were fighters and the others killed were in close proximity to the shells which hit the combatants). The Arab League, an organization renowned as containing some of the world's greatest human rights advocates, have remained deafeningly silent in the face of the massacres in Syria (and Bahrain and Yemen for that matter). Why? Because their regimes depend upon the freedom to suppress their peoples when and how they wish, and action and condemnation will only emanate from that organization when the game is already up (Egypt) or where they believe it will not constitute a precedent (Libya). And let's not forget Amr Musa - former Egyptian foreign minister (to Hosni Mubarak), current head of the Arab League, and the man seeking the mandate from the people of Egypt to lead his native land, who proudly tells anyone who will listen of this wonderful new spirit coursing through the veins of the Arab world - that same spirit he has played so active a part of suppressing for all of his political life. I believe I mentioned hypocrisy.

so Laura Booth (sister of Cherie Blair) tells us that the humanitarian crisis in Gaza is "on the scale of Darfur", she also received an "honourary Palestinian passport" from Ismail Haniya. Without getting into the patent nonsense of her comment (and I'm not going to even try to justify Israel here, that's not my point), it still amazes me how much hatred against Israel certain parts of the liberal left hold towards Israel. How much hatred must you feel, to see an impoverished society in which there are power-cuts and fuel rationing brought on by an Israeli blockade and be convinced that the situation is comparable to African killing fields in which 100's of thousands of civilians have been deliberatagely displaced and 10's if not 100's of thousands of others been murdered? How much hatred must you feel when you feel a snug kinship with the leader of an organization that disagrees with you on almost everything you hold dear (civil rights, human rights, womens' rights, workers' rights, political rights, education of children etc.), and which embraces the very leadership of the country which has caused and is continuing the terrible abuses in the same Darfur with which you compare Gaza , for the simple reason that on one single point you agree with him - his visceral hatred of Israel? Israel is a nation which basically adheres to almost all of the most basic principles of the liberal left, and yet is reviled, ostensibly because of its treatment of the Palestinians. Maybe I could buy this, if the liberal left treated all human rights abuses equally (China, Russia, Syria, Lebanon, Hizbolla, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Lybia, Venezeula, etc.) or at least showed the same level of compassionate excusing to Israel (it's a conflict that requires difficult choices, extremists on both sides make moving forward difficult etc.) that it shows to the Palestinians (how can they be expected to respect traditional rights, when they are afforded none), but the treatment is so one-sided, so distorted, so deeply unfair, that there has to be some other reason. I find it so hard to believe that the roots are in anti-semitism, but maybe just maybe that's what it is. Maybe there is another process at work here, but I just don't know what it is. So far, anti-semitism would appear to be the only candidate and that seems almost comical. Maybe that's why the arguments against Israel are so complex and convaluted - maybe it's the only way to dissumulate what is really quite an embarrassing motivation.

and one other thing - So Desmond Tutu tells the UN HRC that Israel's shelling of Beit Hanun back in 2006 in which 2006 civilians were killed may have constituted a war crime. Awful as this was, it cannot be that the mere fact that a lot of civilians are killed in an attack in itself constitutes a war crime (and i'm not getting into legal definitions). If we really take the view that armies must do everything to keep civilan casualties to a minimum, then those who subscribe to this rule will ultimately lose every war. Yes civilian casualties should be avoided, but the considerations must be measured and not absolute and where they are not the result of reckless or wilful disregard, this cannot be a war crime. War crimes must be limited to the very worst of acts. If they are not, the concept is cheapened and the worst regimes in the world will ultimately prevail.

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