[RACooper]

Well since the Guardian got hacked on... let's try the Jerusalem Post shall we?

The army has lost its way
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satelli...175447&apage=1


Nov. 27, 2004 19:50 | Updated Nov. 27, 2004 20:04
By NOGA TARNOPOLSKY

It's been a long, bad haul for Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Moshe Ya'alon, who one can imagine getting home at the end of these endless days and wondering what the hell has gone wrong.

Last week ended with newspapers publishing side-by-side photographs of former chief of staff Rafael Eitan's Tel Adashim funeral and the image of a young Palestinian man playing the violin at an IDF checkpoint. The connection?

The connection is the question that naturally arises from this juxtaposition: Who among us, really, has been taken by the sea?

Eitan, a man almost universally described as wrought of steel and indestructible, was finally vanquished by a storm that swept him off an Ashdod breakfront. The images of a young violinist playing not for pleasure but out of the fear wrought by an armed military man ordering him to play invariably provoked the question, as stated lightly but clearly by right-wing Army Radio commentator Uri Orbach: "Um, what about Majdanek?"

Is a soldier incapable of asking a potentially suspicious Palestinian to open his violin case, remove the instrument, and display it in such a way that its non-explosive status can be determined without undue and historically disconcerting humiliation?

The predictable IDF response to such incidents, dull and invariable as the winter rain, is that the soldiers face difficult situations at the checkpoints – a fact itself true, but by now banal, and entirely irrelevant.

We know it is difficult at the checkpoints; we also know it is the soldiers' jobs to face that difficulty with honor, not in disgrace. It is their commanders' responsibility to ensure that they are adequately prepared for the task.

Of course, however disturbing the images, an IDF checkpoint is not Majdanek, and much worse things can happen in life than being obliged to play the violin.

For example, death can happen. Ask the family of 13-year-old Iman el-Hams, who was shot and killed while on her way to school by IDF soldiers at another checkpoint.

Iman el-Hams wasn't just shot to death, either. After being scared half to death by ricocheting bullets flying mere centimeters from her and after falling to the ground in fear, after actually being hit, Iman had an entire magazine – some 15 bullets—pumped into her by "Captain R," a Givati company commander, who, like the guys at the violin checkpoint near Nablus, but worse, seems to have allowed his mind to be swept out to sea.

The case of Iman el-Hams is almost paralyzing. Her death occurred on October 5. Captain R, who should have gone home and awaited his trial, instead spun a web of lies around his soldiers' and his own behavior, ensnaring even his own all-too-gullible commanders.

Gullible? Perhaps. Arrogant, egocentric, bigheaded and uncaring sounds more like it.

Can it be that Ya'alon and his commanders' attitudes can be summed up as "a little girl dead, another day at the office?"

All the excuses heard are, at best, irrelevant. The head of IDF intelligence interviewed on Army Radio insisted, once again, that the soldiers have a difficult time at the checkpoints. Well, thanks for enlightening us.

It was the media – Ilana Dayan's investigative program, Fact – and not the IDF who "discovered" the audio tapes that incriminated Captain R and proved his malfeasance. The IDF investigation, it almost goes without saying, accepted R's version of the events.

In the tapes, R. says, "I confirmed the kill." Another soldier caught on tape says, "She's a little girl, maybe 10, and then, in a chilling choice of phrase, "she's scared to death."

"I confirmed the kill," repeats the criminal captain.

IDF officers don't lie, a friend of mine in officer training was told many years ago. Is that a description, an order, or a hope? he asked himself.

Ya'alon seems to have been dragged out as deep into the sea as all the others. He bought R's cover-up of the murder of a minor – hook, line and sinker – and has not apologized for repeating the lie to the Knesset when questioned.

An officer or a gentleman would have apologized. In another era, this scandal might have brought about a resignation. It would have been a convincing indication that for the IDF, the death of an innocent child on the way to school, not by faulty fire but by the "confirmed kill" of an officer, is not a matter to be taken lightly.

Instead, Ya'alon did what any third-rate celebrity would do: He blamed the media. "The tape was badly edited," our chief of staff whimpered.

What the hell has gone wrong?