Israel soldiers: Hell no, we won't go remove settlers

Posted By Thomas E. Ricks Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - 3:11 PM Share

The Israel Defense Forces are very different from the American military. A battalion hung a sign saying it would refuse to help remove settlers from the West Bank. Can you imagine an American brigade hanging a sign saying something like, "Hell no, we won't go to Bosnia" or "No More Iraq Deployments!"?

DAVID BUIMOVITCH/AFP/Getty Images

EXPLORE:ISRAEL/PALESTINE, MILITARY

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BILL KELLER

3:45 PM ET

November 17, 2009

How about flying a "Don't Tread on Me" flag...

just to prick the nose of the sovereign! Put it in the settlements, on the West Bank, in Gaza, southern Lebanon, ...,

IDF may have a different culture about what are the threats...obviously natives in occupied territories are not among them.

JMELLO

5:15 PM ET

November 17, 2009

Brother against brother?

Wouldn't this be more similar to the American military refusing to expel the Branch Davidians, or to use something fictional, like kicking Mormons out of Utah? Granted the West Bank is not "technically" part of Israel, but the point still stands. Americans are not fighting/expelling Americans in Iraq. We aren't asking our military to police American territories or to fight fellow citizens.

SMCI60652

5:15 PM ET

November 17, 2009

Provicialism

This entry reminds me of that line from King Henry:

One drop of blood drawn from thy country’s bosom, Should grieve thee more than streams of foreign gore:

It's disturbing how uprooting fellow Jews from what are CLEARLY illegal settlements is loathesome to some soldiers, and yet the same military remains virtually silent when even more odious acts are carried out against Palestinians.

ADMIRAL

9:58 PM ET

November 17, 2009

40 years of occupation

"IT CANNOT be denied: 40 years of occupation have changed the State of Israel beyond recognition.

That is obvious in all spheres of life. All of them have been contaminated.

18-year old youngsters, most of who have been brought up by decent parents as moral human beings, are drafted into the army, enter the brutal subculture of their units and receive an indoctrination that justifies every act of brutality against Arabs. Only a few rare individuals are able to withstand the pressure. After three years, the majority leave the army as tough men with blunted sensibilities. The brutality in our streets, the routine killings around the discotheques, the proliferation of rape and violence within the family - all these have undoubtedly been influenced by the day-to-day reality of the occupation. After all, it's the same people who are doing it.

For years now, the security services, the police and the army have been lying about events in the occupied territories. Lying has become routine. Few journalists in the world now accept these statements unquestioningly. And when lying becomes the norm in one sector, the mendacity doesn't stop there. The liars of the army, the police and the other services have gotten used to lying about other matters, too.

In the "territories", corruption has a ball. Military government officers take off their uniforms and get involved in shady businesses. Capitalist barons also profit from connections with them. Of course, this is not the only source of the corruption that has become a bane of the state, but it is surely a contributing factor.

THE OCCUPATION causes rot, which then penetrates all the pores of the national organism.

After 40 years, there is little similarity between the State of Israel as it is today and the state that the founders saw in their mind's eye: a model of social justice, equality and peace. The founders dreamed about a modern, enlightened, secular, liberal, socially progressive society with a flourishing economy benefiting all. Reality, as we known, has turned out very, very different."

Uri Avnery

OLDPILOT

10:07 PM ET

November 17, 2009

Never mind the Branch

Never mind the Branch Davidians or the hypothetical Mormons! It actually happened, when the 101st Airborne integrated Little Rock Central High School with M-1s at the ready. I would be very surprised if some at least of the troopers were radically opposed to what they were told to do. But they did it, God bless 'em. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

JSINAIKO

11:53 PM ET

November 17, 2009

Right!

Right! Same unit (or was it the 82nd) protecting African-Americans (actually just one) at Ole Miss.

JSINAIKO

11:45 PM ET

November 17, 2009

For what it is worth, an

For what it is worth, an Israeli friend writes me: "The protesting soldiers were in fact court martialed, received jail time and were demoted, and the incident was severely criticized by high-ranking officers all over the media."

So it isn't exactly as posted - they pulled the BS and they got [rightly] hit for it.

That said, this Jew agrees with Uri Avnery above. The IDF is in real trouble and as Steve Walt points out acts in ways that actually harm Israeli security.

DDREMEZ

9:38 AM ET

November 18, 2009

Israeli pundits are also aghast at the implications

Maariv’s Ofer Shelah claims (http://wp.me/pHlQV-3F) that fundamentalist preaching in the units, so useful in Gaza, is now boomeranging against IDF; recently retired IDF Major General Elazar Stern warns (http://wp.me/pHlQV-3u)in Yediot that the IDF “must not turn into the Phalangists”; and Yediot’s senior military analyst, Alex Fishman, asserts (http://wp.me/pHlQV-3i)that Israeli inaction against settler lawbreaking “is providing the rope that will be used as a noose for the [Israeli-Palestinian diplomatic] negotiations.”

CMEYERGO

5:44 PM ET

November 18, 2009

Squatters

The American people do not understand the problem because the Corporate media clouds the issue by using misleading English. They are not "settlers" the are "squatters." The American people would understand this issue if "reporters" would show some courage and report this fact. Now that Mr. Ricks is free from his corporate editors at the WashPost, can he muster the courage to now use the accurate term of squatters, to describe foreigners who move onto Arab land without permission?

STEVEH

5:09 PM ET

November 19, 2009

How about the Bonus Marchers?

How about the Bonus Marchers? The US Army moved on its own veterans.

TIMBERLAND

7:32 AM ET

December 11, 2009

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