NAZARETH // Extremist rabbis and their followers, bent on waging
holy war against the Palestinians, are taking over the Israeli army by stealth,
according to critics.
In a process one military historian has termed the rapid
“theologisation” of the Israeli army, there are now entire units of religious
combat soldiers, many of them based in West Bank settlements. They answer to
hardline rabbis who call for the establishment of a Greater Israel that includes
the occupied Palestinian territories.
Their influence in shaping the army’s goals and methods is
starting to be felt, said observers, as more and more graduates from officer
courses are also drawn from Israel’s religious extremist population.
“We have reached the point where a critical mass of religious
soldiers is trying to negotiate with the army about how and for what purpose
military force is employed on the battlefield,” said Yigal Levy, a political
sociologist at the Open University who has written several books on the Israeli
army.
The new atmosphere was evident in the “excessive force” used in
the recent Gaza operation, Dr Levy said. More than 1,300 Palestinians were
killed, a majority of them civilians, and thousands were injured as whole
neighbourhoods of Gaza were levelled.
“When soldiers, including secular ones, are imbued with
theological ideas, it makes them less sensitive to human rights or the suffering
of the other side.”
The greater role of extremist religious groups in the army came
to light last week when it emerged that the army rabbinate had handed out a
booklet to soldiers preparing for the recent 22-day Gaza offensive.
Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights group,
said the material contained messages “bordering on racist incitement against the
Palestinian people” and might have encouraged soldiers to ignore international
law.
The booklet quotes extensively from Shlomo Aviner, a far-right
rabbi who heads a religious seminary in the Muslim quarter of East Jerusalem. He
compares the Palestinians to the Philistines, the Biblical enemy of the Jews.
He advises: “When you show mercy to a cruel enemy, you are being
cruel to pure and honest soldiers … This is a war on murderers.” He also cites a
Biblical ban on “surrendering a single millimetre” of Greater Israel.
The booklet was approved by the army’s chief rabbi, Brig Gen
Avichai Ronsky, who is reportedly determined to improve the army’s “combat
values” after its failure to cush Hizbollah in Lebanon in 2006.
Gen Ronsky was appointed three years ago in a move designed,
according to the Israeli media, to placate hardline religious elements within
the army and the settler community.
Gen Ronsky, himself a settler in the West Bank community of
Itimar, near Nablus, is close to far-right groups. According to reports, he pays
regular visits to jailed members of Jewish terror groups; he has offered his
home to a settler who is under house arrest for wounding Palestinians; and he
has introduced senior officers to a small group of extremist settlers who live
among more than 150,000 Palestinians in Hebron.
He has also radically overhauled the rabbinate, which was
originally founded to offer religious services and ensure religious soldiers
were able to observe the sabbath and eat kosher meals in army canteens.
Over the past year the rabbinate has effectively taken over the
role of the army’s education corps through its Jewish Awareness Department,
which co-ordinates its activities with Elad, a settler organisation that is
active in East Jerusalem.
In October, the Haaretz newspaper quoted an unnamed senior
officer who accused the rabbinate of carrying out the religious and political
“brainwashing” of troops.
Dr Levy said the army rabbinate’s power was growing as the ranks
of religious soldiers swelled.
Breaking the Silence, a project run by soldiers seeking to expose
the army’s behaviour against Palestinians, said the booklet handed out to troops
in Gaza had originated among Hebron’s settlers.
“The document has been around since at least 2003,” said Mikhael
Manekin, 29, one of the group’s directors and himself religiously observant.
“But what is new is that the army has been effectively subcontracted to promote
the views of the extremist settlers to its soldiers.”
The power of the religious right in the army reflected wider
social trends inside Israel, Dr Levy said. He pointed out that the rural
cooperatives known as kibbutzim that were once home to Israel’s secular middle
classes and produced the bulk of its officer corps had been on the wane since
the early 1980s.
“The vacuum left by their gradual retreat from the army was
filled by religious youngsters and by the children of the settlements. They now
dominate in many branches of the army.”
According to figures cited in the Israeli media, more than
one-third of all Israel’s combat soldiers are religious, as are more than 40 per
cent of those graduating from officer courses.
The army has encouraged this trend by creating some two dozen
hesder yeshivas, seminaries in which youths can combine Biblical studies with
army service in separate religious units. Many of the yeshivas are based in the
West Bank, where students are educated by the settlements’ extremist rabbis.
Ehud Barak, the defence minister, has
rapidly expanded the programme, approving four yeshivas, three based in
settlements, last summer. Another 10 are reportedly awaiting his approval.
Mr Manekin, however, warned against blaming the violence
inflicted on Gaza’s civilians solely on the influence of religious extremists.
“The army is still run by the secular elites in Israel and they
have always been reckless with regard to the safety of civilians when they wage
war. Jewish nationalism that justifies Palestinian deaths is just as dangerous
as religious extremism.”
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