[News] Religious Extremists Rising Through the Ranks - An IDF Jihad?

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://www.counterpunch.org/cook02042009.html

February 4, 2009


Religious Extremists Rising Through the Ranks


An IDF Jihad?

By JONATHAN COOK

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, say 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 crush 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.”

Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in 
Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are “Israel 
and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and 
the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) 
and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments 
in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is 
<http://www.jkcook.net>www.jkcook.net.

A version of this article originally appeared in 
The National 
(<http://www.thenational.ae>www.thenational.ae), published in Abu Dhabi.




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