OPINION: Government malaise is trickling down to the military

Something very odd seems to be happening in Israel’s army, which, in case we should forget, is largely comprised of 18-21 year-old recruits thrust into making lightning-fast decisions, which are too often, sadly, literally life-changing.

Too often reports reach the public eye and ear either too late, or subject to damaging re-interpretations, which cling to the IDF like a bad stench in a back alley.

To repeat: the bulk of the army is drawn from a frighteningly young cohort. Imagine the fate of the whole of Britain in the hands of people who have just left school, with a sprinkling of older people to try to tell them what’s what.

Not an appetising picture.

There appear to be two troubling spikes in recent IDF behaviour, some, I think, emanating from the sheer youth involved, and another part from what looks like bewildering incompetence.

As Jewish News goes to press this week a young soldier will be released from a 10-day stint in military prison, after a confrontation which should trouble everyone who has Israel’s good name at heart, whether from the right or left of the political spectrum.

The soldier, who has not been named, was involved in an ugly incident in Hebron when he tried his best to intimidate a left-wing activist who was touring the town.

The soldier shouted: “Ben Gvir [the far-right politician due to become Israel’s next security minister] is going to sort things out in this place. That’s it, you guys have lost … the fun is over.”

Asked by the filming activist, “Why? Am I doing something illegal?” the soldier replied: “Everything you do is illegal. I am the law,” and ordered the activist to step back. Reports said that the soldier sported — contrary to military regulations — a patch on his combat kit which read “One shot. One kill. No remorse. I decide.”

Besides the verbal face-off, there were physical exchanges between other soldiers and left-wing activists. One soldier was suspended but not given any further punishment.

Arguably, before matters degenerated like this, someone in the young men’s unit should have been aware of its political climate and not deployed soldiers with such opinions to serve in the hotbed of Hebron.

A post-incident statement from a high-up, Brigadier-General Nadav Lotan, telling officers that “troops who do not behave morally as expected of them will not carry out operational activity until the end of the investigation of the incident,” seems to me to be too little, too late.

Meanwhile — and my thanks to the Jerusalem Post’s Yaakov Katz for his pithy summation of another problem — there was a public relations meltdown, after an attack last Friday afternoon in which three Palestinians, one armed with a knife, attempted to steal the rifle of an Israeli border policeman. The officer fought with the men, including the stabber, and then shot him.

On social media, Mohammed El-Kurd, a well-known Palestinian propagandist, tweeted an edited version of a video showing the shooting of the attacker — but not the fight which preceded it.

Nearly five hours later the former IDF spokesman, Lt-Col Peter Lerner, tweeted the full incident — at which point there had been nothing from the Israeli Foreign Ministry, the Prime Minister’s National Information Directorate, or indeed the IDF spokesman’s office.

But as Lerner later ruefully commented, a lie can be halfway round the world before the truth has got its boots on. Because Tor Wennesland, the United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, denounced Israel on the strength of the mis-leading Palestinian video. It took government sources a staggering 31 hours to issue “talking points” in response.

All this is depressing to report, and speaks of a malaise in the higher echelons of a government in transition, trickling down to a military who think they are unchallengeable. The message is clear: some major house-cleaning is in order, and it is too dangerous to leave a social media vacuum.