Israel Matzav

Today's IDF: Politics before duty

This week, Brig.-Gen. Nitzan Alon completed his two-year stint as Judea and Samaria Division commander. At his farewell party held two days after the terror attack in Jerusalem, Alon described the central challenge facing the IDF in Judea and Samaria as evicting Israelis from their homes.

As he put it, "It's likely that the IDF will be required to carry out, together with the police and the civil administration, certain missions that are not within the national consensus, and do so in the face of a rising conflict with the extremist but expanding fringes of Israeli society."

During his time as division commander, Alon ordered troops to shoot at Israeli residents of outpost communities slated for destruction with rubber bullets if they tried to oppose forcible expulsion.

Alon went on to speak of the grave threat of "Jewish terrorists."

He said, "Already today there is an extremist minority, marginal in size but not in influence, that is liable to steeply escalate the acts commonly referred to as 'price tag,' but are actually terrorism. These acts must not only be condemned; their prevention, and the arrest of their perpetrators, must be undertaken more effectively than what we have managed to accomplish to date."

As far as Alon is concerned, "Jewish terrorists," pose a threat to Israel that is just as dangerous - if not more dangerous - than the threat posed by the real terrorists just freed from prison. And from OC Central Command Maj.-Gen. Avi Mizrachi's supportive statements at Alon's farewell bash, it appears that Mizrachi agrees with him.

But how can this be? No "Jewish terrorists" have stabbed and murdered Palestinian children. No "Jewish terrorists" have sent missiles into Palestinian residential neighborhoods or strapped bombs on their chests to blow up Palestinian cafes and buses. What Jewish terrorism are they talking about?

True, earlier this month there was an arson attack at the mosque in Tuba Zanghariya in the Galilee. While the media was quick to blame it on unknown Jewish assailants, it is hard to see why they would be the obvious or even most likely culprits.

Residents of Tuba Zanghariya torched their own clinic and community center. They routinely steal and kill livestock belonging to Jewish farmers in neighboring communities and set fire to their fields.

Aside from that, the police arrested two Jewish suspects but were compelled to release them this week due to lack of evidence. The police arrested a third suspect this week but failed to convince a judge to remand him to custody for 10 days. The judge scolded the police for even asking, given that they had no evidence of guilt.

Why would Jews from Judea or Samaria go to all the way to the Galilee to attack a mosque anyway? There are plenty closer to home.

The truth is that the "price tag" attacks are not acts of terror. They are acts of hooliganism and warrant criminal punishment. But their Jewish perpetrators are not terrorists. They are petty hooligans.

The fact of the matter is that there is no Jewish terrorist infrastructure in Judea and Samaria or anywhere else. And there never has been. This was reported this week by Amir Oren in Haaretz.

Among other things, Oren's article dealt with the 1994 Shamgar Commission formed in the aftermath of Baruch Goldstein's massacre of Arab worshipers at the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron. Oren revealed that following the massacre, the Shin Bet recommended forming fake Jewish terror groups in order to provide an organizational framework for would-be Jewish terrorists that would enable the Shin Bet to find and arrest them. The commission adopted the recommendation in its final report.

Obviously, if there had been a Jewish terror infrastructure, the Shin Bet wouldn't have needed to build fake ones.

So what has motivated Alon to focus his attention on fighting a nonexistent Jewish terror threat? Throughout his two years in Judea and Samaria, Alon distinguished himself as one of the most politicized IDF commanders. He consistently overstepped his authority, contradicted government policies and advocated positions of the radical Left. For instance, in an interview this month with The New York Times, Alon indicated that unlike the government, he supports a full IDF withdrawal from Judea and Samaria and doesn't believe that a withdrawal would be dangerous for Israel.

In the same interview, Alon reprimanded Congress for threatening to cut off US funding to the Palestinian Authority's terror-aligned security forces, claiming that they are a stabilizing force in the region. It is hard to think of another example of an IDF officer telling Congress how to spend US taxpayer dollars.

But while Alon's political activism is more pronounced than that of his colleagues, he is far from the only commander who misunderstands the responsibilities of the military.

Labels: Caroline Glick, Israel's Hebrew Palestinian daily, Nitzan Alon, politicization of the IDF

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 3:48 PM