Judging the IDF from an armchair
LAST SUMMER, my sister was sitting with her family at Shabbat dinner, when they heard screaming from their neighbour’s house.
My brother-in-law ran next door to find a nineteen-year-old Palestinian stabbing the neighbours to death. My nephew, an off-duty soldier, shot the terrorist, which incapacitated but did not kill him.
In the aftermath, many people were criticising my nephew for not killing the terrorist. It’s painful to see pictures of the terrorist smiling proudly in court, secure in the knowledge that his family will receive a vast sum of US dollars as reward from the Palestinian Authority, knowing that he will one day walk free while three members of the Salomon family lie underground and the surviving family members had their lives shattered. Why didn’t my nephew shoot to kill?
Such criticisms came from armchair soldiers — people with little knowledge of combat scenarios beyond what they’ve seen in James Bond.
People with actual knowledge of such things are aware that such situations are chaotic and that there’s rarely such a thing as “shoot to kill”. You shoot to stop what’s happening as quickly as possible and the largest target is the torso.
Once the attacker is neutralised, it’s up to the courts to decide what to do with him. The IDF was extremely proud of my nephew’s professional conduct and awarded him a medal. The goal of soldiers is not to kill terrorists; it’s to follow the rules of engagement under very difficult conditions.
A different group of people are acting as armchair soldiers with regard to Gaza.
Such criticism invariably comes from people with no experience or knowledge of such situations. If they would bother doing proper research before publicly condemning Israel, they would discover the facts of the situation.
The IDF does not want to kill anyone — if you speak to people in the IDF, you would know that. But sometimes situations arise in which there is simply no choice if you want to prevent even worse bloodshed.
There were not only protestors present: there were numerous Hamas terrorists armed with butcher knives, guns and firebombs whose explicitly declared goalwas to break into Israel and kill people. The terrorists mixed together with the protestors in huge mobs. There is simply no way to stop them at a distance without using guns.
The IDF used tear gas, but its effectiveness is dependent on wind conditions, and the canisters can be quickly buried or thrown away. Rubber bullets only work at short range. And you can’t wait for it to be a short-range confrontation — with a mob of thousands, many of whom are armed, it would be a bloodbath on both sides.
“But Israel is so technologically advanced, there must be non-lethal ways of stopping them!” No, there aren’t. No army in the world has yet discovered a way of stopping enemy combatants without using bullets.
It’s the height of irresponsibility to condemn Israel’s actions on a completely fictitious, baseless claim of the existence of “alternative technologies.”
“But it ends up being so disproportionate — sixty Gazans dead, and no Israelis dead!” This is perhaps the most bizarre criticism of all. Should Israel wait until the Gazans had broken through the fence and killed some Jews before stopping them from killing any more?
You don’t measure the morality of a confrontation with terrorists or a war by comparing the number of dead on each side.
Unless you’re one of the many outright antisemites who believe that Israel has no right to prevent its civilians from being butchered by terrorists, then please, show some responsibility. Learn what the IDF says about these situations.
Contact soldiers, as I did, and listen to what they have to say. If you don’t trust the IDF, then listen to what Colonel Richard Kemp, former commander of British Forces in Afghanistan, has to say about the absolutely necessity and propriety of what the IDF did.
Don’t be an armchair soldier. It’s morally irresponsible and it’s plain stupid.