Most Moral Army In The World?

 

You have probably heard this claim made at some point, “Israel has the most moral military in the world.” Especially last year (2023) in the aftermath of October 7^th when Israeli war planes started bombing civilian targets in Gaza. It was common to hear at the time many defenders of Israel’s strategy come out and say, again and again, no country goes out of its way more to be moral than the Israeli Defense force. It was like some kind of whiplash inducing gas-lighting campaign. Firstly, as an Australian, knowing that we have a military with a stellar reputation around the world, though not perfect, I don’t know how anyone could make such a statement. Secondly, this is just observably and demonstrably not true.

As the Jerusalem Post itself notes,

“Reality Check: The most moral army in the world. Really?

After 70 years of independence, we should be mature enough to honestly examine ourselves.

The IDF, said Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman recently, is the most moral army in the world, a statement which had most Israelis nodding their head in automatic agreement. But how do we know? Is there a league table for military morality, with a point gained for every enemy civilian left unharmed during a battle, two deducted for every civilian maimed or killed and five points taken off for any use of illegal weapons? Who keeps the score?

And if there really was such a system of assessing military morality, how do we honestly think the IDF would rank?

Over the past three weekends, more than 30 unarmed Palestinians have been shot dead by IDF snipers for demonstrating on the Palestinian side of the border between Israel and Gaza, including Yasser Murtaja, who was clearly wearing a flak jacket identifying him as a journalist when shot. Another 300 or more Palestinians have been wounded by live fire in these demonstrations.

These were not peaceful demonstrations on the Palestinian side, and were clearly designed to spark conflict with the IDF, but why is “the most moral army in the world” automatically resorting to the use of live ammunition against unarmed demonstrators to quell such protests? It’s not as if the IDF does not have water cannons, tear-gas grenades, rubber bullets and other non-lethal weaponry at its disposal.”[1]

No, this was not written last year, or even this year, while this particular conflagration of the 100 or so year war in Gaza has been ongoing. It was written back in 2018 and seeks to be an honest reflection on the many immoral things that the Israeli army has done. 

But as the author notes, how would you rank this anyway? How can you determine which army is the best and which is the worst? The United States military has been revealed to have engaged in countless war crimes, especially in the Middle East, so have many other militaries. Though it would not be fair to say all have done this equally. However, choosing who is the worst amongst the lot would take a lot of evaluation and data sheet work. So, my aim is not to argue that the Israeli Defense Force is the worst military in the world, just that it is certainly not a moral exemplar. The idea that it is the most moral army in the world is clearly just messaging for the gullible, and the severely uninformed.

Is this the action of a moral force?

“Or take the example of Elor Azaria, convicted of manslaughter – not murder – for shooting dead an incapacitated Palestinian terrorist. For this crime, he was initially sentenced by a military court to 18 months in prison, which then was later commuted to 14 months by none other than IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot. Exactly what moral lesson is being taught here? That killing a defenseless prisoner only merits a relatively short period of time behind bars?”[2]

Of course, in the Middle East these kinds of mass actions against civilians are pretty much par for the course,

“But the opposite is not true either. None of the above examples turns the IDF into the most immoral army in the world. As Defense Minister Liberman pointed out when defending the IDF’s actions on the border with Gaza: “In the entire region, half a million were murdered in Syria, hundreds of thousands were murdered in Yemen, Libya and Iraq. No one notices....”

Yet still, Israeli leaders, and Christians I know personally, like to try and argue that the Israeli military is the most moral in the world. This is a good example of the “Big Lie” if I ever heard one. And it is proclaimed with such gusto that some people actually believe it. I have had people say it to me personally, on many occasions, and especially in the last 12 to 14 months. But it is clearly not true, and never has been true.

Ilan Pappe notes, about a previous Israeli war,

“This exploded in a most horrific way in September 1982, when the Phalangists, under the watchful eyes of the Israeli army, massacred between eight hundred and two thousand refugees living in two camps in the south of Beirut: Sabra and Shatila.

The invasion was a brutal affair, which included constant shelling and air bombardment of Beirut and led to the flight of hundreds of thousands of Lebanese from the south to the north. The Israelis remained in many parts that they invaded more or less until the year 2000, and established harsh military rule that included infamous prison camps such as Khiam, where Palestinians and Lebanese were tortured and imprisoned without trial. At the same time, the Lebanese resistance, led by the Shiite minority residing mostly in the south of Lebanon, inflicted a high number of casualties on the Israeli army that eventually forced the Israelis out of Lebanon.

The scenes from Lebanon played out on every TV screen in British homes and energised those within British civil society to institutionalise advocacy for the Palestinians.”[3]

Ilan Pappe is an Israeli historian, and he is honestly reflecting on the way his own nation has acted in the past. He is being far more open and honest about his nation's misdeeds than many Christians. Indeed, many Christians I know will deny this reality even when informed about it. They deny it ever happened, or pretend you didn’t say anything, and some even go so far as to say that if such crimes did happen, then Israel must have had good reasons for it. But what is a good reason for torturing prisoners being held without trial? In fact, what happened in Lebanon was so terrible even Ronald Regan, a very pro-Israel president (are there any who aren’t) called for the Israelis to stop what they were doing.

Then there was what Israel did to its own greatest ally in 1967,

“But it may seem that this carte blanche had limits which were breached when the Israeli air force bombed an American spy ship called Liberty, killing thirty-four navy personnel and wounding more than a hundred. Israel apologised, explaining it away as a case of mistaken identity scarcely plausible given that the Star-Spangled Banner flew high on the deck.

ALPAC realised that it could not prevent President Johnson from admonishing Israel in public for its assault on the ship. All it could do was damage control, as it was clear that even the usually pro-Israel mainstream media would find it hard to swallow the Israeli explanation. Israel's reasons for attacking the ship are still debated today. It probably had to do with information the spy ship was able to collect that might have tarnished Israel's international reputation. Most scholars assume that the ship had gathered intelligence about an Israeli massacre of Egyptian soldiers and about the expulsion of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, which Israel wanted to conceal. But we still need further substantiation of this reasonable, and in many ways only acceptable, explanation. The most important task for AIPAC was to dissuade members of Congress who wanted an official inquiry from making this demand — a goal they successfully achieved.”[4]

Ron Unz has done a series of fantastic articles on his website outlining what Israel did to the USS Liberty. All the American eyewitnesses note that there is no way that the Israelis could not have known it was an American ship, as Pappe himself notes. The ship was flying the US flag high and visible, and many of the soldiers remember their cries that they were Americans going ignored by the attacking Israeli forces. An unarmed American ship as well, remember; it was not a warship, but an intelligence ship. These are not the actions of even a moderately moral military, let alone the most moral military in the world.

What is significant though is that the Israel lobby, in particular AIPAC, was able to get the Americans to bury any investigation into the matter. Which is incredible. It is because of lobbying actions like this that many Australian and American Christians believe the propaganda line that the IDF is the most moral military in the world. Something that even many Israelis themselves would reject, as we noted above, and as is noted by this next Israeli piece,

“While Palestinians are officially prohibited from entering, the reality is more severe than a simple exclusion zone. "It's military whitewashing," explains a senior officer in Division 252, who has served three reserve rotations in Gaza. "The division commander designated this area as a 'kill zone.' Anyone who enters is shot."

A recently discharged Division 252 officer describes the arbitrary nature of this boundary: "For the division, the kill zone extends as far as a sniper can see." But the issue goes beyond geography. "We're killing civilians there who are then counted as terrorists," he says. "The IDF spokesperson's announcements about casualty numbers have turned this into a competition between units. If Division 99 kills 150 [people], the next unit aims for 200."

These accounts of indiscriminate killing and the routine classification of civilian casualties as terrorists emerged repeatedly in Haaretz's conversations with recent Gaza veterans.

"Calling ourselves the world's most moral army absolves soldiers who know exactly what we're doing," says a senior reserve commander who has recently returned from the Netzarim corridor. "It means ignoring that for over a year, we've operated in a lawless space where human life holds no value. Yes, we commanders and combatants are participating in the atrocity unfolding in Gaza. Now everyone must face this reality."[5]

The clear war crimes being committed in Gaza prove that it is a lie that the Israeli military is the most moral in the world, and this is recognized by many Israelis themselves. Just like many Americans now know that their military is not always the good guys. Israel’s army is acting much like any other military force in the Middle East, with indiscriminate brutality against civilians. And while this is happening a massive propaganda campaign is run throughout the western media to convince the average American or Australian, that the IDF is going out of its way to minimize casualties.

I noted on Substack a week or so ago that Christians are fallen people like any other people.

We make mistakes and believe lies, just like anyone else. But unlike others, we have a deep and abiding moral responsibility to correct our errors and speak the truth, and when we have believed lies to then correct those lies. I once believed the Israel military was the most moral military in the world. I once believed much of the hype that many of my Christian brothers and sisters still believe. However, for some time now I have seen through them, and I have seen many other people begin to see through them as well. Sadly, though, many believers are resistant to the idea that Israeli forces and leadership could be bad guys in a sea of other bad guys in the region.

The problem with getting involved in the Middle East is that the people who live there do not want to be ruled by western forces, even Eastern Europeans who have a tangential claim to heritage in the region. This reality means that all foreign militaries that get involved there end up becoming as brutal as the enemies they fight. To be fair this happens anywhere where one people seek to rule another people by force. It is part of the dirty business of empire. We should have nothing to do with this. And it certainly should not be sanctioned as being in the name of God.

The Apostle Paul wrote something to confront his own people in Romans 2. He noted,

“22 You who say that one must not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? 23 You who boast in the law dishonor God by breaking the law. 24 For, as it is written, “The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you” (Rom. 2:22-24).  

Paul wrote this to challenge his own people and note that they were no less sinners than the Gentiles they looked down on, and because of this they had led many Gentiles into blaspheming the name of God. But I wonder how many non-believers today are blaspheming God because of the Church’s support for clearly evil actions in the Middle East? Not just from Israel of course, but from the US, UK, France, and other western countries. How badly has Christian support for these forever wars of empire, and the evil actions that often accompany this, and then even sometimes denial that these evil things are actually happening, how badly has this tarnished the image of Christ and his Church in the eyes of many secular people today, or even people of other faiths?

Every human has a duty to speak the truth, but we Christians believe in the one who tells us that he is the truth (John 14:6). Therefore, we will be held to a much higher account for spreading lies. Let’s make sure we do not do this.

List of References

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[1] 2018, Jeff Barak, https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Reality-Check-The-most-moral-army-in-the-world-Really-549906

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ilan Pappe, 2024, p.212.

[4] Ilan Pappe, 2024, 256-257.

[5] Yaniv Kubovich, 2024, https://archive.vn/hFruD