Following the recent escalation in the South, Reshet Bet radio broadcast an important interview with Professor David Zangen, medical officer of the brigade that lost many of its troops in Operation Defensive Shield.
Professor Zangen told of the ordeal of having his requests to create an evacuation route out of the combat zone in Jenin rejected because the IDF didn’t want to destroy homes of residents of the area.
“I saw my fears confirmed when soldiers died whose lives could have been saved if they had been evacuated in time.”
Later in the interview, Professor Zangen described how, after the screening of the propaganda film “Jenin, Jenin,” he tried to defend the honor of the IDF and present the truth to the audience, but was forced to leave while people cried “murderer.”
There is no doubt that Zangen is a person of high ethical and moral character, but were the orders that he received despite his warnings – warnings which, as he recounted, led directly to the deaths of many soldiers – moral? Or were they patently immoral?
Was the strategic decision to go into battle in an urban environment – instead of, for example, giving clear advance notice and reasonable time for the area to be evacuated and leaving the work to the artillery or air force – moral? Is the IDF, which Professor Zangen tried to defend, really a moral army?
The answer is, unequivocally, no! An army that sacrifices its soldiers for the sake of protecting the property of an enemy population is not a moral army! It is a confused army – an army led by politicians and senior military officers who have completely lost their ethical and moral compass, leaders who are much more afraid of the hypocritical court in The Hague than they are of a few more bereaved mothers.
So they sell to our poor soldiers – our children – a bill of goods, telling them that it is the height of morality to be killed rather than destroy cinder blocks in a refugee camp. And the soldiers buy into this horrible nonsense.
It is immoral and unethical, dear soldiers. You enlisted to protect Israel – even at the cost of your lives. You didn’t enlist to sacrifice your lives for the sake of an enemy population, their property, or their well-being.
Don’t do it! It’s the most immoral thing possible.