Our World: The IDF’s Suicide Attempt, by Caroline Glick
Excerpts;
… The IDF’s treatment of Dayan; its new recruitment guidelines and Halutz’s anti-religious rhetoric reveal a dangerous politicization of the IDF. It seems that today, with Hamas now in charge of the Palestinian Authority and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz now in charge of Israel, the IDF views Israelis rather than Arabs as its principal threat. Halutz and Stern, in criminalizing actions like Dayan’s while minimizing the significance of the Hamas takeover of the Palestinian Authority are sending a clear signal of where they believe the IDF should be devoting its energies.
The IDF General Staff’s decision to attack religious Zionists is perhaps the most disturbing development in Israel’s recent past. Israel is in the middle of a war — a war it has given its enemies every reason to believe they are winning. The result of Halutz and Stern’s goading of the national religious camp is already being felt as its members make increasingly unrestrained statements regarding their unwillingness to fight for the country. If the current trend is not quickly reversed, not only will the IDF itself degrade its fighting capabilities by rejecting its best soldiers and recruits. It
will be transformed into a force charged not with defending Israel against its enemies, but with defending the government against its political opponents.Continue reading Our World: The IDF’s Suicide Attempt
