A year and a half ago, a small group of Israelis decided to break a deeply entrenched taboo andbring up the subject of war crimes. Until then, it was self-evident that the IDF is “the mostmoral and humane army in the world”, as the official mantra goes, and is therefore quiteincapable of such things.
The Gush Shalom movement (to which I belong) called a public meeting in Tel-Aviv and invited agroup of professors and public figures to discuss whether our army is committing such crimes.The star of the evening was Col. Yig’al Shohat, a war hero shot down over Egypt in the Yom Kippurwar. His damaged leg had to be amputated by an Egyptian surgeon. Upon his return, he studiedmedicine and became a doctor himself.
In a voice trembling with emotion, he read out a personal appeal to his comrades, the Air Forcepilots, calling on them to refuse orders over which “the black flag of illegality is waving” (aphrase coined by the military judge at the Kafr Kassem massacre trial in 1957). For example,orders to drop bombs on Palestinian residential neighborhoods for “targetedliquidations”.
The speech aroused a strong echo, but the army command succeeded in “damage control”. The AirForce commander, General Dan Halutz, perhaps the most extremist IDF officer exceptChief-of-Staff Moshe Ya’alon, was asked what he feels when he releases a bomb over aPalestinian neighborhood and answered: “I feel a slight bump.” He added that after such anattack he “sleeps very well.”
It seemed as if Shohat’s call had evaporated into thin air – but not any more. The seed hasmatured slowly. This process accelerated after a pilot released a one-ton bomb over aresidential neighborhood in Gaza in order to kill a Hamas leader, abruptly ending the lives of17 bystanders, men, women and children. Many pilots were deeply troubled by this. Now theconscience of 27 of them has spoken out.
In Israeli mythology, combat pilots are the elite of the elite. Many of them are Kibbutz-boys,who were once considered the aristocracy of Israel. Ezer Weitzman, a former Air Forcecommander, once coined the phrase “The Best Boys for Flying” (and immediately added, in thetypical macho style of the Force, “and the Best Girls for the Flyers”.)
The pilots are bought up from an early age to believe that we are always right, and that ouropponents are vile murderers. That the army commanders never make a mistake. That an order isan order, and theirs is not to reason why. That professionalism is the highest virtue. Thatproblems have to be solved inside the Force. That one does not question the authority of thepolitical leadership. There exists a whole mythology about the part played by the Force in theIsraeli victories in all our wars: from the tiny Piper planes in 1948, the destruction of theEgyptian Air Force in the Yom Kippur war of 1973, and so forth.
The Air Force does not, of course, take in non-conformists. Candidates for flight trainingare scrutinized carefully. The force chooses solid, disciplined youngsters who can berelied on, both as to their character and their views, Zionists and the sons of Zionists.
Moreover, the Air Force is a clan, a sect whose members are ferociously loyal to the Force and toeach other, There have never been public quarrels or signs of mutiny in the Air Force.
All this explains why the pilots struggled with themselves for so long, before they found inthemselves the inner strength required for such an extraordinary, morally courageous act aspublishing this appeal.
The 27 Air Force pilots informed their commander that from now on they would refuse to fulfil”immoral and illegal orders” that would cause the death of civilians. At the end of theirstatement, they criticized the occupation that is corrupting Israel and undermining itssecurity.
The most senior officer among the signatories is Major General Yiftah Spector, who is also aliving legend. He is the son of one of the “23 men in the boat”, a group that was sent in World War IIto demolish oil installations in Lebanon (at the time under Nazi-puppet Vichy Frenchcontrol) and never heard of again. Yiftah Spector was the instructor of many of the presentcommanders of the Air Force. Altogether, the statement was signed by one general, 2 colonels,9 lieutenant colonels, 8 majors and 7 captains.
Such a thing is unprecedented in Israel. Because of the special standing of the Air Force, therefusal evoked a much louder echo than the refusal movement of the ground troops that seems tohave leveled out, for the moment, at about 500 refuseniks.
The army establishment, the real government of Israel, sensed the danger and reacted as it hadnever reacted before. It started a wild campaign of defamation, incitement and characterassassination. The heroes of yesterday were turned overnight into enemies of the people. Allparts of the government – from ex-president Ezer Weitzman to the Attorney General (whoalready has his eye on a seat in the Supreme Court), from the Foreign Office to the politiciansof the Labor and Meretz parties – were mobilized in order to crush the mutiny of the pilots.
The counter-attack was headed by the media. Never before did they expose their real face as onthis occasion. All TV channels, all radio networks and all newspaper – without exception! -revealed themselves as servants and mouthpieces of the army command. The liberal Haaretz,too, devoted its front page to a ferocious attack on the pilots, without giving space to theother point of view.
It was impossible to switch on a TV set without encountering the Air Force commander, and afterhim a long line of establishment figures who, one after another, condemned the pilots. Armycamps were opened to the cameras, loyal officers damned their comrades as “traitors” who had”stuck a knife in our backs”. Except for one single interview on Channel 2, the “refusers” werenot given any opportunity at all to explain their point of view or answer their detractors.
No doubt: the establishment is worried. Perhaps it may succeed in containing the protest thistime and deterring other potential mutineers by spreading defamation, fear and punishment.But the message of the 27 has been written and nothing can change that.
With this sortie the flyers have served the State of Israel more than on any of the hundreds ofothers in the course of their army service. Some day Israel will recognize the huge debt it owesto the valiant 27.