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Why the IDF Shouldn’t Adopt a “Turn-the-Other-Cheek” Policy

Dec. 26 2017

Last week, a video circulated the Internet of a Palestinian teenager named Ahed Tamimi insulting and taunting two Israeli soldiers. When they didn’t respond, she proceeded to slap, shove, and kick them while her friends videotaped the scene and encouraged her. The incident concluded only when they walked away, although Tamimi was subsequently arrested and is now in custody. Hillel Frisch argues that the IDF does itself no favors by letting such behavior go unpunished:

This . . . incident . . . can only dampen young people’s willingness to join [combat] units [when they enter the military]. Israeli youth will ask themselves, quite reasonably, why they should not only put their lives on the line but tolerate such humiliation as well. . . . Prospective soldiers don’t want to become victims of the doctrine of turning the other cheek.

This incident also sends a dangerous signal to the many Palestinians who want to harm Israelis. Anyone viewing the two-minute video can clearly see how the number of people encouraging the assault grew as the passivity of the officers continued. It begins with two girls, a third joins in, and then [Tamimi’s] mother enters the fray with two young boys. The assault also becomes increasingly brazen in the face of the officers’ passivity.

One can safely assume that the weaker the IDF looks, the greater will be the willingness of Palestinians to join the ranks of attackers in larger, more charged, and more dangerous scenarios. Israel must make clear that turning the other cheek is not its doctrine.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: IDF, Israel & Zionism, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

The Summary: 10/7/20

Two extraordinary events demonstrate something important about Israel’s most fervent adversaries. One was a speech given at something called The People’s Forum (funded generously by Goldman Sachs), which stated, “When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism.”

The suggestion that this tiny state is the linchpin of a global, centuries-old phenomenon like capitalism goes well beyond anything resembling rational criticism. Even if Israel were guilty of genocide, apartheid, and oppression—which of course it is not—it would not follow that its destruction would help end capitalism or imperialism.

The other was an anti-Israel protest that took place in front of New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, deemed “complicit” in Israel’s evils. At organizers’ urging, participants shouted their slogans at kids in the cancer ward, who were watching from the windows. Given Hamas’s indifference toward the lives of Gazan children, such callousness toward non-Palestinian children from Hamas’s Western allies shouldn’t be surprising. The protest—like the abovementioned speech—deliberately conveyed the message that Israel is the ultimate evil and its destruction the ultimate good, cancer patients be damned.

The fact that Israel’s adversaries are almost comically perverse does not mean that they can be dismissed. If its allies fail to understand the obsessive and irrational hatred that it faces, they cannot effectively help it defend itself.

Read more at Mosaic