Year: 2019

The War Ethics of Benny Gantz

“Every Jewish mother should know that she has deposited her sons in the hands of generals who prefer enemy lives (and the foreign forums where they can brag about that) to the lives of her children.

Nadav Halamish (who is running in the Zehut primaries) discovered this 2015 speech by Benny Gantz, the Chief of Staff of the Operation Protective Edge defeat – currently running for election at the head of a new party.

In his speech, Ganz brags that despite the fact that shots were being fired relentlessly at Israel’s Golani soldiers from the Wafa hospital (which had become Hamas HQ) in the Saj’aiyah neighborhood of Gaza, and despite the fact that the IDF had already spoken with the hospital/Hamas HQ administrators to ensure that there were no civilians there – when he finally decided to shoot back at the hospital, Gantz ordered to hold fire just a bit longer in order to check with the hospital once again to ensure that there were no civilians there.

In other words, the IDF High Command skewed the front line soldiers’ element of surprise, made it possible for the enemy to prepare itself well for the Golani attack and then – after repeated warnings, the Chief of Staff did not take advantage of his immense firepower superiority and instead of turning the hornets’ nest into dust by bombing it from the air, preferred to send the Golani infantrymen into the fire.

“Woe is to the evil person and woe is to his neighbor,” says the Jewish fighting ethic.

The Geneva Convention also places the responsibility for the death of civilians who were used as human shields upon the shoulders of the side that used them as such.

But Gantz decided to be more Catholic than the Pope.

Gantz, motivated by different “ethics”, fashionable and expedient, explicitly admits in his speech that although he had warned the evil terrorists’ neighbor, he again constrained the momentum of the battle.

“And we took the risk on the Golani Brigade” brags the Israeli general Gantz.

For Gantz, a dead IDF soldier is better than a photo of a destroyed hospital.

The farcical Chief of Staff of Operation Protective Edge, repeats that to the best of his knowledge, there were no Gazan civilians hurt there.

No Gazan civilians were hurt.

But a Golani soldier was…

Media reports from that battle (a Google search for “Waffa hospital Golani” shows reports in Hebrew on Mako, YNET and Walla) quote the IDF spokesman who said that there were enemy command centers and arms stockpiles in the hospital and that they were shooting automatic and anti-tank weapons at our forces “over many long days”.

That same Google search also brings us a very detailed description of the battle on the website of the Golani 13th battalion: “The El-Wafa hospital served in effect as Hamas HQ, according to intelligence…150 meters from the El-Wafa hospital, from which they were shooting ceaselessly…the fighters…returned fire…Shawn Carmeli, a machine gunner by military training, a lone soldier…who made Aliyah to Israel at the age of 16…realizes that the machine gun ammunition belt on top of his APC was stuck…and it had to be fixed in order to continue to fire at the terrorists across the road from the hospital…Shawn…gets out of the APC to fix the stuck ammunition belt…doesn’t succeed…around him shots are being fired from all sides but Carmeli goes out again…The Unit Commander asks him not to expose his entire body, but Carmeli answers him immediately, ‘I am doing it quickly and will finish’…The Unit Commander goes out to help…The Unit Commander comes back in but Carmeli doesn’t return with him…it took about a minute to pull him back in…Carmeli was hit by enemy fire and killed…the first casualty of the Golani Brigade in the operation”.

Shawn Nissim Carmeli was 21 when he fell.

David Ben Gurion formulated the upper ethical bar required of an IDF commander: “It is not enough for the commander to know his work. He must love people, the life of his soldier must be dear to him…Every Hebrew mother should know that she has deposited the fate of her son in the hands of commanders who are worthy of it.”

The values of the distorted “fighting ethics” that the offshoots of the New Israel Fund have embedded by means of commanders like Benny Gantz and his friends in the IDF have already brought about the deaths of hundreds of soldiers and perhaps even more.

My son, Avraham, a cited soldier in one of the infantry brigades, could not remain silent. About half a year ago, he publicly condemned this phenomenon and was dismissed from his position.

Was Benny Gantz worthy of commanding my son? Your sons?

Is a person who preferred the unbroken walls of the Waffa hospital/Hamas terror command over the life of Shawn Carmeli, may God avenge his blood – worthy of being an Israeli leader?

And one last word –

The Defense Minister during Operation Protective Edge was Bogie Ya’alon. The PM was Binyamin Netanyahu.

Their responsibility for the abandonment of our sons is no less than Gantz’s.

It is even greater.

The Great Voucher Fraud

by Laurence M. Vance

The mantra of “school choice” is repeated endlessly by proponents of educational vouchers and is getting louder. But does an income-transfer program cease to be an income-transfer program just because it is recommended by conservatives, libertarians, a Republican president, and free-market economists?

Advocates of educational reform are agreed on one thing: the doleful condition of the public school system. But instead of proposing a free-market solution, the panacea offered for improving the education of American youth is usually government vouchers. The federal government would provide each child a voucher worth enough money to fund his education. Parents would have the “choice” of the school on which to spend the voucher. The school would then redeem the voucher for payment from the federal government. If this was describing anything but vouchers for education, it would be denounced as an income-transfer program as well as a subsidy to private industry, courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer.

But rather than being viewed as another income-transfer and corporate-welfare program, vouchers have garnered the support of many conservatives and libertarians who would otherwise be outraged if taxpayer money flowed anywhere but into education. Because of the opposition to vouchers by the National Education Association, the American Federation of Teachers, and local teachers’ unions, many ardent defenders of the free market have latched on to the voucher movement. Many conservatives who only recently talked about abolishing the federal department of education now support increased government funding of education through vouchers. Some libertarians claim that vouchers will improve education by fostering competition. The Milton & Rose Friedman Foundation is pushing vouchers under the rubric of “educational choice.”

The voucher solution is understandable coming from conservatives since they generally have no problem with using the state to further their political and social agendas. However, for libertarians to embrace a government program such as vouchers is indeed troubling.

Yet vouchers themselves are not a bad idea. There are many private voucher programs in existence. Even in the ideal case of a complete separation of school and state, vouchers would be a viable alternative for the funding of education, and perhaps very much so. The problem with vouchers is their funding.

The main objection to government vouchers is that they are paid for by the taxpayers – the same taxpayers who already fund the public school system. So not only are vouchers an income-transfer program, they amount to a double tax: the taxpayer foots the bill for both public and private schools. Vouchers are “fresh money.” Tax money spent on educational vouchers does not come out of tax money spent for traditional schooling. No current voucher proposal even hints at a reduction in funding for public schools to pay for vouchers. To argue that parents who receive vouchers to fund their children’s education would merely be getting back some of their own tax dollars is to ignore the fact that most of the parents eligible for vouchers will pay little or no taxes to begin with.

But even aside from the funding issue, there are still a number of problems with government educational vouchers.

First of all, the state does not give without taking something in return: it always controls what it subsidizes. After accepting public money, private schools will no longer be responsible to parents but to government. Therefore, vouchers will ultimately destroy private schools and the identity of sectarian schools.

Second, vouchers will make private schools inefficient. Without vouchers, private schools must compete for business in the free market. If every private school is on the government dole, the incentive to keep costs down will be greatly diminished. The universal availability of vouchers will distort the marketplace by establishing a floor below which tuition would not sink.

Third, vouchers will put some private schools out of business. This will happen in two ways. Schools that refuse to accept vouchers will most likely find fewer paying customers. Schools forced to accept vouchers (can a restaurant refuse to serve anyone?) might well choose to close their doors rather than fall under government control.

Fourth, the correct solution to a problem is never increased government intervention. Government is the problem, not the solution. Increasing government intervention and forcing someone to pay for the education of someone else’s children are about as far afield from libertarianism as one can get.

Fifth, to imply that vouchers are what enable parents to have “school choice” is to perpetuate the myth that parents don’t already have a choice about their own children’s education. All parents have “school choice” right now – just as they have food choice, clothes choice, and car choice. What voucher supporters really mean by “school choice” is that parents don’t have a choice of where to spend other people’s money for the education of their children.

Sixth, voucher proponents don’t advocate food stamps or government-subsidized housing and medical-care programs. So why do they compromise on the issue of education? What is so magical about education? Vouchers are nothing but food stamps for education, and even worse since they would generally pay the entire cost of a child’s education.

Seventh, in spite of the language of the free market that is often used by libertarians when they make the case for vouchers, there is nothing about using the coercive power of the state to raise and dispense education funds that is akin to supply and demand, the price system, consumer sovereignty, or competition. Real competition in education can be achieved only when there is a complete separation of school and state.

And finally, vouchers would foster increased dependency on the government. Parents would look to the state as the provider of educational funds for their children just as many parents now receive subsidies from the state for their food, medical care, and housing. There is, however, one redeeming thing about vouchers: they are an admission by government that its public schools are a failure.

A threat to independence

But even without these problems, vouchers are a great fraud to begin with. Under a state-funded voucher system, there are many groups that will still have no “school choice” because they will never receive a voucher in the first place.

Those who homeschool their children will certainly not be eligible for vouchers. Most parents who homeschool do not have a degree from a state-recognized college or university, are not certified teachers and do not have the money for all the recommended textbooks to establish an elaborate curriculum. So in addition to paying taxes for the support of public schools, parents who homeschool would have to purchase books, videos, software, and supplies without a voucher to pay for them.

Those who would enroll their children in a religious school will find out that vouchers will be off-limits to them as well, since most religious schools, by their very nature, are highly discriminatory. Many religious schools hire only teachers and admit only students who are adherents to their own particular faith. Any religious school that refused to compromise would be denied vouchers. The temptation would be great to give in to government demands – meager at first, like all government regulations, but then highly intrusive.

The most overlooked group that will have no “school choice” under a voucher system is the taxpayers who would pay for the privilege of “school choice” that others would have. Educational vouchers given to parents for each school-age child to spend at the school of their choice comes from only one source: the taxpayers. Couples with no children who spend thousands of dollars to educate the children of others will now have to cough up even more money. Local communities are not taxed to feed and clothe all of the children living in them, but they are taxed to educate them. If it would be unthinkable to directly tax the citizens of a community to feed and clothe all of the children in the community, then why is it acceptable to tax the citizens at large to educate the children of some?

Ultimately, the real issue is not vouchers but the role of the state in education. The theory behind the government education monopoly is that government, rather than father, knows best. But the paean of “school choice” should be seen just for what it is: one government program to fix another failed government program. In spite of much conservative and libertarian support that vouchers have, they are merely another transfer payment from the “rich” to the poor – an income redistribution scheme just like food stamps, Medicaid, AFDC, and yes, the funding of public education. So when it comes to the education of your children – just say no to vouchers.

March 28, 2005

From Lewrockwell.com, here.

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