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.