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| Israel-Palestine |
| IDF to oust troops who obey rabbis rather than officers |
| 2004-12-25 |
| Chief of Staff Moshe Ya'alon said this week, during a briefing with company and regimental commanders serving in the Ramallah area, that the Israel Defense Forces would not consider ideological opposition a reason to exempt soldiers from participating in the evacuation of settlements. According to Ya'alon, any concession made to these soldiers would "legitimize gray refusal." Ya'alon said that only soldiers whose families live in the settlements slated for evacuation would be exempted from participating in their removal. According to Ya'alon, soldiers should heed only one authority - that of their commanders, and not their rabbis. "Any soldier who obeys an authority other than his commander will not be acceptable among our ranks. A platoon commander who hesitates will not be one of us. The only consideration will be of soldiers who will have to evacuate their own relatives. We will not send them to this mission," Ya'alon said. "But there aren't going to be any discounts, neither for hesder students nor for residents of settlements, if they aren't relatives of the people who are going to be evacuated. If I post the skullcap-wearers to peripheral tasks, I will perpetuate gray refusal." The hesder students combine military service with yeshiva studies. "Just as we were clear when we dismissed pilots and Sayeret Matkal [an elite special operations force] fighters who signed letters of refusal to serve in the territories, we will behave in the same way here. We cannot allow ourselves anarchy," said Ya'alon. "There is great pain in implementing the decision about the settlements in the territories, but precisely for this reason it is necessary to be clear: In the army there is one authority and no other. Otherwise, a disaster could happen here, a disintegration. There are already rabbis who will come out with an explicit call against the refusers. I believe that it will be possible to persuade more rabbis who are now sitting on the fence." |
| Posted by:Anonymoose |