Israeli military at odds with political class

BY JOSEF FEDERMAN / The Associated Press

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JERUSALEM — The Israeli military, which has battled foes on all of the country's borders, is now facing a challenge from within: nationalist politicians who are openly disagreeing with army commanders and bickering with the security establishment.

This growing rift was underscored by angry reactions from inside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition to Wednesday's manslaughter conviction of an Israeli soldier who fatally shot an already wounded Palestinian attacker. [...] Azaria was tried after a human rights worker filmed him in March fatally shooting a badly wounded Palestinian assailant in the West Bank city of Hebron.

The assailant had already been shot after stabbing an Israeli soldier and was lying on the ground. Lt. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot, the head of the military, was among the first to condemn Azaria, saying his actions ran counter to its ethics and values.

Military service is compulsory for Israeli Jews, so most have relatives in the service and soldiers are seen as "our boys and girls." Opinion polls in Israeli media showed 70 percent of the Jewish public supports a pardon. [...] Eizenkot, meanwhile, was excoriated on social media in ways that would have been unthinkable a few years ago.

A small crowd of extremists demonstrating outside military headquarters called for his assassination.

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Folio reads "A10 | THE REGISTER-GUARD INTERNATIONAL | SATURDAY, JANUARY 7, 2017" — masthead, section and date all agree with Maria's label. Photo caption: "Sgt. Elor Azaria waits with family inside the military court in Tel Aviv, Israel, before being found guilty." Credit: HEIDI LEVINE/via The Associated Press.

Also quoted or cited: Liat Schlesinger of the leftist think tank Molad; Education Minister Naftali Bennett; Culture Minister Miri Regev; Sima Kadmon; the 2012 documentary "The Gatekeepers"; former Prime Minister Ehud Barak; and Meir Elran of the Institute for National Security Studies, who says the rift is "quite serious" and "We do not want that to be diminished, and degraded." Eizenkot here is again the restraining figure — the man the far right wants killed for condemning a soldier.

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"Israeli military at odds with political class," The Register-Guard, 7 January 2017, p. A10. Covering Palestine archive, CP-2017-028. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-2017-028