Watering Down the IDF Oath

By Sultan Knish

Meretz MK Avshalom Vilan has put on hold the usual Meretz\Shinui proposals to toss all the Jewish babies in the sea with a proposal to once again alter the IDF oath to reflect that soldiers must obey the orders “only” of their authorized commanders. Has a right wing MK proposed such a thing, the usual press and academics would be barking “fascism” like mad dogs and claiming that the government is turning Israeli soldiers into fascists, but of course fascism is never fascism when it’s on the left.

The “only” is meant to be the word that orders soldiers not to listen to their conscience or their Rabbis but only the politically appointed commanders planted on top of the IDF by the Sharon/Olmert government.

By Oslo, the Rabin/Peres government had already appointed Professor Assa Kasher to water down and outright destroy the IDF code by eliminating any mention of land, Jewish people and Torah and focusing only on the government. The result was to focus on the military not as a means of protecting a land and a nation and a people but to execute the decisions of the government.

Professor Assa Kasher was a leading academic and a leading left winger who opposed the Law of Return for Jews to Israel, supported the return of Arabs and a separate Arab state in the Galilee. Professor Asa Kasher had worked with Yesh Gevul, an organization that encouraged left leaning IDF soldiers to refuse to serve in the territories.

When given the chance to formulate an IDF code, Professor Asa Kasher worked to strip any Jewish references, both cultural and religious from it. There is no Zionism in it. No commitment to the Jewish people. Its Jewish content has been sterilized and cleansed.

The gap can easily be seen with the Haganah oath

I hereby swear to devote all of my strength, and even to sacrifice my life, to defense and war for the sake of my people and my homeland, for the freedom of Israel and the redemption of Zion.

to the IDF oath

I swear and obligate myself on my word of honor to remain loyal to the
State of Israel, its laws and its legitimate administration … and to devote
all of my strength, and even to sacrifice my life, in the defense of the
homeland and the freedom of Israel.

Now MK Vilan wants to sterilize this even further.

Vilan also recommends removing the declaration that soldiers will sacrifice their lives during their military service. He said that the words “sacrifice my life” should be replaced with “give my entire self.”

Vilan said that Joseph Trumpeldor’s dying words, “It is good to die for our country,” were no longer relevant for today’s youth.

“No one goes to serve in the IDF to sacrifice his life and to die,” Vilan explained. “Soldiers do all they can to protect the state, and sometimes they to pay with their life, but this is not the goal they start their military service with.”

No one’s goal of course is to join the army to die. No one but Arab terrorists. But the import of a commitment to sacrifice one’s life if need be is the fundamental understanding of the nature of service, which is to put one’s one life at risk. To proclaim that Trumpledor is no longer relevant is the typical mantra of the post-zionist left which reveals their true face rather aptly.

Azure Magazine has an excellent article laying this all out in depth, of which this best demonstrates how we got here,

The committee of four refused to accept any alternative principle which implied loyalty to the Zionist idea—or even to include the word “Zionism” in the code’s preface or main body—claiming that there is no consensus definition of the term, and no reason or need to include this concept in the code. There were also those who doubted whether Zionism is a doctrine that is acceptable to the majority of soldiers.

Moreover, the prospect that IDF troops would be asked to be loyal to the State of Israel as a Jewish state (or a “Jewish and democratic” state) was categorically rejected. The authors claimed that it is impossible to ask the non-Jewish soldiers serving in the IDF to be obligated to Jewish-national values, and even more so to religious values. Because the intent was to formulate a code that would be suitable—without exceptions—to all IDF troops, they maintained that there is no place in the code for even the slightest Jewish-national content.

And thus we now have a government that attempts to use the IDF in a campaign against Jewish and Zionist values and that works to mandate that soldiers not rely on Jewish and Zionist values to inform their moral reasoning.