Print
PDF FormatEven the legends which are learned as part of the process of becoming an Israeli soldier—the paratroopers weeping next to the Western Wall after its liberation in 1967, or the legendary scaling of Mt. Hermon by the troops of the Golani brigade in 1973, or the flag-raising ceremony at Eilat in 1948—every one of them has been perpetuated in order to express, in graphic and symbolic terms, the love of the land of Israel that is embedded deep within the IDF experience, an expression of the ties between the Israel Defense Forces and the land of Israel. It is clear that Spirit of the IDF, the preface of which insists that it draws upon IDF tradition, in fact signals a fundamental and glaring divergence from that tradition.5
The uprooting from the IDF code of ethics of what should have been one of its primary components was not the result of forgetfulness or negligence, but a deliberate rewriting of the meaning of the Israeli army. Indeed, one of the early drafts actually included an item on “love of the land,” which read as follows:
Love of the LandCentral idea: Complete loyalty in practice to the land and the state, derived from emotional attachment.Components:• Belief in the Zionist view that the land of Israel is the singular place for the existence of the Jewish people.• Zionist fulfillment does not end with merely living in the land of Israel, but demands the personal involvement and creativity of the individual in the life of the society, and concern for what takes place in it.• Loyalty stemming from a personal connection to the homeland in which live family, relatives and friends. In defending the borders of the country, soldiers and officers are in a direct way defending their loved ones back home.• Love of the homeland will bring about increased identification with the aims of the mission.
Yet nothing resembling this item appeared in the final, approved text. There were those who determined that, upon consideration, such an item did not belong in the code and must be eliminated.
The conscious removal of “love of the land” and “love of the homeland” from Spirit of the IDF carried with it an obvious and stunning implication: Love of the homeland is no longer a value legitimately demanded of IDF troops. What was once an unspoken tenet held by a tiny Post-Zionist minority has become the overt stance of the entire armed forces. The estrangement from the traditional concept of love of the Jewish homeland, and indeed from the traditional Zionist ideology as a whole, has paved the way for a marginal doctrine to transmogrify into a fully legitimate and authoritative belief. An officer today who educates his men to love the land of Israel and demands their loyalty to the Zionist idea generally will be aware that such behavior is a divergence from the IDF code. In the best case, it will be possible to interpret his actions as exceeding the permissible demands on troops as set forth in Spirit of the IDF; in the worst case, his actions may be interpreted as a contravention of the code.
IV
When complaints were raised that Spirit of the IDF insisted on exclusive allegiance to the democratic idea while omitting any reference to Zionist concepts, the authors of the text responded that it is impossible to include terms such as “love of the land” or “love of the homeland” in a code of ethics, because one cannot ask a soldier to internalize emotions. The term “love” has no practical substance, they said, being a personal and subjective feeling. This claim, however, did not prevent the authors from demanding that soldiers feel loyalty to the principles of democracy and camaraderie.
In the official IDF manual of instruction distributed to officers regarding the code, the authors explained how soldiers should be answered if they ask why “love of the land” was omitted from the code. The official explanation reads as follows:
With regard to love of the land, the idea is this: The character of the professional code of ethics lies in the specific behavioral norms that it broadcasts, norms which are possible to demand so that they will in fact be put into practice. With regard to love of the land, since we are speaking of a concept that means different things to different people, and justifiably so, it is impossible to obligate people to love. [emphasis added]
In addition to the claim that one cannot obligate a soldier to feel love, there were those who alleged that the concept of “love of the land” contained a streak of fascism. According to this school of argument, the inclusion of this value in the IDF ethical code would be tantamount to sanctifying territory. Some of the more exuberant advocates of this line charged that the issue of whether one should love the land is actually at the core of the political debate over the future borders of Israel. In their view, the IDF cannot be a party to this argument, in effect taking sides in an ideological conflict. Those who rejected “love of the land” for this reason also did not agree to include the value “love of the homeland,” even though such a formulation deletes the specifically territorial aspect found in the phrase “love of the land”—which in Hebrew automatically connotes “love of the land of Israel.” It would seem that even love of the homeland generally—any homeland on any piece of territory whatsoever—was too politically charged a value to impart to soldiers.
But not only were “love of the land” and “love of the homeland” rejected by the code’s authors. 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. The sole compromise the authors were prepared to make, apparently under pressure from above, was to add to the preface an assertion that Spirit of the IDF draws its values and principles from—among other sources—“the tradition of the Jewish people throughout the generations.”
This feeble gesture constitutes nothing beyond lip service, and is no answer to the problem which dogs the document over its entire length, namely the characterization of the State of Israel as a democratic state only, and not as a Jewish-democratic state. The authors did not see fit to add that the eleven values and thirty-four basic principles in Spirit of the IDF are also drawn from the tradition of the Zionist movement. This matter may appear to be marginal, but in light of the cultural and moral struggle now taking place between the Zionist and Post-Zionist movements in Israel, this omission has more than merely symbolic significance.
V
A reading of Spirit of the IDF and the official commentary on it reveals that no effort has been made to rank the values and principles invoked—indeed, they appear in alphabetical order. There is one exception, however: The General Staff decided that the value of “Tenacity” (literally, “sticking to the mission”) should appear at the head of the list, as the first among equals. It seems that this prioritization reflects the generals’ apprehension that the code might serve to undermine the centrality of the military mission by placing too great an emphasis on its manner of realization. After all, the role of the IDF was and remains to carry out the missions demanded of it.
