Dissent in the Army

As anyone who has paid attention to what is happening in the Holy Land knows, the discontent being felt by the Jewish youth of the Holy Land over ongoing pogroms and other antisemitic repressions is beginning to find its way into the army. Indeed, it is a measure of how completely the dati leumi community is enthralled by suicidal achdut propaganda that it took twenty years of Israeli escalation, atrocity piled upon atrocity, before a tiny number of brave young Jews began to protest in a manner that truly concerns the Israeli ruling elite. The same elite that sent black-suited thugs to beat and molest Jewish children at Amona is now up in arms over a few signs.

And instead of backing these heroic young men in their struggle, the “rabbis” of most hesder yeshivot and mechinot are counseling their young charges against resistance. These are the same “rabbis” who deliberately sabotaged the effort to save Gush Katif.

Consider the depth of the treachery perpetrated by these modern-day Korachs! They acquiesce in the surrender of Hashem’s Holy Land to the enemies of Hashem. They urge Jewish youth to obey patently illegal orders. In short, they actively help Hamas. They facilitate the preparations for a Second Holocaust.

They justify this, first, by the ridiculous assertion that an order of the government must be obeyed even if it goes against the Torah. Secondly, they invoke the specter of “chaos”, claiming absurdly that soldiers must obey orders under any and all circumstances. They do these things, in reality, not out of any conviction in either of these pathetic arguments, but out of obedience to their Israeli paymasters.

Any real rabbi knows full well that an order that violates the Torah cannot be obeyed. The Law of Hashem overrides the worthless babbling of earth-bound worms, no matter what fancy titles said worms claim for themselves. This point is so obvious and clear that we need not even consider it further. Anyone who desires further discussion of this obvious truth can consult the writings of the Holy Martyr Rebbe Meir Kahane (z”l, h”y”d).

The second point raised by the betrayers of Gush Katif is likewise laughable. “Befehl ist Befehl “, as a defense, went out with the Nuremberg Trials. If these “rabbis” claim that soldiers are to obey orders at all times, regardless of the legality of said orders, how do they dare criticize the Holocaust? The Nazi rank and file only followed orders, like good German automatons! What’s good for the goose is good for the gander! And if these “rabbis” do not condemn the Holocaust, then what kind of rabbis are they?

But the true depth of the pseudo-rabbis’ perfidy, the true evil of scum like “rabbi” Druckman and “rabbi” Amar is evident not from the instant refutation of their laughable claims, but in the reason the Israeli ruling establishment is beside itself with hysteria over a couple of hand-painted signs. The traitor “rabbis” know full well that which is obvious to the Israeli elite. The young men who raise the signs know it too, in their hearts, but they cannot articulate it consciously.

THE DATI LEUMI COMMUNITY HAS ABSOLUTE VETO POWER OVER ALL ACTIONS OF THE ISRAELI STATE. The very existence of the State of Israel is dependent on the continued loyalty of the kippot srugot.

Consider, dear reader. Two thirds of Israel’s combat arms soldiers wear knitted kippot. The IDF is a conscript army, but one must VOLUNTEER for the combat arms. It is true that any shortfall in volunteers is made good by involuntary conscripts, but it is the strong core of volunteers that makes the combat arms units effective. Deprived of this core, the units, even if filled to nominal paper strength, would be nearly worthless. There is a world of difference between a volunteer proud to risk his neck for his country and an involuntary conscript who is only serving because he couldn’t dodge the draft. When the involuntary conscript is surrounded on all sides by proud volunteers, he will perform as well as they, for most men have their pride and do not want to appear weak and cowardly in front of their peers. But if the same conscript is surrounded only by those like him, he will feel no such compulsion. He will shirk, mope, malinger, break, run and desert, the choice of actions being dictated by circumstances and the group instinct of a mob of demoralized slaves whose only dream is to escape the lash.

Now, a few more basic facts. Under ordinary circumstances, all other things being nominal, a military unit is considered combat ineffective when it has lost one third of its personnel. Israel’s regular military service length for men is three years. This means that, under normal circumstances, on the order of one third of the army is replaced every year with new troops. If the dati leumi were to refuse military service en masse, even for a single year, the IDF would be brought to its knees.

Now, a refusal by a small section of the dati leumi community could be made good. If necessary, the proportion of involuntary conscripts in the ranks of the combat units can be increased. Push come to shove, some operations can be cut back, others run with fewer troops, yet others cancelled. If absolutely necessary, additional incentives can be found to keep a few more soldiers on active duty past their obligatory service time. If no other choice exists, involuntary service length can even be extended. Stop-loss orders can be filed to prevent demobilization of men who have completed their service obligation.

But these are expensive, temporary and ultimately increasingly desperate and self-defeating measures. If the IDF were to experience a sustained and growing shortfall in the number of combat arms volunteers for whatever reason, the Planning Directorate would sound an immediate alarm. The Manpower Directorate would follow suit almost immediately. The next thing you know, the Ramatkal would be barging into the defense minister’s office and demanding that whatever problem is causing the shortfall be rectified forthwith, by any means necessary, lest the IDF literally fall apart. But the rub of the matter is, you CANNOT force a man to VOLUNTEER. You can conscript, you can coerce, you can threaten. But you will not get a volunteer’s performance out of a slave; at least not for long. Yet if the IDF does not get its VOLUNTEERS, it will slowly collapse.

There is no need for violence. There is not even a need for open draft-dodging. All that needs to happen is that the dati leumi young men should, en masse, leave the mechinot and the hesder yeshivot and should enroll instead as full-time yeshiva students, thereby qualifying for the exemption that is already being used for near-total service refusal by the haredi community. They should do this with the proclamation that they will not serve in an army that expels Jews from Jewish land and that, since they have been forced to choose between the IDF and the Torah, they choose the Torah.

It is THIS that the Israeli ruling elite is terrified of. The kids raising the banners on IDF bases do not know this. But the adults, the Druckmans and the Amars, DO. They SHOULD be leading the struggle. They SHOULD be standing up and instructing every draft-eligible Jewish youth in the Land to immediately enroll full time in the yeshiva, apply for the draft exemption and refuse to report for induction even if the exemption is not granted. They SHOULD be publicizing the reason for the refusal. They SHOULD be shouting it from the rooftops. They SHOULD be organizing marches, petitions, mass oath-taking ceremonies wherein huge numbers of young men in knitted kippot swear upon the Torah to refuse IDF service until all antisemitic atrocities stop, until the yishuvim of Yosh are given full autonomy, permitted to provide their own security as they see fit and allowed to build freely without any government interference whatsoever. They SHOULD be going to jail for sedition, along with their young charges. They SHOULD, in short, be challenging the State of Israel, forcing it to submit to the Law of the Holy Torah on pain of death. They SHOULD be holding firm despite the desperate brutality the Israelis will unleash in response to such a threat. They should, in short, dangle the sword of Damocles over the heads of the Israeli ruling elite, grab the Israelis by the beitsim and squeeze ever harder until the Israeli State comes crawling on all fours to kiss the sandals of our Jewish youth and beg for mercy.

Yet they do precisely the opposite, as they did at Gush Katif. They cooperate with the pogromschiks. They not only refuse to explain the reality of the situation to the young men, much less take charge as a rabbi should and lead the struggle, but they actively conceal the enormous power of the Jewish community from the Jewish youth!

Why do they do this? BECAUSE THIS IS WHAT THEY ARE PAID TO DO.

For pay, these “rabbis” are sabotaging preemptively the inchoate effort to correct the course of the State of Israel before fratricidal violence becomes absolutely necessary. By so doing, the Druckmans and the Amars are preemptively committing murder. The blood of all the future victims of Islamic terror, who will die as direct consequence of surrendering territory to the Moslems, as well as the blood of all the Jews and all the Israelis who will die in the inevitable armed struggle for Jewish self-determination in the Holy Land, is on their hands as much as it is on the hands of the Israeli elite that provides these malshinim with their parnassah. They are murderers. Knowing, willful, DELIBERATE murderers. And they should be labeled as such.

2 Kislev 5770