ISRAEL

Avnery: The Magnificent 27 by Uri Avreny

A year and a half ago, a small group of Israelis decided to break a deeply entrenched taboo and bring up the subject of war crimes. Until then, it was self-evident that the IDF is "the most moral and humane army in the world", as the official mantra goes, and is therefore quite incapable of such things.

The Gush Shalom movement (to which I belong) called a public meeting in Tel-Aviv and invited a group of professors and public figures to discuss whether our army is committing such crimes. The star of the evening was Col. Yig'al Shohat, a war hero shot down over Egypt in the Yom Kippur war. His damaged leg had to be amputated by an Egyptian surgeon. Upon his return, he studied medicine and became a doctor himself.

In a voice trembling with emotion, he read out a personal appeal to his comrades, the Air Force pilots, calling on them to refuse orders over which "the black flag of illegality is waving" (a phrase coined by the military judge at the Kafr Kassem massacre trial in 1957). For example, orders to drop bombs on Palestinian residential neighborhoods for "targeted liquidations".

The speech aroused a strong echo, but the army command succeeded in "damage control". The Air Force commander, General Dan Halutz, perhaps the most extremist IDF officer except Chief-of-Staff Moshe Ya'alon, was asked what he feels when he releases a bomb over a Palestinian neighborhood and answered: "I feel a slight bump." He added that after such an attack he "sleeps very well."

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