A soldier, not a 'child'

In a short, clear sentence, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot issued a formative message to the Israel Defense Forces and Israeli society as a whole: An IDF soldier is first and foremost a soldier, not our child. His words should be welcomed, enshrined in the canonical utterances of the IDF for generations to come, along with famous speeches like Former Chief of Staff Moshe Dayan's 1956 eulogy over the grave of Roi Rotberg, the security officer at Kibbutz Nahal Oz who was killed in an ambush.

It was actually the nationalist-right circles who found fault with Eizenkot's words. Aside from the criticism of the timing -- a day before the verdict in the trial of Sgt. Elor Azaria -- they asked why his remarks were met with such support among leaders of the Israeli public discourse "on Azaria's watch," and not in earlier contexts?

Unlike them, I saw the chief of staff's remarks as an opportunity to restrengthen the centrality of the IDF in the Israeli consciousness as a common sphere for national identification that crosses all sectors. Every soldier is in fact a son or daughter to their mothers and fathers. The chief of staff certainly wasn't trying to cancel those basic ties. It's true that the IDF has also undergone an important change in its openness to parental intervention. Sometimes that openness is a burden to commanders, but in many cases the cooperation contributes and helps them.

The fate of the nation

One winter day on the Golan Heights, when I was deputy commander of the 36th Division, a worried father appeared at the division headquarters and told us that he had just returned his son and his son's friend to the Paratroopers Battalion after the two had showed up at home, AWOL. The father asked me look into whether the son's complaints about his commander were right, or was he just weak and possibly unfit for the burden of combat service. I went to the battalion, talked with the son and was impressed.

I got back to the father to give him my impression that his son was just fine, and that he wasn't the only one who had complaints about his commanding officer. In my opinion, the matter should be looked into. Former Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. (res.) Benny Gantz, who was at time was in charge of the brigade, got the message, conducted his investigation, and decided to end the commanding officer's career. The decision wasn't made because of "our children's" sensitivity, but because of the unit's need to function properly and carry out its missions. That was and remains the spirit of the IDF.

"Our children" can also be taken with generosity of spirit in so far as it expresses support for our soldiers, the national fear for their fate, the expectation that they will return from their missions safe and sound. Eizenkot wasn't trying to take that away from the public. He was trying to underscore the scale of the expectations we have of a soldier, the meaning of the demand that when put to the test, he or she will give everything they have and even more for the sake of their people and their homeland. There is no way to demand this from someone we persist in seeing as a child.

When young men and women join the ranks of the IDF, they obligate themselves to the moment in which they will be put to the ultimate test, when as David Ben-Gurion stressed, the fate of the nation would actually rest on their shoulder. In those moments, being a soldier is a total commitment. In moments like those, which sometimes pop up without warning, the soldier represents the nation as it is put to a fateful test.

Plenty of IDF soldiers through the generations have met those tests successfully. That was the heroism of 2nd Lt. Zerubavel Horowitz, the armored commander who broke through roadblocks with the Nebi Daniel convoy in the 1948 War of Independence. The convoy was en route from Gush Etzion to Jerusalem when it encountered an ambush and an extended battle. When Horowitz realized that his vehicle was cut off, surround by Arab attackers, he covered his soldiers as they retreated to the rest of the forces, and stayed where he was to protect the wounded. When hope of a rescue ran out, he blew up his vehicle, along with himself and his soldiers. He was awarded the Medal of Valor posthumously. That is what war looks like when it gets tough, and it's really not a nice, protected place for "our children."

How and when did IDF soldiers become "our children"? It's not a historical question. It's a question about the worldview of society. It's one of the results of a neoliberal worldview that has swept up the western world for the past few decades. The crux of the question for us is the story we tell about the question of why enlistment in the IDF is mandatory.

The liberal civilian view of the world sees the individual and his or her freedom as the base of social existence, making compulsory military service a kind of burden, like paying taxes. The burden is justified by the cost-benefit formula, which makes it clear that everyone must enlist in his or her turn to ensure that he or she will be able to fulfill themselves later on in life. All along the way, the individual interest remains at the center of the considerations.

In comparison, when society as a whole enlists, like society as we knew it prior to the founding of the state and in the first two decades of the state's existence, the leading interest was the national one. The point of view of the needs of the collection not only takes precedence over the individual outlook in that world, it gives the life of the individual meaning and content.

In a place like that, military enlistment isn't just something required by law, it is first and foremost the privilege and opportunity to take part in the general national responsibility. When young men and women enlist, conscious of that privilege, they cannot accept that anyone continue to treat them as "children."

Maj. Gen. (res.) Amos Horev tells a story about the end of the battle for Mount Zion in 1948, when he and two other company commanders in the Palmach came to the Jewish Agency offices in Jerusalem. They went into the office of Golda Meir, sat down, lit cigarettes and waited. When she came in, she asked them, "Boys, what are you doing here-" They answered, "If it's not clear to those of you in the leadership that we're going to win, we came to tell you that we're winning."

In my opinion, this is an expression of the consciousness of shared responsibility, which is where a young soldier needs to be when things get tough. The chief of staff's words are an opportunity make it clear to society, all sectors of society, how we as parents should treat the younger generation, even after their military service is complete. How long can we see them as "children"-

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