Former Commander of the IDF northern front Lt. Gen. (Res.) Amiram Levin this week told Army Radio: “The IDF is beginning to be complicit in war crimes, in deep processes reminiscent of processes that happened in Nazi Germany.”
He added: “Walk around Hebron and you will see streets where Arabs cannot walk. It is painful and unpleasant but it is the reality. It’s better to deal with it as hard as it is than to ignore it.”
Before I forget: if you happen to take a walk in Hebron, you’ll quickly realize that while there’s a stretch where Arabs may not enter because it was the site of numerous murderous attacks on Jews – some 90% of Hebron’s streets are off limits to Jews, with signs that say so explicitly.
Also, back in 2017, when Amiram Levin was running for chairman of the Labor party, he told the party members: “Next time we’ll tear the Palestinians apart and throw them across the Jordan River.” He also suggested “We were too good to them in 1967,” and, “The Palestinians earned the occupation, they deserve nothing because they did not accept the borders of the [1947 UN] partition.”
So, here’s a treat: when a former IDF general accuses his country of an apartheid policy, Al Jazeera listens. The Qatari news outlet picked up the whole thing. So much fun:
Amiram Levin is yet another former IDF commander who lost it in the wake of the military coup d’état taking place in Israel, as an estimated 500 reservist pilots are blackmailing the Netanyahu government to stop its judicial reform or face the consequences.
These open-faced acts of defiance of law and order in Israeli democracy are supported by a well-funded and well-organized group of a few thousand (you’ll notice that media reports of protest rallies no longer talk about “hundreds of thousands,” because the pictures just can’t support it).
Over the past seven and a half months, a few dozen Israeli has-beens: failed prime ministers, IDF chiefs of staff who can’t cut it in politics, and rank and file old guard folks who just don’t want to give up control of the country to the majority, which is extremely not them, are blasting the mainstream media with ever-more outrageous statements, which the mainstream media laps up like a dog who found a hunk of tossed away ice cream in the trash.
Amiram Levin has now also made a grab for late-in-life fame, with statements like this one, saying Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “has been in power for too long, he is dirty, and surrounded by yes-sayers. Ben Gvir should be behind bars. A Messianic group, criminals, and hilltop youths who don’t know the meaning of democracy took advantage of his weakness.”
Remember thinking that in a democracy, the majority rules? In Generalissimo Levin’s world, the majority is put in jail.
The same Israeli mainstream media have been drawing a connection this summer between 1973 when Israel was almost wiped out by a sneak attack from Egypt and Syria, and 2023, when the country is facing an even greater threat: Netanyahu’s narrowing the definition of the reasonability clause.
How can Netanyahu ignore the objections of dozens of former military officials and current ones, the media are asking? Can’t he see how united they are in making the same point: do not reform the judiciary, or the country will go to the dogs?
Speaking of dogs, as every Israeli with a hint of knowledge of his country’s history would tell you, the reason the IDF was caught with its breeches unhinged was what has since come to be known as The Consensus. The entire IDF brass, from the Chief of Staff to the last military intelligence gatherer in the Kirya base on Kaplan Street in Tel Aviv, was convinced the Egyptians and the Syrians would not dare to challenge the third Jewish empire, the strongest army in the region, the brave IDF.
Think of that one when you hear a straight line of military officers barking the exact same line with dogged conviction.
Likud MK Danny Danon, member of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Security Committee, said it’s very sad when people who did good things for the country have become process identifiers.
In computing, a process identifier is a number used by most operating systems—Unix, macOS, and Windows—to uniquely identify an active process. In this case, military heroes who became failed politicians and discovered a new path to Shangri-la.
“Apparently, in the dusk hours of their days, their minds get a little confused,” Danon surmised. “Anyone who compares us to Germany or the Nazi regime needs to be checked. They try to pass on their resentment to others, without success.”
That’s not entirely true: Al Jazeera listened.
