Think before you judge

Letters

Editor: I am going to take a risk and venture that none of you has ever been personally involved in blowing up a Palestinian house. Well, I have, in the late 1980s, and I wanted to share with you what the experience was like.

In the first intifada, I was doing reserve duty in the Jenin area. Our unit was assigned to give support to the Engineer Corps in blowing up the houses of several convicted terrorists. This was supposed to act as a deterrent. I am not competent to judge its effectiveness, nor is that my issue here. If it works, then, according to a view of morality that I can subscribe to, it is a lesser evil than allowing another terrorist attack to occur. So let me tell you how the Israel Defence Force destroyed houses.

Well, we didn't sing "Hava Negilla" and dance the horah around the house we were preparing to blow up. It was actually quite different. The houses were large, several storeys, and contained a lot of furniture and other possessions. We did not run amok destroying these possessions to cause further emotional hardship. Quite the contrary. We, the reserve soldiers, spent many hours removing every single item from the houses so that they would not be damaged! That's right, although the decision had been made to destroy the houses of these convicted murderers, our soldiers spent hours working as porters carrying furniture, appliances, clothing, cooking utensils, etc., to a safe distance, so that no harm would befall them.

You see, we didn't want to hurt the families any more than necessary. So the atmosphere was really quite heavy. Needless to say, the additional hours in the field clearly endangered our lives more than if we had simply blown up the houses with everything in them. I would sincerely like to know if there is another army in the world that fights a war in this manner.

Sometimes the moral thing to do is actually quite distasteful, yet still more moral than allowing terrorists to blow people up in the middle of Jerusalem. Anyone who enjoys activities like demolishing houses should not serve in the Israel Defence Force and I have been witness to cases where overly "enthusiastic" soldiers were removed from any contact with the Arab population. Sometimes seemingly abhorrent military operations are the lesser of the moral evils in a no-win situaton.

I would sincerely request from those of you who have not done military service, blown up houses or spent days in a row at a blockade checking thousands of cars (from which shots could be fired without warning), to think carefully before criticizing. (I did not say not to criticize.) As our rabbis taught, "Don't judge your fellow until arriving in his place." That would include the government and the military authorities who have to make the tough decisions, as well as the soldiers in the field risking their lives to protect us.

Rabbi Zvi Blobstein
Efrat

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