Some in Israel Military Sound a Discordant Note

Minority--but poignantly persistent--military voices continue to lament the Israeli army’s role in fighting the Arab rebellion on the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Although their impact on the government’s policy appears slight and soldiers continue to serve as ordered in the territories, the expressions reflect a corrosion of pride in the armed forces, among the country’s most respected institutions.

The latest despairing words came in the form of a booklet published by left-wing members of kibbutzim--collective farms--who have served in the occupied lands. They entitled their collection “Commanders Talk,” a name that evokes a larger collection of conversations among kibbutz soldiers published after the Six-Day War of 1967.

Despair, Unease

There is a striking contrast between “Commanders Talk” and the earlier collection, called “Soldiers Talk.” In “Commanders Talk,” officers speak of despair and unease at the role of the army during the 17-month conflict. The officers recorded and published observations they had made earlier this year in a complaint session with Maj. Gen. Amram Mitzna, Israel’s West Bank commander.

“Soldiers Talk,” on the other hand, was a collection of conversations among troops of kibbutz origin made after the Six-Day War ended. It was euphoric about the quick and impressive victory.

“In the case of ‘Soldiers Talk,’ there was a situation in which the entire country was in agreement that the war was politically and morally right,” said Mordechai Bar-On, a retired general who helped edit the 1967 selection.

“All that unanimity of purpose is lacking now. This conflict is one in which soldiers do what they have to do so as not to disobey orders. They perform even if they do not believe in what they are doing.”

Dim View

In recent months, military commanders have taken an increasingly dim view of the chances of putting down the Arab rebellion, or intifada , as it is known in Arabic. The measures that might be effective in systematically stopping the uprising are beyond what Israel’s military norms permit, they point out.

Earlier in the year, a group of soldiers confronted Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir with their misgivings during an inspection tour he made in Nablus.

While “Commanders Talk” represents the open opinion of a few, it nonetheless is an embarrassment for the Israel Defense Forces, since members of the kibbutz movement have traditionally been among the soldiers most keen to serve in elite armed units.

“Once in four, five months you are called to intifada, and you see that nothing has changed, maybe it only got worse. I can even say that . . . in a certain way, you feel like stone fodder--stone because there are no cannons,” said Omri Frish, a member of Kibbutz Mesilot.

‘Not My Job’

Some of the officers found it cruel and distasteful to take on civilians. “I don’t think I can enter at 2 o’clock at night into a house where 10 small children are crying and take people away, their father or somebody. This is not my job, this is not what I was trained for in the army,” said Yehiam Yogev, from the Kfar Menahem kibbutz. “I have gotten to the point today where I have to raise a club against a child the age of my children. I simply can’t do this.”

Added another officer: “How is it possible to stand at a distance of 70, 80, 90 meters from groups of dozens of women, old people and children and be hit by stones, curses, slogans and whistles? This is pressure. . . . The instincts take over.”

To escape the task, some soldiers simply do nothing; one officer described “a wide phenomenon of not fulfilling orders.”

There were also complaints about the formation of militias by Israeli settlers in the West Bank and Gaza, which themselves provoke Arabs into violence. “My next war will be against Jews,” said one officer flatly.

The preoccupations of 22 years ago were different, coming as they did after the astounding victory of Israel over the combined offensives of its Arab neighbors. Instead of self-criticism, there was confidence.

Terrific Feeling

“You’re caught up in the excitement,” recalled one tank officer. “Everyone had a terrific feeling of enthusiasm--only let’s get out there, get into it all.”

There appeared to be no discontent over carrying out orders. “ . . . There was no task that wasn’t carried out, no unit that failed in its assignment,” boasted an interviewer in “Soldiers Talk.”

Still, there were intimations that short-term triumph alone might not bring peace and well-being. “How . . . are we going to avoid turning into militarists?” asked a welfare officer. “What we have got to avoid is cheapening life and becoming conquerors.”

And even then, in the first weeks after the victory, debate broke out over whether to keep the land taken in the war--a debate that has not yet ended. A soldier named Elisha made a remark that prophetically pinpointed problems expressed again in “Commanders Talk” 22 years later:

“There’s one little thing that I’ve only now begun to feel. In every war in which we were engaged, in all the stories we were told, we were always the weak against the strong, the few against the many. Now, possibly for the first time, we are the strong facing the weak.”