Suchergebnisse

This article focuses on the most extensive mutiny in the history of the IDF, which broke out in Atlite Military Prison No. 6 on 9 Aug 1997. The central role of the army in Israeli political culture accounts for the fact that a mutiny of such extent has never taken place in the IDF military units & prisons. Israel's political culture, which emphasizes the importance of the state & is characterized by weak liberalism, is not a good breeding ground for civil disobedience, even in circumstances where one would expect such behavior. In the case under discussion, the mutiny was led by soldiers belonging to peripheral ethnic groups of the IDF recruit population; specifically, it was organized by new immigrants from the former Soviet Union & a number of Druze soldiers. Some military police officials & Israeli politicians of Russian origin claimed that there was no connection between the ethnicity of the prisoners & the riot. I would like to argue, however, that it was the prisoners' unique socialization in the USSR in the Perestroika period, when the attitude toward state & the army swayed from skepticism to hostility, that made this riot possible. I argue that what gave rise to the rebellion was not maltreatment by jail officials (as the mutineers themselves argued), but rather a different civic culture as it had developed among Soviet youngsters who were socialized in the atmosphere of "liberal nihilism" of the early 1990s -- a time when the majority of them emigrated to Israel. Adapted from the source document.

Israel Army veterans of kibbutz background who had served in the occupied territories during the Intifada were retrospectively asked how this service affected them. Some common themes were disclosed. Service in the territories deepened understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but increased fear and hate of Arabs. These feelings did not lead to a national extremism, but rather to a rationalistic position demanding a peaceful, political solution. The majority of respondents became firmer in their original "leftist" position, and the justification for their position was utilitarian, considering the needs of the Israeli side; only a few based their position on support for the Palestinians' rights or suffering. To cope with the conflict between their military duty and their moral values, soldiers either sought shelter in military orders or compartmentalized their humanistic values and military duty. Few criticized the army. The major criticism, that soldiers had not been given enough tools to deal with the challenges of the Intifada, was directed at the state. Many regarded military service during the Intifada as a most difficult experience, but with only a temporal imprint.