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| November 2006 - Dan Halutz | |
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My generation, at least those who grew up in Israel, finds it hard to voice harsh criticism of pilots like IDF Chief of Staff (COS) Dan Halutz – a man who accumulated over 4,000 flight hours, downed enemy warplanes and contributed so much to strengthen our Air Force. The old pilot recruiting slogan “The Good to Flight!”, product of the creative genius of ex-Air Force chief Ezer Weizmann, used to evoke sympathetic smiles – but in fact it was taken seriously. It was an inseparable part of the dominant Zionist ethos of the generation born with the state, of youngsters who were raised upon the stories of 1948 heroism. Our generation felt we had missed out on an enormous experience, by not having been sacrificed on the altar as part of Alterman’s “Silver Platter”[1]. Ben-Gurionism took that sacrifice of the young for granted, serving – together with the expulsion or killing of Arabs - as a means to achieve the massive ethnic cleansing of 1948-49. Cleansing of the conscience was accomplished by talking about “Purity of Arms”[2] – which helped attract eager and devoted manpower from the youth movements and the socialist schools. In lessons and movement meetings they talked about international solidarity, but in practice, a generation of warriors had been forged, who erected the state with their blood, but also perpetrated the Nakba [3].
Halutz, who was born with the state in 1948, belongs to my generation – people who grew up on Ben-Gurionism, but have gradually gotten rid of any moralistic pretense or international solidarity aspiration. By the time he reached the COS-ship in 2005, as the first Air Force pilot to do so, he has become thoroughly gentrified, just like most of his generation. Egalitarian values were obliterated, and Israel has become a member of the global Right Wing, supporting conservatism, nationalism and extreme neo-liberalism. Weizmann, the ultimate patron of people like Halutz, belonged at the time to the hawks who advocated heating up the Cold War, not only against the Soviet bloc, but even against Third World countries. He scolded the Americans for being too dovish on this issue, and was instrumental in setting up the alliance between Israel and the racist regime in South Africa. According to foreign sources, Security Minister Weizmann was among the initiators of the joint nuclear test carried out by Israel and the Apartheid regime in the Indian Ocean in September 1979. Halutz, the Good who got to Fly, inherited the sense of superiority toward the Arabs, and his arrogant talk about murders of civilians by his pilots has already been internalized by a new generation of literally ‘poisoned’ soldiers [4].
As the man responsible for “targeted assassinations” without trial, i.e. plain murder, Halutz has turned into a war criminal in the eyes of the enlightened world. The man who described in 2002 the experience of bombing civilians as “a slight tremor of the airplane’s wing” [5], nowadays personifies the blatant Israeli arrogance and our collective inhuman attitude to human life, especially Palestinian or other Arab life. His pilots’ war crimes in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon did not prevent his promotion to COS, but rather accelerated it. But if 16 innocent civilians were murdered during the assassination of a single Hamas leader, and Halutz openly admits that he doesn’t give a damn and that the pilots responsible for the horror deserve praise – then not only Halutz should be the target of criticism.
Halutz represents a whole generation of politicians, opinion shapers and even business leaders, who seek to retain the current social order and national agenda. He only exaggerated these attitudes with his arrogant and stupid statements, but he did not invent them. The man who appointed Halutz as COS may have lost his mind [6], but it is hard to diagnose madmen in a system where everything is out of control. Avigdor Lieberman as a senior minister and Dan Halutz as COS symbolize the death of Zionist hypocrisy. Journalist Boaz Evron has always feared that this hypocrisy will be ultimately replaced by a much worse brutality. He was of course right on the mark.
Halutz failed in managing the second Lebanon war, and this has made him unpopular. His Establishment critics couldn’t care less about his morality or ideology. Only the IDF’s flawed performance bothers them. But in my view there is a deep connection between the deterioration of Israeli society into a perverted hedonistic version of Sparta, and Halutz’s demise as man and commander [7]. The public expected from him a deluxe version of heroism: smooth and easy victories from the air, and continuation of murderous assassinations without having to pay the price for them. Halutz himself has encouraged this illusion, and therefore has become its most conspicuous post-war victim.
The present Israeli power elites consist of people who think like Senators from Alabama. Halutz, like many officers of his generations, especially in the Air Force, cares little for geographical, political or economic limitations, and believes that difficult problems can be removed within minutes. This is why we cannot internalize the simple fact that we are not a great world power, but a rather lowly emissary of the United States. It is ironic that the man who flew to physical heights most of us will never know, is stuck now to the bottom of the barrel – both in the eyes of Establishment analysts, and in the eyes of Israelis who still advocate moral values, believe in a policy of peace, and reject the Israeli version of “Shock and Awe”, that Halutz is its ultimate symbol.
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| Haim Bar’am (translation and footnotes by Assaf Oron) |
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As the man responsible for “targeted assassinations” without trial, i.e. plain murder, Halutz has turned into a war criminal in the eyes of the enlightened world...
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