Word: soldiers
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...incident has left lingering doubts over whom soldiers will obey: their commanding officers, or hard-line rabbis who believe it's the destiny of Jews to occupy the Biblical lands of Judea and Samaria, even if they are now in disputed Palestinian territory? One senior IDF commander complains to TIME: "It seems like every soldier is consulting his own rabbi." The more extremist rabbis, he says, "want to change the system," bringing Israel's vibrant secular society more in line with their orthodox views...
Several refusenik soldiers rang Rabbi Re'em Hacohen, a former teacher of theirs at a yeshiva, or religious seminary, in the West Bank. "They were all loyal and responsible citizens, wracked by the decision whether to obey their superiors," says the rabbi, who urged them to act "with a clear conscience." The rabbi, himself a former soldier, lays blame on the army brass, not the refuseniks: "The army should be used to fight our enemies, not against our own society...
Interviews with officers, enlisted men and rabbis show that opposition to evicting Jewish settlers from Palestinian territories is widespread inside the army. One senior officer told TIME: "As a soldier, I'd prefer it if the government doesn't assign me the task of evacuating Jewish settlers, but if that's the mission, I promise we'll carry...
...territory could not exist. The IDF guards the roads leading to the settlements. The senior army commanders consult on a weekly basis with the settlers' council on possible security risks coming from Palestinian militants. In Hebron, where over 500 troops protect the city's settler families, the boundaries between soldier and settler are even more blurred than elsewhere. Six settler families actually live inside a Hebron army outpost, and their illegal presence is tolerated. Officers routinely arrange for a settler to lecture troops on the significance of Hebron to Jewish history, advocating a large influx of more settlers...
...profile of the Israeli army is changing. Increasingly, today's soldier wears a yarmulke, the skullcap of the religious conservative. In the past, a majority of Israel's fighting officers came from agricultural communes, known as kibbutzim, and from villages. Over the past 15 years or so, kibbutz members have traded socialism for the materialistic individualism so prevalent in Israeli society. Nowadays, dynamic Israeli youngsters want to cash in on the country's high-tech boom and not spend their lives in uniform. The pool of potential recruits is also shrinking for other reasons: 11% of the nation...