The army regularly assassinates Palestinians accused of the same level, if not less, of culpability for terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians. So much for double standards, unless you suggest the Palestinians should have had carte blanche to dole out to Sharon and Eitan, inter alia, the same fate that met Elie Hobeika.

You say both here and in your LA Times op-ed “Orders are Orders” a soldier has a duty to obey *every* order, except in, well, exceptional circumstances. Ah, but herein lies the rub. When exactly becomes an order so outrageous that the soldier has a duty not to obey but to resist? What defines the line in the sand? The laws of the soldier’s country? International law, such as the Hague Convention and the Geneva Conventions? The Ten Commandments, the Torah, any other holy book? The soldier’s own conscience? It’s easy to come up with exemplary situations where most of us can agree on the outcome, proof of most of us sharing similar basic values. So what about the soldier who does mistreat Palestinian civilians? Is he
a) really a psychopath, a bully boy, a brute for whom all our civilisational efforts are in vain (but who does love his German shepherd)?
b) someone like the settler Aaron Levitt encountered in Tel Rumeida, Hebron (http://justiceforpalestine.blogspot.com/#112709894086768153), sweet and sociable among his fellow Jews, even an opponent like Levitt, but showing his true colours vis-a-vis the Palestinian untermenschen?
or c) an albeit all-too willing victim of the circumstances of his job, who would otherwise be a perfectly decent guy, and in civilian life usually is?

If c), a common case of strong spirit and weak flesh, I certainly agree that all should be done to bring the flesh up to par, but when that isn’t enough, when the soldier is addicted to the petty powers of his job, when he is like the Untertan who can for once play the Obertan, to quote Alfred Polgar via Kurt Tucholsky, then he has to remove himself from his drug of choice – or be removed, a task both the higher brass and civilian command have been so far entirely unwilling to fulfill.
Actually, “drug of choice” isn’t entirely accurate, as you have the draft in Israel. As you correctly note however, being involuntarily conscripted shifts some of the moral burden onto those doing the conscripting, and likewise gives the conscripted somewhat more freedom to resist seemingly immoral orders. With volunteers you could argue that they freely chose their profession, warts and all – but even that doesn’t entirely free them of ethical considerations, as we’ve seen in Abu Ghraib.
That, I think, is the reasoning that ended the draft in the US after the Vietnam disaster.

As if on cue, the story of Gaza journalist Mohammed Omer’s mistreatment by the Shin Bet has emerged: http://tinyurl.com/6a8rpm (and probably a dozen other places)