Haim Watzman In the valley that runs west of the Omer ridge I wrestle with my angel. Noon is approaching and I’m munching a bagel-and-cheese sandwich under a tamarisk tree with my hiking buddies at our meeting point on the most boring section of the Israel National Trail. It’s a 21-kilometer stretch that is nearly [...]

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Haim Watzman Have Israeli soldiers’ values—and the moral choices they make in combat—changed? Do the soldiers’ testimonies from the Rabin pre-military academy show that the IDF and its soldiers have adopted values different from those of earlier decades and earlier wars? I’m not convinced. They might, and the charges made in the testimonies certainly need [...]

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Haim Watzman What was most surprising about the conference on Battle Ethics in the Cast Lead Operation held on Sunday by the Ethics Center at Mishkenot Sha’ananim in Jerusalem was how much agreement there was among speakers with ostensibly different points of view. Everyone from noted liberal Mordechai Kremnitzer to the IDF’s favorite ethicist Asa [...]

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Haim Watzman I recently bumped into a mild-mannered, bookish paratrooper I know. He had come home to Jerusalem for a short weekend after spending two weeks in Gaza. I didn’t know what to expect when I asked him what he thought of the war. I thought I might hear him echo my own thoughts, and [...]

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Haim Watzman Gershom gets requests for advice from seekers of Jewish identity, I get them from soldiers. I’ve edited the letter slightly to make it clearer and to avoid giving away the writer’s identity.-hw Dear Sojo, You have said something to the effect that soldiers do not have the right to refuse orders to go [...]

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When I told my soldier son last weekend that I was preparing to lead a book club discussion on Michael Walzer‘s book Just and Unjust Wars, he shrugged. “What’s there to talk about?” he asked. “When you are protecting your country you do whatever you need to do to protect it.” That may sound cynical [...]

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