A story broke in Israel that took the country by storm. In less than three days, it was over. The story concerned three Israelis who were arrested in July and were held for three days in prison without public knowledge. The three were accused of killing a Hamas terrorist who participated in the Massacre while he was in their custody.
Here is some background: The Massacre of October 7 took the country by complete surprise. Many IDF soldiers were home for the holiday weekend, and only a skeleton staff remained in most of the bases. In some battles, IDF soldiers were outnumbered 10 to 1 by the well-armed terrorists. The soldiers were quickly overwhelmed. Many of them were killed, and a significant number were taken – both dead and alive – as hostages to Gaza. When the IDF command realized what was happening, additional IDF soldiers were mobilized and sent to the Gaza Envelope. There was so much chaos that most of the soldiers had no idea what their mission even was. They did not know where the terrorists were located, and they were unaware of the extent of the carnage in the town of Sederot, at the Nova Festival, and in the kibbutzim in the Envelope.
Enter the Israeli reservists. The IDF is composed of a standing army augmented by a larger number of reservists who are called up once a year or so for an exercise and once every couple of years for a few weeks of border patrol. All reservists know how to use an automatic rifle, usually the American-made Remington M-16. In addition, many Israelis carry a handgun. In Judea and Samaria, where the security situation is more acute, the percentage of citizens carrying handguns is especially high. On October 7, when news of a Hamas invasion slowly began to trickle in, many Israelis understood that they needed to put their fingers in the proverbial dike, to help defeat the terrorists, and to rescue as many citizens as they could. They took their handguns, got into their cars, and drove as far as they could towards the Gaza Envelope until they were stopped at a roadblock. Many of these people had donned their army uniforms which they kept at home. Some of them had already received phone calls informing them that they had been drafted and that they were to go to some IDF logistical center where they would receive a rifle, ammo, and other necessities. Others figured they’d join up with some unit – not necessarily their own – when they reached the Gaza Envelope. My friend, who is a Colonel in the army reserves, has a daughter who was in one of the bases that had come under heavy fire. He put on his uniform, took his Glock pistol, and drove off to rescue his daughter. Fortunately, she escaped unharmed.
Hanan Kalmenson, from the Judean town of Otniel, drove with his brother and his brother-in-law to Kibbutz Beeri, where they saved the lives of dozens of people until he was gunned down. Elisha Meidan, who spoke in my home town of Moreshet a few weeks ago, drove down to Sederot, where he was given an army-issued rifle and told to “go find and kill terrorists.” Elisha described the carnage he saw in Sederot in a way that I will never forget. (A few months later, Elisha was caught in a booby-trapped building in Gaza, where he lost his Commanding Officer, his childhood friend, and both of his legs).
Enter the three incarcerated Israelis. They, too, joined the fighting on their own volition. They, too, saved dozens of Israelis in the Envelope. On October 8, they were given custody of a Hamas terrorist who had been captured alive. He was handcuffed and put in the back of their car. They were to take him to an army base where he would be transferred into IDF custody. When the car arrived at the army base, the terrorist was dead. Nine months later, the three were arrested, accused of murder, thrown into jail, and a gag order was put into place. To make things even worse, the three were also accused of “impersonating a soldier” because they were wearing army uniforms while they were not officially in the army.
When the news of the arrests finally broke, Israelis were shocked and angered. The extent of the October 7 Massacre is hard to fathom. More Jews died that day than in any other day since the Holocaust. Entire communities were destroyed. The atrocities committed by the Hamas terrorists were especially barbaric. The three “criminals” must have been in a state of shock, yet the Israeli Government still expects its citizens to act with respect and kindness to these terrorists.
In fact, a soldier may use only the precise amount of explosives that he needs to perform a mission and not one ounce more. My friend is a commander of a SPIKE LR2 mission team. A SPIKE LR2 missile carries five pounds of explosives about three and a half miles where it can enter a window and destroy a specific room, where, say, terrorist leaders are meeting. My friend was complaining to me that during one mission, he lost the target because of smoke and when he finally reacquired it, he was unsure if he was locked on the right window. I told him that when you are in an existential battle with terrorists, there is no such thing as “the wrong window.”
The morality of the IDF is unparalleled and not only because Judaism is a moral religion: The world body politic levies rules on the IDF that it levies nowhere else in the world, rules that are impossible for an army to abide by if it intends to win the war. The noncombatant-to-combatant casualty rate in the current Gaza War is lower than in any other war ever fought by any country. In some instances, IDF soldiers have put themselves in mortal danger in order to maintain “purity of arms,” one of the key principles in the manifesto that each IDF soldier receives when he is drafted.
The public outcry was deafening as many were angered about the punishment of the soldiers. The government scrambled to find a way out of the mess that they had created. When I woke up this morning, I discovered that all of the charges against the three had been dropped other than one: misappropriating army uniforms. They had to charge them with something.
On October 7, Israelis encountered pure evil that they had never encountered before, and since that day, we have been trying to eradicate it, as humanely and efficiently as possible. It remains critical that we always remember that in this war, the border between good and evil is well-defined. We are the good guys, and they are the bad guys. It remains equally critical that we always remember the Talmud that teaches that a person who acts with mercy on the cruel will inevitably act with cruelty to the merciful.
We can’t let that happen, can we?
Good Things,
Ari Sacher
Comments