> Resisting the 'Ecstasy of War': Gaza Through the Eyes of Religious, Left-wing Israeli Soldiers

> https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-04-15/ty-article-magazine/.premium/resisting-the-ecstasy-of-war-gaza-through-the-eyes-of-religious-leftist-israeli-soldiers/0000018e-ce86-d283-a5ee-fe9ff47e0000 > > Resisting the 'Ecstasy of War': Gaza Through the Eyes of Religious, Left-wing Israeli Soldiers - Israel News - Haaretz.com Article excerpt: >> >> "He says he saw reservists armed with pamphlets from extremist rabbis such as Yigal Levinstein and Zvi Tau, distributed by rabbis in uniform sent by the Israel Defense Forces' department of Jewish education. >> >> "War "shouldn't be treated as a 'mistake' or 'error' that we would prefer to avoid. War is a great thing," Levinstein wrote. These words echoed what an IDF rabbi, Amichai Friedman, said a month after the Israeli military response to the Hamas massacre began: "I imagine in these days there are no murdered people, no hostages and no wounded. And then, I am left with perhaps the happiest month of my life." >> >> "Schwartz shared that on the front lines, rabbis in IDF uniforms came to lecture the soldiers. "Once, a rabbi from Kiryat Arba in the West Bank said we need to destroy and shoot everyone, and that the IDF's [rules of engagement] ethics are a 'distorted Western morality.'" >> >> . . . >> >> "Schwartz felt what he describes as a complete and painful theft: "They take away from me what is precious to me, my faith, and direct it against me," adding that he "witnessed people feeling joy about this war." >> >> "Calls to "restore Jewish honor" through intense military action weren't only heard among rabbis or far-right politicians. On October 7, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised to "avenge" Hamas and was quoted on social media citing the biblical verse "God, to whom vengeance belongs." Days after the ground invasion of Gaza at the end of October, in a letter to soldiers, Netanyahu invoked a biblical commandment for Israelites to decimate their nemesis: "Remember what Amalek did to you." What is described above is the very definition and essence of “Fascism,” the “Ecstasy of War!” Now shared collectively throughout the U.S. in a bi-partisan love of "War as a Great Thing,” deserving of dedicating our society to it with our love of all things military. With the M-16 and its civilian variants our national religious icon now (see Republican X-mas cards). And ever-increasing massive military spending, with Republicans always outdoing Democrats (but not by much) in their clamor for more, more, and a “National Security Strategy” fully articulated in 2017 and 2018 by the Trump administration of strangling our “Peer Competitors” by any means necessary. At all levels throughout the “Spectrum of Conflict;” Economic (Blockade, i.e., sanctions), “Information,” and Military Encirclement as Phase Zero of a "War of Aggression Plan” in “plain view.” With that set in motion in 1995 by the Republican “Contract for America,” calling for NATO expansion, and carried on successively by all administrations since, with the only slight “ebb” in that by sequestration during the Obama administration. Remedied in full and more by Trump, and carried on by the Biden Administration, with our “War of Aggression Plan” even more set for the incoming Trump administration (they hope and work for) with the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025. In plain view, if one can actually see “reality.” The Ecstasy of War! We can never get enough of it, nor the incitement and provocation that leads to it, making it the one immutable fact of existence for the USA and Israel!