Don't ignore the political angle

by Lurker

A number of people have complained about Jameel's recent post on the Anat Kamm spy scandal, objecting to the fact that Jameel addressed the issue of Kamm's political motivations for her crime. In a comment on the post, for example, tafka pp suggests that Kamm's politics are irrelevant to the issue:

There is a lot to discuss here and a lot to get shocked and angry over.
Yet The Muqata, for a reason unfathomable to me, chooses to present an entirely political angle...

I'm sorry, but there most definitely is a political angle here. A very, very big one. The media has reported quite unambiguously that Kamm did what she did for "ideological reasons", and even Kamm's attorneys do not deny that.

Well, if she did it for "ideological reasons", then what ideology is that, exactly? I think we all know the answer to that. And why should the issue of that ideology, and its relationship to the criminal acts that the ideology spurred, be a forbidden topic of discussion?

Why should we tiptoe around the 800-pound gorilla in the middle of the room?

The Israeli media and leftist political leaders have been quite vocal of late in voicing their objections to the service of right wing religious people in the army, charging that their allegiance to their own ideological values trumps their loyalty to the State and the army, and thus poses a "threat to Democracy". The rightists' ideological beliefs, it is argued, makes them inherently disloyal.

So why, exactly, is it legitimate to raise these concerns about ideological rightists in the army, but illegitimate to raise analogous concerns about ideological leftists? This is a glaringly obvious political double standard, one that we would be remiss in ignoring.

It should be noted, too, that the supposed "threat" posed by ideological rightists in the army is their potential refusal of orders to forcibly expel Jewish families from their homes and destroy their communities. Such a refusal poses no immediate, tangible military threat to Israeli security. The threat posed by ideological leftists like Kamm, on the other hand, poses "a direct and real threat to the lives of IDF soldiers and Israeli citizens", in the words of GSS chief Yuval Diskin.

The left brands the phenomenon of conscientious objection by ideological rightists as a "threat to Democracy". These leftists (in a display of embarrassingly stupendous ignorance) define "Democracy" as the "Rule of Law" -- insisting that Israel be run as a "Medinat Hok" ("State of Law"), and that the law be strictly enforced with an iron fist against any rightist who dares to disobey a military order that conflicts with his or her conscience. But when it comes to a brazen leftist criminal like Anat Kamm, there is no such "threat to Democracy" perceived in her actions. On the contrary, in this case, it is the very suggestion that she should be prosecuted for her crimes at all that is branded a "threat to Democracy" by Kamm, Haaretz and their fellow travellers! Gone and forgotten by these leftists is all their self-righteous pontification about the "Rule of Law" and "Medinat Hok".

That is rank, outrageous, baldfaced hypocrisy.

So please, let's not kid ourselves into pretending that there is no "political angle" here. There most certainly is. The left would very much like us to ignore it, so that there will be nobody to object the next time they stir up a frenzy against a religious solder who dares to refuse orders to throw a woman and her children out of their home in the middle of the night. For right now, while the spotlight is on Anat Kamm, they would like us to forget about the sacred imperative to "obey orders", and how failure to do so "endangers Democracy". They would like to intimidate us into ignoring their hypocrisy.

I, for one, refuse to be intimidated.

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