Correspondents' Correspondence The Geva Case
SALPETER, ELIAHU
Correspondents' Correspondence BRIEF TAKEOUTS OF MORE THAN PERSONAL INTEREST FROM LETTERS AND OTHER COMMUNICATIONS RECEIVED BY THE EDITORS. The Geva Case TEL AVTV-The American and West European...
...He headed the tank brigade that was blockading PLO forces in west Beirut from the south...
...Nor is there any other country in the world that in wartime would publicize such a confrontation, the ensuing discussions, and the failure of the top leaders to win over a subordinate...
...At that point, an angry Begin declared that there would be no lesser post for Geva and that his alternative request????To quit the Army altogether????would be accepted...
...Colonel Geva, the youngest officer to command a brigade in the Israel Defense Forces, is the son of retired General Yosef Geva, a distinguished former member of the Israel General Staff, as well as the brother of a highly decorated tank officer who was severely wounded during the Yom Kippur War...
...The merits of the arguments aside, the Geva affair and the national debate it produced say much about Israel...
...But, as the case of Colonel Eli Geva surely has shown, Israeli democracy is still alive and strong.-ELIAHU SALPETER...
...First the Chief of Staff, then the Minister of Defense and ultimately Prime Minister Menachem Begin himself tried to dissuade Geva...
...But to many here who followed the controversy closely, it is more significant as an example of how, among democratic nations, Israel remains a very different society with a very different military...
...It was clear to all that his action in this instance was dictated solely by his convictions, and for this he was widely respected...
...And this, essentially, was the view expressed by the vast majority of Israelis, including soldiers and the officers who were extensively interviewed in the press, on radio and on television...
...The young Colonel refused to change his mind...
...Whether everyone thought he was right in doing what he did is quite a different matter...
...After six weeks on the front, Eli Geva asked the Chief of Staff, General Raphael Eytan, to relieve him of duty for reasons of conscience...
...It is hard to think of another nation where the Minister of Defense and the Prime Minister would spend hours with a young colonel trying to persuade him of the moral and political correctness of government policy...
...The Left and the Peace Movement, naturally, praised Geva's position as exemplary .The majority of Israelis were critical of his move, both in principle and from a practical standpoint...
...If the order came, the Colonel said, he could not lead his tanks into west Beirut because his own troops and the city's civilian population would probably suffer heavy casualties, and he did not believe such a maneuver would defeat the PLO...
...Most of all, in no other country would the Army organize open talks among soldiers in all units to consider whether a recalcitrant colonel was right or wrong-and permit the state radio and television to broadcast some of the give and take...
...Few questioned Eli Geva's personal courage...
...Prime Minister Begin and Defense Minister Ariel Sharon may not exactly fit Israel's traditional liberal and humanistic image...
...The attack on West Beirut may not be what an ideal Israel is expected to do...
...He had a promising military career ahead of him, with the way open to the topmost ranks...
...To show he was not abandoning his comrades on the eve of a possible battle, though, he asked to serve merely as a tank commander in his battalion...
...As former Chief of Staff and present opposition Labor Party Secretary General Chaim Bar Lev put it, it is inconceivable that an individual military officer should have the privilege of choosing which mission to undertake and which to be excused from????especially in time of war in a democratic country, where certain objectives have been decided upon by a government responsible to a freely elected parliament...
...He was a brilliant officer whose performance in the initial stages of the fighting had been outstanding, and he did not oppose the Lebanese operation as a whole...
...The Geva Case TEL AVTV-The American and West European press found the case of Colonel Eli Geva an excellent lead for articles describing how the Lebanese war was creating problems of conscience in the Israeli Army and deepening divisions in this country between hawks and doves...
Vol. 65 • September 1982 • No. 16
