During Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip a force of Givati Brigade soldiers seized a position in a house in the Tel AlHawa neighborhood of Gaza City. Two of the soldiers, sergeants first class GA and SA, noticed bags they considered as possibly booby-trapped. Therefore, they used what the IDF used to call the “neighbor procedure,” separated a nine-year-old child from his mother and demanded he open the bags. Unfortunately for GA and SA, the incident was documented; they found themselves in the middle of a firestorm, and they ended up before a military tribunal, with the media dubbing the incident, “the child procedure.” In his testimony, the child, RM, described the fear he felt as he was taken from his mother, how he wet his pants and noted that the soldiers hit him in the face.

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It’s important to note that the barbarians – which is to say, the allegedly uncivilized people; the term is Greek in origin and refrains to the Greek concept that foreigners’ speech sounded like barking, bar bar – never had a monopoly over acts of barbarity. The history of civilized people, from the Athenian occupation of Melos to our own time, is full of them. Where people are armed – where, as Erich Kastner wrote, the beast in men is fed – there will be acts of barbarism. No army is free of them; by its very existence, war invites war crimes. Ares, the god of war, was portrayed as a drunk and a hot-tempered fool for a reason – and nobody but the Spartans worshipped him. Judaism’s view of war is also complicated: the important commentator Rashi wrote about the Bible describing Jacob going to war with Esau as “greatly afraid,” afraid that he might be killed, ”and distressed,” distressed at the thought that he might kill. Other commentators noted the suspect proximity between two chapters in Deuteronomy: chapter 20 describes the laws of war, and chapter 21 explains how to deal with an unknown murderer; and they said that one invites the other. Every army that goes to war will commit war crimes; the difference between them lies in how they treat the criminals.

But in the case of GA and SA, nobody spoke of barbarity or cruelty. The prosecution charged them not with war crimes, but with “exceeding authority to the point of endangering lives.” The court showed mercy to the two frightened so-called “fighters” – faster than the vulture, braver than a hare – and after uttering some empty words about their actions “being contrary to their orders, and to the international moral values as expressed by the Fourth Geneva Convention and the values of the IDF,” it sentenced them each to… a three month suspended sentence, as well one rank demotion. The court noted, however, that the “many merits” of the two cowards would have to be considered in their eventual requests for their criminal records to be wiped.

The question I want to ask is simple: how in damnation did the tearing of a child from his mother, threatening him with guns, beating him, forcing him to open bags he was told they might be booby-trapped – all of which was done by two “fighters” armed from head to toe – become the tepid ” exceeding authority to the point of endangering lives?”