Sharon vs. the Army

Ever since Israel's birth as a nation in 1948, the Israel Defense Forces have enjoyed a position of uncommon esteem both in the country and beyond. David Ben-Gurion once remarked that the I.D.F. was perhaps his nation's most successful achievement. The London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies this year rated the Israeli military as the fourth most powerful in the world. Yet today, in the wake of the Beirut massacre, many among the I.D.F.'s 172,000 regulars and 504,000 reservists are deeply demoralized.

That rising tide of anger and frustration is directed primarily at one man: Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, a general and hero of the 1973 October War. Simply put, the soldiers are afraid that he will make the I.D.F. a scapegoat for the Beirut massacre. Brigadier General Amram Mitzna, head of the I.D.F.'s Staff and Command College, announced two weeks ago that he was requesting a leave of absence in protest over the killings. (He has since relented.) Mitzna bluntly told Sharon, "I have lost faith-in-you." More than 100 top Israeli officers, including everyone above the rank of brigadier general, met behind closed doors with Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan on Sept. 24 to complain about Sharon. A group of reservists opposed to the Lebanon invasion addressed a petition to Sharon last week signed by 1,000 of them, including 150 officers, asking not to be sent to Lebanon.

Sharon has fanned suspicion that he is trying to evade responsibility for the massacre. During the Knesset debate two weeks ago on whether to conduct an official inquiry, the Defense Minister hinted that when the opposition Labor Party was in power in 1976 Israeli officers took part in a massacre of Palestinians by Lebanese Christians at the Tel Zaatar refugee camp near Beirut. Sharon clearly was sniping at Labor Party Leader Shimon Peres, who was then Defense Minister, and not at the army, but I.D.F. officers familiar with the matter issued angry denials.

Sharon then said on Israeli television that he had decided not to call up a reserve brigade during the Lebanon invasion because he was afraid that antiwar sentiment in the ranks would blunt the unit's effectiveness. Members of the brigade denounced the charge and pointed out that they had indeed been summoned to the front.

Even before the Beirut massacre, many Israeli soldiers felt that the I.D.F. was beginning to forget its middle name. For the past 15 years, the I.D.F. has been mainly an army of occupation, with thousands of troops tied down in the restive West Bank, Gaza Strip and Golan Heights. Israeli soldiers last April were forced to perform the anguishing task of evicting Jewish settlers from the northern Sinai town of Yamit as part of the 1979 Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty. When Israeli tanks rolled into Lebanon last June, many soldiers expected that campaign to last only a few days. Four months later, with 335 Israeli troops dead and 2,000 injured, many in the invasion force are questioning the utility of that mission. As one enlisted man in Beirut put it last week, "What are we doing here? We have no business being involved with these people. It's time to go home."

The widespread grumbling among the military worries some Israeli officials. "It's inconceivable to have officers who will not agree to carry out the orders of the Cabinet," says an aide to Prime Minister Menachem Begin. "Whatever you think of Sharon, you can't say you're not ready to listen to his orders." No one, of course, is accusing the soldiers of insubordination, and most Israelis have grown used to grumbling within the armed forces.

The reason is that the I.D.F. is truly a people's army. All men who reach the age of 18 must serve for three years and then remain in the reserves until age 55. "When you have two-thirds of the army in reserves and professional officers serving under more senior reserve officers, there is a blurring of the boundary between military and civilian life," says Dan Horowitz, a political scientist at Jerusalem's Hebrew University.

Indeed, the I.D.F. has from the start been animated by the same righteous anger and high moral purpose that has guided Israel through its tumultuous history. If the I.D.F. is a troubled force in the wake of the Lebanon campaign, so is the nation at large.

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