![\"Sgt](\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/Sgt-Guy-Levy.png\")
<\/a>Sgt Guy Levy: murdered by the IDF to prevent his being used as a bargaining chip by Hamas. Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n
Tonight, my Israeli source informed me that Sgt. Guy Levy<\/span><\/a>,<\/strong><\/span> serving in the armored corps, was captured\u00a0by Hamas fighters. \u00a0He had been part of a joint engineering-armored-combat unit searching for tunnels. \u00a0Troops\u00a0entered a structure and discovered a tunnel. \u00a0Suddenly, out of the shaft sprang two militants who dragged one of the soldiers into it. \u00a0By return fire, one of the Palestinians was killed, while the other fled, presumably with the soldier.<\/span><\/p>\n This Israeli report<\/strong><\/span>,<\/span><\/a> which was censored by the IDF, says only that the attempt to capture the soldier failed. \u00a0It says nothing about his fate. \u00a0The expectation of anyone reading it would be that the soldier was freed. \u00a0But he was not. \u00a0In order to prevent the\u00a0success of the operation, the IDF killed him. \u00a0Nana reports that the IDF fired a tank shell into the building, which is the same way another captured soldier was killed by the IDF during Cast Lead.<\/span><\/p>\n I would presume that once the militant fled into the tunnel with his prisoner that the IDF destroyed the tunnel and entombed those within it, including the soldier. \u00a0I would also presume that the IDF knows he is dead because they retrieved his body.<\/span><\/p>\n To the uninitiated this will seem a terribly strange, uncivilized, even immoral act. \u00a0But that\u2019s where I learned something I\u2019d never known before about the IDF. \u00a0There is an unwritten secret regulation written by the IDF High Command, but nowhere codified in writing. \u00a0Its existence is protected by military censorship. \u00a0Journalists have rarely written about it. \u00a0When they have it\u2019s usually been in code or by inference.<\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s called the Hannibal Directive<\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/span>. \u00a0Though the Wikipedia article doesn\u2019t explain the reference to Hannibal, I assume it relates to the death of the great Carthaginian general, who took poison rather than allow himself to be captured by his mortal enemy, the Romans. \u00a0Though Sara Leibovich-Dar wrote in 2003<\/span><\/a> that the name came from a military computer!<\/span><\/p>\n In my long history of dedication to this subject, I\u2019ve rarely seen anything that has disturbed me as much. \u00a0The Hannibal Directive is:<\/span><\/p>\n \u2026A\u00a0secret directive of the\u00a0Israel Defense Forces<\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/span>\u00a0with the purpose of preventing Israeli soldiers being captured by enemy forces in the course of combat.<\/span><\/p>\n \u2026The order, drawn up in 1986 by a group of top Israeli officers, states that at the time of a kidnapping the main mission becomes forcing the release of the abducted soldiers from their kidnappers, even if that means injury to Israeli soldiers.<\/span><\/p>\n The order allows commanders to take whatever action is necessary, including endangering the life of an abducted soldier, to foil the abduction\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n As happens so often in these cases, an IDF commander instrumental in drafting the order denied the horrific logic of the directive and then offered an example of how he would proceed which only confirmed it:<\/span><\/p>\n In a rare interview by one of the authors of the directive, Yossi Peled\u2026denied that it implied a blanket order to kill Israeli soldiers rather than let them be captured by enemy forces. The order only allowed the army to risk the life of a captured soldier, not to take it. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t drop a one-ton bomb on the vehicle, but I would hit it with a tank shell<\/em>\u201d, Peled was quoted saying. He added that he personally \u201cwould rather be shot than fall into Hizbullah captivity.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n In other words, the IDF will do almost everything in its power to prevent capture of its soldiers including killing him. \u00a0It might not put a bullet directly in his brain, but it would certainly shell a home or vehicle in which he was situated.<\/span><\/p>\n Perhaps there\u2019s a lingering bit of the liberal Zionist I once was here, but I\u2019d always heard that Israel never leaves a soldier behind. \u00a0It does everything possible to bring all its troops home, and once captured does everything possible to retrieve or free them.<\/span><\/p>\n All this time I was sorely mistaken. \u00a0When all hope is lost of liberating the soldier from captivity, he dies. \u00a0What\u2019s equally disturbing is that the existence of the directive is an open secret. \u00a0Commanders warn their soldiers that no one may be captured and that if you are you must commit suicide. \u00a0If you can\u2019t do that, then they will do their best to kill you. \u00a0Perhaps they don\u2019t articulate it precisely in those words, but that\u2019s the clear intent.<\/span><\/p>\n Lest you think Hannibal is a theoretical regulation, it has been implemented before and captured soldiers have been killed by the IDF. \u00a0Most recently it happened<\/strong> during Operation Cast Lead<\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n During the war there was a case where the Hannibal directive was invoked. An Israeli soldier was shot and injured by a Hamas fighter during a search of a house in one of the neighborhoods of Gaza. The wounded soldiers\u2019 comrades evacuated the house due to fears that it was booby-trapped. According to testimony by soldiers who took part in the incident the house was then shelled to prevent the wounded soldier from being captured by Hamas.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n You have every right to ask: what soldier in his right mind would follow such an order. \u00a0There are thankfully examples of ones who refused. \u00a0But there are a number who didn\u2019t including the tank commander who fired on his comrade in that home in Gaza, killing him.<\/span><\/p>\n You also have a right to ask how the IDF could approve such a regulation. \u00a0The answer is it didn\u2019t. \u00a0It has never been vetted by military lawyers. \u00a0If it had been, the High Command might\u2019ve been told it was an illegal, immoral directive which had no standing. \u00a0Then the IDF would have to implement an order its highest legal authorities had deemed treif. \u00a0That would never do. \u00a0So neither the generals, nor the Judge Advocate has ever delved into the matter. \u00a0It is yet another example of the national security state refusing to examine the deepest, most troubling principles on which it is based.<\/span><\/p>\n Implementation of the Hannibal Directive comes on the heels of the freeing of Gilad Shalit after five years in captivity. \u00a0The nation freed 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in order to release Shalit. \u00a0Israeli hardliners screamed bloody murder about freeing murderers with blood on their hands. \u00a0Some said it would have been better if Shalit had died rather than face this ignominy.<\/span><\/p>\n I believe that Benny Gantz and Bibi Netanyahu aren\u2019t prepared to go through such a trauma again. \u00a0They believe their constituency would understand if they killed a soldier rather than lose him to capture. \u00a0Let\u2019s make no mistake about this: it is a purely political calculation. \u00a0A nakedly, cynical political calculation. \u00a0It suggests that the interests of the nation trump the life of the individual. \u00a0These are considerations of an authoritarian state and not a democratic one. \u00a0A democracy values the individual. \u00a0It recognizes that the nation cannot exist without the individual. \u00a0Even that the nation should not exist unless it respects and values that individual.<\/span><\/p>\n The Hannibal Directive perverts such principles. \u00a0It embraces a fascist perspective in which the individual is subsumed within the mass. \u00a0He has no specific individual value unless he is serving the interest of the nation. \u00a0And his interests may, when necessary be sacrificed to the greater good.<\/span><\/p>\n I thank Dvorit Shargel for raising an important, and thorny issue. She implored me to consider the trauma of Levy\u2019s family hearing their son was killed not by Palestinian fire, which would be painful enough, but by his own comrades.<\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s very doubtful the IDF would tell the family the truth unless it had no other choice. So then the question is, should we allow the IDF to lie just to cover up the use of the Hannibal directive and allow the family to believe he was killed by the enemy instead of his own?<\/span><\/p>\n My answer to this reluctantly is No. The greatest good is served by transparency. By knowing the truth, telling the truth, forcing everyone involved to explain what they did and why. Secrecy and pandering helps no one, even the dead soldiers\u2019s family. I am sorry if this causes them added suffering. But blaming me is blaming the messenger not the real culprit.<\/span><\/p>\n Here is some of the discussion around the matter conducted by military ethicists (if there can be such a thing):<\/span><\/p>\n Dr. Avner Shiftan, an army physician with the rank of major, came across the Hannibal directive while on reserve duty in South Lebanon in 1999. In army briefings he \u201cbecame aware of a procedure ordering soldiers to kill any IDF soldier if he should be taken captive by Hizbullah. This procedure struck me as being illegal and not consistent with the moral code of the IDF. I understood that it was not a local procedure but originated in the General Staff, and had the feeling that a direct approach to the army authorities would be of no avail, but would end in a cover-up.\u201d He contacted\u00a0Asa<\/strong> Kasher<\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/a>, the Israeli philosopher noted for his authorship of\u00a0Israel Defense Forces\u2019 Code of Conduct<\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/span>, who \u201cfound it difficult to believe that such an order exists,\u201d since this \u201cis wrong ethically, legally and morally\u201d. He doubted that \u201cthere is anyone in the army\u201d believing that `better a dead soldier than an abducted soldier\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n On this point however Asa Kasher was apparently wrong. In 1999 the\u00a0IDF Chief of Staff<\/span><\/a>Shaul Mofaz<\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/span>\u00a0said in an interview with Israeli daily\u00a0Yedioth Ahronot<\/strong><\/span>h<\/span><\/a>: \u201cIn certain senses, with all the pain that saying this entails, an abducted soldier, in contrast to a soldier who has been killed, is a national problem.\u201d Asked whether he was referring to cases like\u00a0Ron Arad<\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/span>\u00a0(an Air Force navigator captured in 1986) and\u00a0Nachshon<\/strong> Wachsman<\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/span>(an abducted soldier killed in 1994 in a failed rescue attempt), he replied \u201cdefinitely, and not only.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n The legality of the order has never formally been examined by the IDF\u2019s legal department. According to Prof.\u00a0Emanuel Gross<\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/span>, from the Faculty of Law at the University of Haifa:\u2026\u201dOrders like that have to go through the filter of the Military Advocate General\u2019s Office, and if they were not involved that is very grave,\u201d he says. \u201cThe reason is that an order that knowingly permits the death of soldiers to be brought about, even if the intentions were different, carries a black flag and is a flagrantly illegal order that undermines the most central values of our social norms.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n I hate to harp on this, but liberal Zionists enjoy claiming Israel is a nation of laws. \u00a0That is upholds the rule of law. \u00a0But this is clearly not the case. \u00a0No democratic nation would permit such a directive after undergoing legal review. \u00a0So the answer in Israel is simply to prevent it from undergoing any such review. \u00a0It allows the flourishing of a secret code that governs critical aspects of the Israeli military.<\/span><\/p>\n\n
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