In recent months, CAMERA has hosted numerous events featuring senior Israel Defense Forces (IDF) personnel, who shared their experiences of the ethical challenges they face during their service.
Yeshiva University’s Israel Club, a CAMERA-supported group, hosted Colonel Benzi Gruber (res.), a vice commander of an IDF division. He is involved in the training of soldiers, which includes discussions and sessions about how to deal with complex moral situations. The IDF has a detailed Code of Ethics which guides the conduct of their soldiers, both in regular service, as well as during wartime. Colonel Gruber showed clips depicting various situations soldiers find themselves in, in order to demonstrate just how difficult some of the situations are, and how little time there is to make decisions. Colonel Gruber is the founder of the organization “Ethics in the Field,” which educates about this topic, and he personally lectures frequently in Israel and around the world about IDF ethics. He has also appeared on major US television networks to defend IDF conduct during military operations.
On the same day, the Friends of Israel Club at Rockland Community College, another CAMERA-supported group, hosted Sergeant Benjamin Anthony. Sergeant Anthony founded “Our Soldiers Speak,” which brings the stories of Israeli soldiers to student and military audiences in the USA. In a powerful address, Sergeant Anthony, who was heavily involved in the Second Lebanon War in 2006, described some of the situations IDF soldiers find themselves in. Both events gave students, sitting in their classrooms, first hand accounts of the high ethical standards that the IDF sets for itself in the complicated battlegrounds of the Middle East.
