Lapid’s words come against the backdrop of an emerging hard-right coalition government led by Benjamin Netanyahu that will include members of the far right, where there have been calls to loosen the army’s rules of engagement.
Addressing cadets who completed the officers’ course at Bahad 1, the Israel Defence Forces officers’ school in southern Israel, Lapid said that the IDF will be confronted with “calls to use force without laws, without rules, without adherence to the model of a law-abiding army.”
“These calls weaken Israeli society and the IDF,” Lapid said. “The fact that we are a proper democracy with rules and laws is not a limit on our power, it is the source of our power. It is something that differentiates us from our enemies. If we aren’t different from them, we won’t beat them,” he added.
“If the IDF is not an army of morals that protects the law, it won’t draft the best soldiers and commanders to its service.” READ MORE
