Avi Feiglin, the son of former Likud MK Moshe Feiglin, was removed from combat duty in the Kfir infantry battalion on Monday and given a probationary military prison sentence after posting a message to Facebook over the weekend calling on IDF soldiers to refuse orders.
Lamenting the IDF's policy of "knowingly endangering soldiers' lives" by using them "as bait to catch a terrorist," Avi Feiglin said that he plans to refuse orders if told by his commanders to "contain disturbances, with all that this entails, until things change."
The IDF said in a statement: "After an inquiry, the soldier's commanders decided to court-martial him. The IDF views in a grave light and condemns all calls by soldiers to refuse orders. The soldier was discharged from combat duty, found guilty and given a probationary prison sentence."
In an emotional Facebook post decrying the recent deaths of a number of soldiers, Avi Feiglin wrote: "I call on every combat soldier here on Facebook, or anyone you know, to refuse orders too. This is not an act of cowardice, but rather an act of genuine concern for our continued legitimacy as a sovereign nation. My life and your lives aren't worth the morality blanket that [IDF Chief of Staff Gadi] Eizenkot snuggles with at night."
His father, Moshe Feiglin, who currently leads the far-right Zehut party, shared the post on Saturday evening and expressed support for his son.
"Most of the IDF soldiers who have been killed in recent years were killed because the safety of a hostile population was prioritized over the lives of our sons," he wrote on his own Facebook page.
"Instead of warning the population and calling on it to leave the area, and then wiping it out from the air, our soldiers are sent into the alleyways and tunnels," he continued. "Instead of drawing a line and cutting down anyone who crosses it, the soldiers are sent to deal with civilians and to get shot at from afar by snipers. Instead of eliminating terrorist cells that launch incendiary kites, they let the south burn."
Recalling his tenure in the Knesset, Moshe Feiglin went on to say that "as a member of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, I objected to sending ground forces into Gaza during Operation Protective Edge [in 2014]. If you don't intend to win, don't play life and death games with our children's lives."
As for his son's decision, Moshe Feiglin wrote: "All the friendly fire is going to be directed at him now – my son. But let every Jewish mother know: There are brave, responsible soldiers out there right now doing everything they can to save their sons from the senior military command, which cares more about the International Criminal Court in The Hague than about protecting the lives of the soldiers under their command."
In his post, Avi Feiglin revealed that a platoon commander in the Haruv infantry battalion boasted to his soldiers about a past operation he had led in Gush Etzion, in Judea and Samaria. The mission was to counter a violent riot from a Palestinian village near Kibbutz Migdal Oz, in which the soldiers killed a terrorist. Avi, however, described the operation as "impotent."
"The purpose of the mission was to shoot the terrorist in the leg in order to apprehend him. The platoon commander didn't know if there was one shooter or more, which raises the question that if one terrorist was hit in the leg it would mean the second could realize [the soldiers] didn't want to kill them. Which would encourage him to open fire on the soldiers [which almost happened before the sergeant shot him]," he wrote.
"Aside from all the things that could have gone wrong, like the [sergeant's] weapon jamming or missing the terrorist who had picked the weapon up from the floor, the snipers are instructed to aim at the legs instead of center mass – a much harder target, which means that if the terrorist was quick enough he would have opened fire on our soldiers," Avi Feiglin continued.
"More than any of the other wrongs in this story, two things make me the angriest: 1) They used the soldiers as bait to catch a terrorist, not to kill him; and 2) standing before us was a Haruv platoon commander … presenting the operation to us as battle heritage, as an operational success. This platoon commander belongs in civilian prison after dismissal from the IDF, along with the rest of the chain of command that authorized this mission.
"I'm still a soldier in mandatory service and as long as my blood and the blood of my friends is forfeit in the name of political correctness and the high command and government's twisted/dismal ethical priorities – I intend to refuse orders," he wrote.
