IDF Chief Dismisses Officer Who Hit Danish Activist
IDF Lt. Col. Shaul Eisner, who was filmed over the weekend hitting a Danish protester with his rifle butt in the Jordan Valley, was dismissed from his position on Wednesday.
IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz decided to dismiss Eisner, after the recommendations of GOC Central Command Nitzan Alon and Sami Turgeman, commander of the Israel Defense Forces’ ground forces, on the grounds that the attack was a “moral failure.”
Gantz said that an investigation into the incident revealed operational failures in the preparation of IDF soldiers for the protest bike ride in which the activist took part as well as in the soldiers’ handling of the confrontation that erupted.
Eisner, who was due to receive the rank of first lieutenant, will be transferred to a senior staff position and will be barred from carrying out any command position in the IDF in the next two years. Starting 2014, Einser will be able to return to a command position, should he fulfill the necessary requirements.
Video footage posted on YouTube showed Eisner, deputy commander of the IDF’s Jordan Valley brigade, striking Danish activist Andreas Ias in the face with an M-16 rifle during a cycle rally near Jericho in the West Bank.
Watch the video (content is graphic):
Read more on Haaretz.com
The Forward is free to read but not free to produce
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
