Two weeks ago it was a sledgehammer. Today it’s a cigarette. The same village in southern Lebanon, Debel. A different soldier, a different gesture, and the same question lingers.

A man in military uniform stood in front of a statue of the mother of Jesus and placed a cigarette between her stone lips. Someone with him took a picture. The picture was kept, then shared, then surfaced online weeks later. Each step was intentional.

The IDF says it views the incident gravely. The soldier will be disciplined. I am grateful for the quick response, and I trust it will be carried out. I want to write about something else. I want to write about what makes a soldier decide, even for a moment, that this is something worth doing.

Not all soldiers. Not most. Such acts shock the Israeli public as much as they shock the world, precisely because they violate the ethos the IDF teaches and most soldiers live by. And live by it they have. The men and women of the IDF have left their families and their children, sacrificed months of their lives, and gone back to the war again and again in defense of our Land, our State, and our people. The vast majority have remained moral and upright through all of it: carrying their weapons with seriousness, their consciences heavier than their gear. I know them. They are my family and my friends. I have prayed with them and for them. They all carry the cost of what the country has asked of them. What I am thinking about is the few, and what the few tell us about what a long war does to a soldier’s soul.

The Torah is not naive about........

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