Udi’s Code

Etgar Keret explains the finer points of the IDF’s Code of Ethics in this article.

A few days ago, the philosopher Assa Kasher, who had just finalised the Israel Defence Force’s Code of Ethics, paid me a visit on the television screen in the dentist’s waiting room and explained to me, in a nutshell, how it really works. The Code of Ethics, if I understood it right, says that a soldier can exert force and, under certain circumstances, can even cause suffering if he does it to protect his own safety or the safety of the citizens of Israel. An elderly woman sitting next to me, even more bored than I was, stared at the screen and said that was very good and if she wasn’t mistaken, the IDF was the only army in the world to take the trouble to “commission”, in her words, a code like that, and not from just any hack, but from a university professor.

The piece is very much in the style of Keret’s fiction–funny, sarcastic, well-observed. (Thanks to David for the link.)