Former Likud MK and Zehut party head Moshe Feiglin said he supported his son after he was booted from his combat unit for calling for mass refusal of orders in a viral Facebook post.
"My son received a 10 day suspended prison term and was removed from combat duties, but I want to tell you that he is doing the greatest fighting that is needed today," said Feiglin in a video. "What he did in the past 24 hours, in the last 48 hours, is the real fighting over the lives of our soldiers, the life of our next recruits.
According to the veteran politician, "Most of the IDF fatalities in recent years are killed on the altar of a baseless ideology of sacrificing the lives of our soldiers for the benefit of a hostile population."
In a viral Facebook post last week, Avi Feiglin wrote that soldiers should not have to heed orders that endangered them in order to spare Arab lives. Feiglin related how, several months ago during a brigade educational evening, the commander of the Kfir Brigade's Haruv Battalion had talked about an operation he conducted that enabled Arabs to shoot at his soldiers during Operation Protective Edge in 2014 near the Gush Etzion community of Migdal Oz.
"The goal of the operation was to identify and capture terrorists who had routinely been shooting at soldiers containing riots in the area," Feiglin wrote. According to the plan, “The soldiers would handle the riot as usual, while snipers would be stationed at the entrance gate of Migdal Oz. When the snipers identified who was shooting at the soldiers during the riot, they would neutralize him with a bullet to the foot.”
Avi blasted the what he called the “impotent” plan, concluding, “More than all the injustices in this story, I am enraged by two things: 1) We used soldiers as bait to ‘catch’ a terrorist, not kill him. 2) Standing in front of us is a commander from the Charuv battalion, now a special unit, presenting the events as a war story, as an operational success. That commander’s place is in civilian jail after being booted from the IDF, and so also for the whole chain of command that approved this activity.”
Avi said he intended to refuse orders that endanger soldiers' lives "in the name of political correctness," and called on other soldiers to do the same.