’Israeli’ Soldiers Refuse to Secure Army Base in Occupied Golan

Local Editor

"Israel" sentenced on Monday thirteen soldiers from the Golani Brigade's 51st Battalion to 20 days in a military prison for refusing to secure an army base in the Occupied Golan Heights.

According to "Israeli" "Ynet" daily, two other soldiers from the same unit went AWOL.
The soldiers reportedly refused the order because they felt their commanders had punished them excessively.

The combatants said that over the past few months, their commanders had repeatedly canceled their vacations and confined them to the base over what the soldiers referred to as petty acts. This treatment led them to collectively refuse the order, the soldiers said.

It remains unclear whether the jailed soldiers will resume their service in the brigade.
Other soldiers from the brigade were eventually sent to secure the army base in the Golan.
"These are quality soldiers from a top unit within the battalion who felt they were being abused," a relative of one of the jailed soldiers said. "Over the past few months they have given their all at the exhausting and demanding brigade-level training exercise."

Another relative said some of the soldiers were confined to their base "because they did not get a good enough result in the 5,000-meter race, while others were confined to the base for not rolling their shirt sleeves adequately.

Last month, Ynet revealed that six commanders and combatants from a Golani Brigade auxiliary company were jailed for physical and mental abuse of soldiers, which spanned months. They were jailed for 14-21 day stretches. Soldiers' testimonies served as the basis for the charges brought against them.

According to testimonies, the company commander, a captain, would often swear at and humiliate his subordinates. "It was a habit for him to swear at his soldiers," one soldier said. "He even threw stones and hit a soldier in the back with a stick during one of the exercises."
A month earlier, five combatants and officers from the brigade's elite Egoz unit were dismissed, following an incident in which one of the soldiers urinated on the head of a fellow combatant while his comrades cheered him on and filmed the hazing ceremony with their cell phones.

Source: Ynet, Edited by website team