Genetics and Religion in the Identification of Dead Soldiers Bodies Meira Weiss, Ph.D.

Department of Sociology and Anthropology Hebrew University of Jerusalem Mount Scopus Jerusalem 91905 E-mail: msmeira@mscc.huji.ac.il

Meira Weiss is a Professor of Anthropology specializing in medical anthropology, cultural studies, and Israeli society. She has published many articles on topics such as gender, militarism, and individualism and collectivism. Her book "The Chosen Body: The Politics of the Body in Israeli Society" was published by Stanford UP (2002). Her current project builds on a comprehensive ethnographic study of the National Israeli Institute of Forensic Medicine.

E-mail: msmeira@mscc.huji.ac.il

M Weiss, dead soldier Genetics and Religion in the Identification of Dead Soldiers Bodies

Abstract This paper offers an ethnographic analysis of the conflict surrounding the identification of Israeli soldiers, which is being performed both scientifically (by the Institute of Forensic Medicine) and religiously (by the army rabbinate). Despite the Institutes claims for superior objectivity and accuracy, it is the army rabbinate that has the final authority over identification and burial. The paper discusses cultural and organizational aspects of the conflict over identification, and explores related issues such as DNA repositories. It is argued that Israeli and Jewish identities, although sometimes discursively (politically) separated, are still closely tied in more fundamental, non-discursive practices of body identification. This traditional fusion, however, has been recently challenged by public and civil discontent with the performance of both the chaplaincy and the Institute.

M Weiss, dead soldier Genetics and Religion in the Identification of Soldiers Bodies

In this paper I discuss the entangled and turbid relationships between genetics and religion in the context of soldiers identification. My two dramatis personae are the Institute (the agent of genetic and bioscience knowledge) and the army chaplaincy (the guardian of Jewish tradition within the Israeli Forces). While the chaplaincy is bestowed by the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) with supreme authority over all cases of identification and exhumation of soldiers and MIAs (Missing in Action), the Institute possesses the technology that enables scientific and hence reliable identification. The data that appear here are based on interviews and observations I conducted in the Israeli National Institute of Forensic Medicine during 1996-2005, and supplemented by narrative analysis of media texts. The on-going competition between the Institute and the chaplaincy has recently re-surfaced through what is widely known in Israel as the naval commando scandal. This exemplary scenario will serve as a point of departure for the ensuing analysis.

The Naval Commando Scandal: Misidentification of Soldiers Bodies

Guy Golan and Raz Tebi were two of the 12 soldiers killed in a botched naval commando raid in Lebanon on September 4, 1997. The remains of most of the soldiers were returned and buried immediately. However, the body of MIA Itamar Ilya was brought back by the Hizbullah (the terrorist group that ambushed the soldiers) only nine months later, on June 26, 1998. Body parts of other soldiers in the unit were returned together with Ilya's. The chaplaincy identified them as belonging to Tebi and Golan, and the army secretly deposited the parts, which they thought belonged to each body in their respective graves, outside the casket. The Golan family and Nachshon Tebi (Raz Tebis father) petitioned the High Court of Justice,

M Weiss, dead soldier demanding that the army reopen the graves and perform DNA tests on the body parts to see whether they had been correctly identified. They also demanded that the army give them a proper burial. Golan's grave was the first to be reopened. DNA tests and dental tests at the National

Forensic Institute proved that the body parts deposited outside the casket belonged to Raz Tebi and not to Guy Golan, as the army had believed. Golans father then called for the opening of Raz Tebi's grave to see whether his son's remains had been buried there, but Nachshon Tebi refused. He demanded that the army first apologize to him for the distress it had caused. After the army negotiated the wording of an apology with Tebi, he reneged on his initial agreement. It should be noted that the opening up of graves is considered a serious violation of Jewish law and a desecration of the dead body. The Golan family tried to persuade Tebi to change his mind. When they failed, they petitioned the High Court once again, and it ruled in their favor. The scandal, however, left a bitter taste and a committee was convened by the Chief of Staff in order to investigate the failure, and particularly the role of the chaplaincy in it. As I explain below, this scandal which was neither the first nor the last exemplifies the inherent conflict between the chaplaincy and the Institute over who is to have the authority of identification.

The Institute and the Chaplaincy Located in Tel-Aviv, the Institute of Forensic Medicine is a terminus of bodies in need of identification or examination. It is an intriguing meeting ground for different, almost opposite approaches to the body. On the one hand, it is a scientific Institute, affiliated with the Sackler School of Medicine (Tel-Aviv University) and operating a state-of-the-art genetic laboratory. On the other hand, it is also closely inspected by the chevra kadisha (Aramic for "holy society"), the religious undertaking organization that, except in the army and kibbutzim, has a monopoly on burials. On the one hand the Institute is a civil organization working under

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the Ministry of Health. On the other hand, military life penetrates the Institute in various ways; the majority of bodies come from the military and most of the physicians have had a career in the medical corps. Forensic medicine has a special role in policing. Historically, it has been largely constituted as a judicial aid. The Outline of Forensic Medicine, written by the physician Johann Valentin Muller in 1796, exemplified the attitudes of medicine toward those who sinned against convention (Mosse, 1996, p. 29). For example, forensic physicians were occupied with identifying outward signs of homosexuality and excess masturbation (onanism) -- condemned and prohibited by the Church and the State alike. According to Mosse (1996, p. 27), forensic medicine came to the aid of judges and juries trying to enforce the laws against sodomy by developing a stereotype for use in identifying homosexuals. Homosexuality, incidentally, was viewed as dangerous to the health of the state. Ambroise Tardieu, in his Crimes Against Morals from the Viewpoint of Forensic Medicine (1857), stressed a feminine appearance and diseased body as outward signs in a male homosexual. In modern Israeli military, physicians serving in the army medical corpses similarly serve as the gate-keepers of Israeli masculinity by selecting and grading prospective recruits and further selecting those who volunteer to elite units. The Institute of Forensic Medicine conducts tests in order to identify bodies and physical violence. Despite having been created to support the state authorities, the Institute also operates as a guardian of human rights, often in the context of minorities (e.g., prisoners, terrorists, infants, the elderly, and victims of rape). The cases examined in the Institute, the nature of its practice and the applicability of its findings, are directly connected to breaches in Israeli society, in particular to nationalistic, religious and ethnic breaches. One of my most startling findings was that the handling of bodies in the Institute reflected the boundaries of collective identity in Israel. Jews versus non-Jews was the first

M Weiss, dead soldier dichotomy according to which bodies are handled. If the body is not circumcised, all procedures are halted until it is found out whether or not the dead person is registered as Jewish. Mistakes are known to occur, and the staff takes special care not to mislead Chevra Kadisha so that non-Jews get buried in a Jewish cemetery. If it is found that the dead person is Jewish, but for some reason is also not circumcised, Chevra Kadisha people take it upon

themselves to circumcise the body, usually without notifying the relatives. There are additional ways to "correct" the Jewish body after death. A prevalent example are tattoos related to Christianity (usually a cross). The Institute has a special laser equipment designed to remove such tattoos and it does so with no charge. In one case, the family of a drug addict with a cross tattooed on his back gave permission to dissect provided that the tattoo be removed: "we want him to die like a Jew," was the family's justification. Another prominent example of correcting the Jewish body, or keeping it perfect, is the returning of tissues to the grave. Once a week an elderly employee of Chevra Kadisha arrives at the Institute. His sole responsibility is to collect tissues that were taken from the body for histological tests, and return them to the grave. These three procedures - circumcision, tattoo removal, and tissue burial - were performed only for Jews. The second, and more stringent dichotomy, is between soldiers and non-soldiers. The bodies of soldiers are kept apart and handled almost ceremonially. It is forbidden, under all circumstances, to take body tissues from soldiers. The "skin bank," available for soldiers in need of transplants, contains the skin of bodies of Arabs killed by the military. The Institute staff speaks with nostalgia on the time of the Intifada (the Palestinian uprising), when skin was readily available. Today, since the peace process and the mass immigration from Russia, "the new rabbits are lonely Russian immigrants," says one of the Institute medical staff. Many of the Institute workers have stressed in interviews how soldiers should be kept "untouched": "the soldier is a hero... his body is sacred. We must not touch it, we must not take away anything...

M Weiss, dead soldier His mother must be able to recognize him. He is one of us." broadly speaking, the ceremonial handling of the soldier's body follows the traditional Jewish commandment to honor the dead

(kvod ha-met). In this manner, there is a continuity between Jewish and Israeli customs as far as the dead body is concerned. More precisely, Israeli culture (blatantly exemplified in the Institute) follows and even adds to the Jewish tradition as far as soldiers are concerned. One of the prosectors told me that for soldiers he uses special skin-color string so that the stitches can be camouflaged." The transplanting of Arabic skin to wounded soldiers, in contrast, was justified by the Institute's physicians on the ground that "it does not stay there for ever - it is not exactly a transplant; there is no tissue match. After a few weeks, the Arabic skin falls off. It is like an envelope, or clothes, or a bandage that comes off." The soldier, being the chosen Jewish body, must not be contaminated by non-Jewish tissue. If Jewish bodies stand for "us," soldiers are "the best of us," cream of the cream, the chosen bodies of the chosen people. Their body is not only kept untouched, it is being perfected. It is this ideological mission of preserving the wholeness of the soldier's body which is behind the common avoidance of dissection. Although without dissection it is impossible to know for sure the cause of death, the army now requires the family's permission for performing dissection.

The Chaplaincy and the Role of Religion in the IDF As Stewart Cohen (1999, p. 387) aptly summarized it, the role of religion in Israeli military service is so inherently complex that it resists classification in accordance with conventional paradigms. Although certainly the military arm of a secular and liberal state, the IDF makes no attempt to confine religious themes to the domain of the army chaplain. Rather, traditional Jewish motifs are deliberately introduced into multiple areas of military life.1 One measure of that symbiosis is provided by the jurisdiction of the IDF rabbinate (in Hebrew: ha-

M Weiss, dead soldier rabbanut ha-tzeva'it). When originally constituted in 1949, this was merely a skeleton body, whose tasks were limited "to advising the Chief of Staff on religious affairs." Commanded by the army Chief Rabbi who holds the rank of major general, the IDF rabbinate is now a full-blown military formation. It possesses its own distinctive unit emblem (the two stone tablets of the Ten Commandments upheld by a sword) and its own tradition of battlefield valor (supplied by the exemplary service performed under fire by members of the chevra kadisha branch, whose task is to identify fatal casualties and bring them to burial). The military rabbinate is now also fully integrated into the army down to the battalion level and represented in every unit by a religious affairs officer or a religious affairs coordinator who attend to the religious needs of the unit and its soldiers. A bitter debate has been recently going on between the chaplaincy and the IDF. In the aftermath of the naval commando scandal, detractors accused that the scandal of misidentification was not coincidental but the tip of an iceberg. Accusations were pointed at the

chaplaincys commander in charge, who led it for the last 22 years: Maj.-Gen. Gad Navon, who is presently around 80 year old. Navon has been warned by the committee investigating the Golan-Tebi case that his "good name" may be besmirched by the investigation's conclusions. It was Navon who decided to bury the body parts without properly identifying them or informing the parents.

DNA repositories: an Overview Following the misidentification of the body parts of Tebi and Golan, the two naval commandos killed in Lebanon, the IDF Chief of Staff suggested that every new IDF recruit leaves a saliva sample with the army for identification purposes. If DNA was taken from every soldier, the argument ran, there would be no chance of wrongly identifying bodies or body parts. In August 1999, Israeli Police Inspector General also suggested that legislation be drawn

M Weiss, dead soldier up to enable the establishment of a DNA data bank. This suggestion was raised following the

capture of a serial rapist who terrorized the center of Israel for a long time The police initiative complemented the earlier suggestion raised by the IDF. Yet as attractive as DNA data banks may appear to the police and the army, the idea also opens up a moral and ethical discussion. Since the first DNA identification of a rapist by a British geneticist in 1983, DNA testing has spread out into the sphere of public surveillance. It appeals to military, law enforcement and other governmental authorities. In 1990, the U.S. congress authorized and funded a military program for the collection of blood and tissue for DNA testing of all military personnel. The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) began collecting blood and tissue from every person in the military in 1992. The tissues are stored in the DODs DNA repository in Gaithersburg, Maryland, the largest DNA bank in the world (by 2001 it will have over 4 million tissue samples). DNA samples are vacuum sealed and frozen to ensure their survival for at least 40 years. Each military personnel is provided with two sealed plastic cards that have a fingerprint, signature, blood stain and oral swab, and a barcode.2 In 1989, The Thatcher government in GB instituted a policy allowing officials to use DNA tests on immigrant applicants seeking to prove they have relatives in Britain. The practice of testing immigrants spread to Canada in 1991. Since 1995, all suspects and convicted criminals in England are required to deposit their DNA. In 1998, a senior member of the British police force called for a national DNA database of the entire population. In Israel, the Air Force is currently the only unit within the IDF which maintains a DNA bank (for pilots). The IDF is presently considering how to create and manage a DNA databank. Should we worry about DNA banks? tests are often a means to compare, homogenize, and exclude; in other words, a means of normalization in the service of power. Sociologists such as Kenneth Laudon (1986) warned against the dossier society, while Gary Marx (1988) looked suspiciously at the growing police surveillance in modern America.

M Weiss, dead soldier 10 There have been various disputes around the coerced implementation of DNA collection. illustrating the mistrust of DNA testing and of authorities in general. Such mistrust is not without rational grounds since DNA testing can be used for much more than positively identifying people. It can also tell who their relatives are, perhaps identify some of their personality traits, and project what illnesses they may contract later in life. This is not necessarily information that people want others to have access to. DNA data banks raise fundamental questions about one's right to privacy, which is not only the right to be left alone, but also the right to control the information others know about us. The situation in Israel, however, is far from being clear. There have been no cases of dispute regarding DNA testing of soldiers (living?) This is probably connected to the overall militarization of Israeli society, the common perception of the IDF as the peoples army, and the perpetual state of war and terrorism.3 The Israeli Bill of Genetic Information (2002) includes the right to confidenatiality; however, the police, army and the Institute for Forensic Medicine are allowed, under certain conditions, to force people to give a DNA sample.

Identification: DNA Testing and Jewish Religious Practice Religious demands in Israel require the identification process of the dead body to be completed in the shortest possible time, as burial must not be delayed. This requirement becomes particularly demanding in mass disasters, because of the sheer number of casualties who are often disfigured or fragmented as a result of the explosions. The Institute takes pride in its success in identifying within 24 hours the casualties of the 18 terrorist bombings that occurred in Israel between 1993-1996 (Kahana, Freund & Hiss, 1997, p. 2). The efficient and rapid completion of identification is enabled by a variety of techniques as well as the interdisciplinary collaboration of several agencies within and without the Institute. The

M Weiss, dead soldier 11 Institutes identification procedure comprises three main stages (the following description was adapted from Kahana, Freund & Hiss, 1997., p. 4-7).4 (1) Post-mortem data collection, in which the body or its remains are brought into the Institute, and pass through the following steps: (1a) Forensic external examination; the body is photographed, and clothes and personal belongings are removed after proper documentation. The pathologist and anthropologist examine the cadaver externally, recording a description of the injuries sustained and of individual characteristics.5 Body fluids and tissues are then sampled, labeled and delivered to the forensic biology lab on the second floor of the Institute, (1b) a team of odontologists or a forensic anthropologist prepare a dental chart and take Polaroid photos of the dentition, (1c) Fingerprints are taken, (1d) dental and whole body xrays are taken by forensic anthropologists and IDF technicians (1e) Documentation of internal injuries is carried out. All signs of surgical intervention and any other acquired or congenital pathology especially relevant to identification (such as gallstones or malformed kidneys), are recorded. When possible, facial tissue is cleaned and restored in order to spare the families feelings. Once the post-mortem file is completed, the body is taken to the storage area. (2) Re-association of body fragments. After all complete and partially complete bodies have been processed in the manner described above, the forensic team turns to any remaining body fragments. The team classifies, describes and photographs all the parts and take tissue samples for biological matching. Anatomical reconstruction is then attempted through physical matching of the torn parts. Those fragments that cannot be approximated by gross anatomical morphology are analyzed at the tissue level and matched by Phosphoglucomutase-1 (PGM) and DNA typing.6

M Weiss, dead soldier 12 (3) Identification. Bodies are now ready for identification, which is first attempted by comparing antemortem information and postmortem files. The comparison is performed by the relevant experts and ratified by a senior forensic pathologist, following rabbinical assent when applicable. Positive identification is established through at least one of the commonly recognized techniques, i.e., fingerprints,7 dental,8 radiographic, medical or biological methods, or by visual recognition of relatively well-preserved facial morphology.9 Once there is a positive match between antemortem (AM) and postmortem (PM) information, the family is asked to confirm the bodys identity. Bodies are viewed by the family in a reception room through a close-circuit video system, or if requested, through a viewing window that opens into the storage area. The viewing is done in the presence of a Rabbi, who ensures that the identification complies with Jewish religious requirements.10 The bereaved are permitted to view the victim for as long as they wish and as many times as they request, regardless of the time involved. The bodies of soldiers are kept apart and handled almost ceremonially. Samples taken from the body of soldiers are marked with an I (for IDF) so that their analysis is accelerated.. Dissection is not performed on soldiers without the familys consent. In addition, the Institute has consistently argued that all dead soldiers should be brought to the Institute, since military and medical pathologists are not eligible to determine the cause of death. This was also a source of debate since the transfer of dead soldiers to and from the Institute often caused a delay in their burial. In their correspondence with the medical authorities of the IDF, Institute representatives have stressed the unique authority of forensic medicine. Various reasons were used to argue that a dead soldier is always an enigma. From such a position of gate-keeping, this reasoning verges on the manufacturing of uncertainty. Among the reasons provided were the following:

M Weiss, dead soldier 13 (1) Soldiers in their 20s, who were selected according to the IDF profile system, cannot die a natural death as we find in adults. One should always treat their death with suspicion. (2) In victims of sabotage or warfare, determining the cause of death can be achieved only through dissection. (3) Determining the type of weapon which caused the death, the direction and range of the shot, the type of bullets that were shot all these can be achieved only through dissection. (4) To examine the quality of medical care given to the soldier before his death, dissection is again necessary. (5) In any event, identification of soldiers should be scientifically confirmed, and not be based solely on personal recognition, even if the latter is possible. This is crucial in order to avoid misidentification. These laconic articles cover a quarrel over authority. The military Rabbinate (chaplaincy) and the Forensic Institute are fighting, in Israel, over the authority to identify. Officially, that authority is in the hands of the chaplaincy. This is the source of intensive criticism from the Institute. Prof. Yehouda Hiss (Head of the Institute) said, in one of his public lectures in Tel-Aviv University, that nowhere in the western world is there another place where religious men are authorized to identify the bodies. This authority, which should have been reserved only to forensic specialists, was given in the IDF to Rabbis without forensic knowledge, who have no idea how to make a DNA profile. The funeral facility in the military hospital (Tel Hashomer) became an identification facility, without the necessary medical equipment. The incapability of the Rabbinate was, according the Prof. Hiss, behind the infamous failure in the Tebi-Golan case. To gain a broader view of these entangled

M Weiss, dead soldier 14 relationships, the Institute-Rabbinate debate should be viewed in the context of IDF and Jewish religion.

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DNA, Religion and Organizational Politics The relationships between the Institute and the chaplaincy crystallized around the idea of a DNA databank to be administered by the IDF. In November 1996, a discussion was conducted by the IDF regarding the plausibility of establishing a DNA bank of MIAs relatives. The discussion was prompted by a petition to the High Court of Justice made by a group of relatives of MIAs that had fallen in the War of Independence (1948) near Jerusalem. Their remains were buried in a tomb of the unknowns and have not been identified since. In the discussion it was decided that the Ministry of Defense would pay for the expenses while the Institute will collect and compare the DNA samples. All the material, once collected, will then be transferred to the chaplaincy that holds the final authority of identification. Should the chaplaincy be convinced that a reasonable basis has been established, it will confirm the exhumation of specific remains from the grave. The discussion illustrates a paradoxical situation for both the chaplaincy and the Institute. On the one hand, the rabbis have no knowledge in genetic fingerprinting, which provides the technological basis for the DNA bank. On the other hand, the rabbis possess the traditional authority over identification and exhumation. To give up their authority in this case would be to relinquish their position of power. The chaplaincy therefore finds itself in the paradoxical position of having to rule over genetic findings of which they know practically nothing. The tactical decision of the chaplaincy was to demand that it would have final responsibility in this case, as in all other cases that involve the exhumation and identification of MIAs.

M Weiss, dead soldier 16 The discussion raised other social and ethical aspects concerning the DNA databank. For example, there was a debate whether the issue was by definition military or civilian. The chaplaincy argued that it was a military issue since MIAs were involved. This argument secured their position of power since if the issue were to remain in the military, the chaplaincy would be responsible for it. The representative of the military justice department, in contrast, argued that taking blood samples from the relatives of MIAs is a civilian issue. The representatives of the Institute were quick to agree since if the issue were to be civilian, it would mean that responsibility rests with them. The representative of the police (forensic identification squad) noted that a clear announcement should be made that the DNA bank is to be used for identification of MIAs only, and not for any police purposes. This brings into the picture the whole issue of privacy rights and informed consent. The representatives of the Institute changed the subject and discussed the technical details of the operation. According to them, there were about 400 MIAs that needed to be identified, which meant at least two DNA samples (from the parents), followed by collection of ante-mortem information, exhumation and DNA comparison with the remains. The Institute representatives conclude that the task is almost Sysiphian and will require a lot of money. At this point the chaplaincy representative interfered and asked that limits will be drawn so that we will not have to deal tomorrow with hundreds of other requests for MIA identification. The military representative calmed him down by saying that there can be no exhumation without the chaplaincys authorization. Dr. Hiss interfered and said that in the U.S., forensic teams are exhuming remains from tombs of MIAs from the Vietnam and Korea Wars. It has become a routine, with no need (in the U.S.) to ask for religious permission every time a tomb is being opened. Dr. Hiss concluded that no exhumations should take place prior to the completion of the collection of all ante-mortem information about the MIAs.

M Weiss, dead soldier 17 A few months later, the Institute began to collect and store mitochondrial DNA from the maternal lineage of MIA relatives as well as nuclear (Y chromosome) DNA from the paternal lineage. A new problem suddenly emerged. The tomb turned out to be inside what is now a Muslim burial ground. Exhumation would require Muslim official permission. The issue was therefore passed on to higher political authorities within the government. In the meantime, DNA collection from MIA relatives continues.

The Jewish Connection The troubled relationships between the Institute and the Chaplaincy represent the clash of science and globalization with religion and local tradition. The Zionist reconstruction of Israeli identity is widely believed to hinge on a negation of all that is diasporic, Jewish and rabbinical, replacing it with masculinity and militarization. The IDF was to be the main organ of the new Judaism with muscles that was to be re-rooted in the land of Zion. An army Rabbinate is, in this context, an oxymoron. However, as this paper makes clear, the Rabbis are still important agents of identity, and their role is paradoxically secured by the military organization. I argue that while the Zionist split from the Jewish diaspora was discursively maintained, there was also a parallel axis of continuation between Israelis and their Jewish heritage. This axis of continuation is primarily non-discursive. It operates mainly through the body, through rituals and rites of passage that are inflicted on the body: the Brith (ritual circumcision), the Bar-Mitzva, marriage, and death, for example. The IDF rabbinate marks a non-discursive continuation between Israeli and Jewish identity.11 I call it non-discursive since it seems to hinge on a primordial, atavistic frame of mind that defies rational consideration. The monopoly of the religious Establishment in the burial and undertaking market, for example, is indisputably taken for granted. No burial can take place without the religious "Chevra Kadisha"

M Weiss, dead soldier 18 (Holy Society), except in kibbutzim. Chevra Kadisha, obviously, is bound by the Jewish religious code, which prescribes the exclusion of non-Jews outside the cemetery's fence. Any secular critique of this situation is conceived as profane, and dismissed as questioning the very foundations of Israeli existence. While the identification of dead soldiers is officially under the responsibility of the army chaplaincy, the Institute has long questioned this authority. It has consistently argued that all dead soldiers should be brought to the Institute, since military pathologists, let alone chaplains, are not eligible to determine the cause of death. This was also a source of debate since the transfer of dead soldiers to and from the Institute often caused a delay in their burial (which goes against Jewish law). Despite the Institutes persistent efforts to replace religious authority with genetic and biomedical expertise, Jewish tradition still dominates the public and bureaucratic aspects of military deaths. The IDF emphasizes its role as a "people's army" based on compulsory universal conscription of men and women (with the significant exception of Arab citizens). This role fits neatly with the conception of the IDF as an agent of Israeli socialization. David Ben-Gurion (1886-1973), Israel's first Prime Minister and Minister of Defense, was a major proponent of the military as an instrument of Zionist "nation building." The new State of Israel was presented as a Jewish State and a homeland for all Jews. The military was therefore to be Jewish, too. Thus, the entire IDF framework needed to be structured around a religious Jewish core. Besides addressing the specific requirements of troops who profess orthodox Jewish beliefs, Judaism also provided an integrative symbolic core for the IDF as a whole. This symbiosis between religion and military service is more pervasive than that experienced in other modern armed forces. Having been invested with authority over identification and other burial rites, the rabbinates unwillingness to give it up is quite understandable in organizational and political

M Weiss, dead soldier 19 terms. Furthermore, the Institutes claim for more valid, objective and scientific methods of identification is irrelevant in this debate. Indeed, any scientific claim for greater validity would be ruled out by religion, since religion is not about positivistic validity but rather about conformity to tradition. The old ways of tradition are not contested by modern science, because they do not stand on equal grounds with it.

The Civil Challenge to Traditional Collectivism: Concluding Remarks The army rabbinate reflects, in its existence and authority, the role of the peoples army as an agent of socialization. It reflects social values of integration, collectivism, and the melting-pot doctrine characteristic of Ben-Gurions nation-building era. The powerful fusion of Judaism (the rabbinate) and state authority (the military) explains the persistence of a situation in which identification is performed inefficiently and with many mistakes. How else could the public and the military system tolerate such a convoluted situation for so many years? In retrospect, it is almost absurd to think that forensic identification of body parts, some ravaged beyond recognition, was actually conducted by rabbis in accordance to traditional rules established hundreds of years ago. The explanation probably lies in the hegemony of collectivism, which the army rabbinate embodied. As a discourse, collectivism often hides its authority structures, seductively obscuring them as taken-for-granted, beyond refute and criticism. From Zionist thinkers to Israeli citizens, collectivism has been perceived not as threatening the autonomy of the individual but rather as an emancipating force. The basic Jewish-Israeli experience in the 20th century encompasses the transition from a state of dependency and dispersion in the diaspora to a state of sovereignty based on the existence of military and national power, which is therefore perceived as emancipatory. In Marxist terms, the long-lasting docility of Israeli citizens and combatants was also a form of false consciousness covering normative and ideological control over the individual.

M Weiss, dead soldier 20 But hasnt anything changed in Israeli society since the high collectivism of the 50s? Recent studies speak of a new Israeli multiculturalism and growing individualism. While the language of commitment (Bellah et al., 1985) has long pre-dominated Israeli society, an opposite language of the 'self-reliant individual' has emerged during the 80's (Eisenstadt, 1985; Lissak and Horowitz, 1989; Weiss, 2002)Those who live in Israel today feel the growing conflicts without the aid of academic research. Religious versus secular, rich versus poor, sectarian interests and collective identity, globalization and nationalism: all these conflicts loom large in Israel in the early 21st century. It is true that collectivism has lost much of its appeal today, especially in comparison with the nation-building era. However, Israeli society is still largely collectivist, since the identity of many of its Jewish citizens hinges on their identification with and commitment to national ideology. Moreover, individualistic phenomena co-exist with, and are even regulated by, the continuing search for collective identity in Israel (Weiss, 2002). Collective identity has remained significant as social glue even if collectivism has weakened and the distance among ethnic and religious/secular groups has grown. As long as this collectivism is sustained, the army rabbinate will preserve its authority over identification, and the Institute will continue to be the gatekeeper of Jewish identity. It is interesting, in this context, to perceive that the real challenge to the army rabbinate has come from without (the public) rather than from within the system (the Institute). The conflict surrounding identification took shape following the scandal of the misidentification of the naval commando soldiers. It was made a scandal, however, only because of the involvement of the media and especially the parents of the soldiers. No doubt many such scandals had happened before but were silenced and buried within the system. This public/civil challenge to the traditional collectivism embodied in the military has had various manifestations lately. Bereaved families and individuals have recently challenged the ways in which the military, for many years, camouflaged training accidents and standardized

M Weiss, dead soldier 21 commemorative rituals. Activities that have been taken-for-granted as part of the collective script were questioned and problematized for the first time. The public challenge to the chaplaincy does not spare the Institute. On the contrary, the Institute has become the target of the same criticism that has been directed towards the chaplaincy. In recent years, the Institute has been accused of illegally harvested organs from bodies without the informed consent of the family. In the case of Leutenant Zeev Buzaglo, an infantry soldier who died in an accident in 1997, his father, Dr. Chayim Buzaglo, who came to see the cadaver, noticed it had openings in the neck that were the result of an emergency operation. The father requested to see the military report of the accident, which he finally received after one year and a half. When he found there was no mention of any life-recovery operation in the report, the father complained to the police. The investigation never reached the court; the police officer conducting it had a long history of work relationships with the Institute. The Buzaglo family did not pursue the case further, but other families took their cases to court, and won. It therefore appears, in the final analysis, that in the public eye the gap between the chaplaincy and the Institute is not so large. Both are perceived by many as corrupt institutions that have ceased to fulfill their role as public servants. This realization is in itself an indication of the shift from a language of commitment to a language of self-reliance. Notes

For additional sociological sources on the IDF, see Cohen (1997); Ashkenazy (1994). The identification in 1998 of Michael Blassie served to highlight the importance of the DODs DNA bank. After CBS reported that the remains in the Tomb of the Unknowns might be Blassie's, the Pentagon was pressured by MIA (Missing in Action) organizations to exhume the remains for DNA testing. Mitochondrial DNA taken from the pelvis was compared with DNA from eight maternal relatives of Vietnam MIAs, and on June 29, 1998, the Pentagon announced that the DNA matched that taken from Michael Blassies mother. Lieutenant Blassie s remains were flown to Scott Air Force Base in Illinois and laid to rest with full military honors. The June 30, 1998 issue of the New York Times stated that "advances in genetic testing have made it highly unlikely that any set of remains can be called 'unknown' with absolute certainty." 3 Mordechai Halperin, a noted Israeli medical ethicist and head of the Schlesinger Institute for Jewish Medical Ethics at Jerusalem's Shaare Zedek Hospital, told The Jerusalem Post he sees no ethical problem with DNA typing, or with setting up a DNA data bank. Conversely, he told the newspaper he would be happy if, along with the identification number everyone gets at birth, everyone also gives a DNA sample. That way if there is a terrorist attack, the person can be identified, and if there is a crime, the police can solve it.
2

I am describing here the standard identification process and not the mass-casualties identification procedure, which is different. 5 Such individual characteristics may include, for example, scars, moles, tattoos and deformities. Genetic matching has recently proven extremely useful in identifying torn body fragments. New protocols have been implemented by the biological lab of the Institute to shorten the DNA typing procedure. The extraction of DNA from cadaver fragments is accomplished in record time of approximately 1 hour. DNA from blood samples of relatives of the missing persons is extracted using the Promega Wizard (TM) Genomic DNA Purification Kit. The entire procedure is completed in less than three hours. After the amplification process, which usually takes about two hours, the PCR products are typed (matched) and results are obtained within 2-3 hours. In Israel, all citizens who serve in the army have a dactilar record, which is taken on enrollment, as well as Polaroid facial pictures. This procedure was first implemented for male personnel in 1973 following the Yom Kippur War and in 1985 for female personnel. The police also has a computerized collection of fingerprints, of individuals who have been suspected of committing a crime.
8 Antemortem dental data is obtained from IDF records (which include a panorex radiograph, dental chart of all personnel since 1973), as well as from clinics and hospitals. 7 6

It is not a coincidence that visual identification is listed at the end. In the forensic sciences, such recognition is considered presumptive identification (see also Wagner & Freude, 1993). Under Jewish law, facial identification is accepted provided that the face is preserved. The Institutes staff regards such identification as probable, and seeks to confirm it through recognized techniques such as fingerprints, dental, radiographic, medical or biological methods. Out of a total of 146 cadavers in the years 1993-6, 60 were identified by visual recognition. In 62 per cent of these cases, the visual identification was later confirmed by scientific methods. The Halacha (Jewish religious code) states that the best identification is facial, particularly based on the forehead and the nose. Facial identification, moreover, is accountable only for the first three days after death. In addition, the halacha lists various significant marks of identification, such as six fingers or organ deformations (Chief Rabbi Eliyahu BakshiDoron, appearing before the national committee of casualty identification). 11 Another example of the non-discursive continuation to Judaism would be the non-discursive perception of the body among the Zionist pioneers. The pioneers messianic return to nature and to a 'religion of labor' resulted more in asceticism than sexual promiscuity. During the second and third waves of immigration, between 1904-1938, labor was eroticized in poems, literature and ideology, and the land of Israel depicted as a lover. Yet actual gender hierarchy remained largely unchanged and educational doctrines were puritanical. It was, in the apt words of Biale (1992:182), "erotic utopianism: the sublimation of sexual desire in the service of the nation." In this manner the Zionist ideology of sexuality was a continuation, rather than a break from, Jewish ideology.
10

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Biale, David. (1986). Power and Powerlessness in Jewish History. NY: Shocken Books. Biale, David. (1992). Eros and the Jews. NY: Basic books. Cohen, Stuart A. (1999). From integration to segregation: The role of religion in the IDF. Armed Forces and Society (3)387-405 Cohen, Stuart A. (1997). The Scroll or the Sword? Dilemmas of Religion and Israel London: Harwood Academic Press Military Service in

Eisenstadt, S.N. (1985). The Transformations of Israeli Society: An Essay in Interpretation. London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson.

Kahana, Tzipy, Maya Freund and Jehuda Hiss (1997). "Suicidal terrorist bombings in Israel identification of human remains," Journal of Forensic Sciences 42 (2), pp. 260264.

Laudon, K. (1986). The Dossier Society. NY: Columbia UP.

Lissak, Moshe & Dan Hurowitz. (1989). Trouble in Utopia. Albany: SUNY Press.

Marx, G. (1988). Undercover: Police Surveillance in America. Berkeley: U of California P.

Mosse, George. (1990). Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars. Oxford: Oxford UP. Mosse, George. (1996). The Image of Man: The Creation of Modern University Press. Masculinity. NY: Oxford

Nelkin, D. & L. Andrews. (1999). DNA Identification and Surveillance Creep. Pp. 191-209 Conrad & J. Gabe (Eds.), Sociological Perspectives on the New Genetics. Oxford: Blackwells.

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Weiss, Meira (2002). The chosen Body: The Politics of the Body in Israeli Society. Stanford University Press