Israel must face up to its soldiers' actions

When confronted by Saturday’s images of wounded Jenin resident Mujahed Abbadeh being strapped to the bonnet of an Israeli army vehicle and driven through the streets of his own town, the first reaction should be one of shock. For generations of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza however, such gratuitous forms of brutalisation are nothing new.

In February 1988, a video shot by Israeli cameraman Moshe Alpert during the First Intifada captured four soldiers using rocks to try and break the limbs of two Palestinian teenagers, an example of violent suppression masquerading as security policy. Fast forward three decades and the world is still seeing images of ill-treatment and humiliation being meted out to Palestinians by Israeli forces in the occupied territories.

After Hamas and other radical factions killed more than 1,200 Israelis and kidnapped hundreds more on October 7, the Israeli military response in Gaza has frequently and violently crossed the line. Tens of thousands of Palestinians – mostly civilians – are dead and there are many credible reports of violations of international law. A characteristic of the past nine months in Gaza and the West Bank has been the additional insult and dehumanisation meted out to Palestinians – often filmed and uploaded to social media sites by Israeli troops themselves.

The ransacking of Palestinian homes, taking selfies with blindfolded and handcuffed Palestinian detainees and bragging while destroying Gaza’s infrastructure are just some of the troubling incidents to have taken place. It was in Jenin – Mujahed Abaddeh’s town – that Israeli troops filmed themselves in December commandeering a mosque’s loudspeaker system to broadcast Jewish prayers in a blatant provocation to the city’s Muslim residents.

That incident led to the suspension of several soldiers, and the Israeli army has said it will also investigate Saturday’s events, adding that the “conduct of the forces in the video of the incident does not conform to the values” of the Israeli military. But how much stock can be put in such investigations, given the apparent impunity with which Israeli forces have been operating to date? As far back as February, Maj Gen Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, the army’s Military Advocate General, warned against “cases of unacceptable conduct” in Gaza, adding that some incidents went “beyond the disciplinary domain, and cross the criminal threshold”. Given what has happened since, her warning appears to have gone unheeded.

According to a report from AP on June 3, the Israeli authorities are investigating close to 70 cases of alleged infractions by its armed forces. Time will tell if these result in punitive action against soldiers found to have done wrong, but thus far admissions of guilt have been rare – the dismissal of two officers and reprimanding of three more for April’s deadly drone strike that killed seven international World Central Kitchen aid workers in Gaza has been a rare exception.

Others have suggested the problem is not solely one of ill-discipline among individual soldiers but is more systemic in nature. As far back as 2017, Israeli NGO B’Tselem was warning that the army’s justice system was “narrowly defined from the outset: to investigate only specific, individual incidents in which soldiers are suspected of breaching orders or directives. The system investigates neither the orders themselves nor the responsibility of those who issue them or determine the policy”.

“It follows,” the organisation added, “that the system is oriented only toward low-ranking soldiers, while senior military and government officials, including the Military Advocate General, are absolved in advance of any responsibility.”

Israeli society should be troubled when its soldiers film themselves blowing up mosques, humiliating prisoners or driving with a wounded man strapped to their vehicle. Undoubtedly, members of Hamas and other militant groups have also committed crimes, and should be held accountable. However, these militants are not members of a national military nor are they getting support from countries like the US and Germany that claim to uphold human rights. Today’s troops are tomorrow’s civilians; demobilised soldiers will have to live with having crossed the line so frequently while enforcing a military occupation of another people. The chances of such a society finding a way to make peace will become more difficult with every such incident that goes unpunished.