By Hariz Aftab,Muslim Mirror,
Waking up to the deplorable news of Israeli warplanes bombing Gaza on 10th of May, midnight, killing 20 innocent civilians including 09 children forthwith brought my attention to the statement of Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Liberman that “IDF is the most moral army in the world.” What parameters he took into consideration afore such a proclamation, one wonders, for IDF keeps the ball of vicious and inhumane treatment of Palestinians in Gaza and other occupied territories rolling. Some of the actions of IDF indisputably are potential enough to be classified as war crimes and need to be investigated independently, agree prevalent rights groups. Excavating a few examples out from the past and recent past, one can conveniently get a notion of moral standards the Israel Defence forces (IDF) uphold.
On 23rd of February 2020, Israeli forces shot dead one Palestinian in the cloistered Gaza strip whom they merely suspected of planting a bomb next to the fence separating Gaza and Israel. Post shooting him, Israeli army hanged the corpse of Mohammed al Naem from the blades of a bulldozer and repeatedly lifted and dropped it in the mud. At the same time, they prevented a group of Palestinian men from collecting the body as seen in the video, shot and published by local media. Lt Col Jonathan Conricus, spokesperson for the Israeli Army defended the action and told The Independent that “It is straightforward. You don’t leave bodies lying around. I cannot say there will be an investigation.” He added that letting Palestinians collect the corpses only outs Israeli forces to danger.
Another video that emerged on the 10th of April 2018 in The Guardian shows Israeli snipers cheering after they shot an unarmed motionless civilian. Following the shooting, a voice is heard shouting “Wow, what a video! Yes! Son of a whore!” At the beginning, IDF defended the act in a statement that the troops were responding to “a violent riot, which included rock hurling to sabotage the security fence” and the soldiers only shot the person conjectured to be the organiser of the protest after several warnings. However, the film didn’t show the people doing anything as claimed and the assertions of IDF were proved to be untrue subsequently.
The killing of Yaser Murtaja who was wearing a flak jacket identifying him as a journalist and Ahmed Abu Hussein in 2018 by Israeli snipers upon which a UN independent commission of inquiry on February 25, 2019 commented that, “it found reasonable grounds to believe that Israeli snipers shot journalists intentionally” is just another example. Apart from this, the demonstrations, peaceful or not but indubitably unarmed have always been dealt with live ammunition and battlefield weapons. During the same time around 30 people were shot dead by snipers, a case of reckless shooting which beyond any doubt amounts to a war crime. The killings could have been averted by the use of water cannons, tear-gas grenades, rubber bullets and other non-lethal weaponry at IDF’s disposal.
During the “Great March of Return” Israeli Defence minister rejected the call of the United Nations and the European union for investigations into the killings of 16 Palestinians by the military snipers.
The murder of a medic Rouzan al-Najjar who was shot by an Israeli sniper while treating an injured protester puts the morals of IDF into question. The Israeli military’s twitter handle a while later tweeted a tendentiously edited video to falsely portray her acting as a shield for terrorists and called her “not an angel.” However, an investigation by The New York Times (which involved scrutinization of 1000 photos and videos captured that day and 30 witnesses) delineates how Israeli army tried to cover up the incident. While Lt Col Jonathan Conricus afterwards said that “she was not the target” and was killed unintentionally, at the same time, no soldier reported accidental shooting. After-action reports said that the snipers aimed at 04 men that day and hit them all. The Times discovered that the first, third and fourth protesters were each shot in leg, when and how the army said they were, but the army’s description of the second person matched the time of Rouzan. The army claimed the second to be a man in yellow shirt who was throwing stones and pulling the fence but the Times found that the man posed no danger nor did anything as claimed. Instead, he stood approximately 120 yards away from the fence.
Israel’s last major offensive against Gaza strip in the summer of 2014 killed more than 2200 Palestinians wherein the vast majority of the people were civilians according to the United Nations.
The aforementioned examples satisfactorily raze the claim of Israeli Defence Minister to the dust. These aren’t a few isolated events and perpetrators black sheep who tarnish the image of the whole flock but stepping into the details of events puts the corruption from bottom to the top at display. Putting all the blame upon the shoulders of the troops on field is a gaffe for the justifications for their criminal actions flow out from top military commanders and online handles of Israel Security Forces.
The Israeli police walks abreast of IDF without a whit of concern for morality. Despite calls from France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Britain to stop further building of settlements in occupied Palestinian territories which may cause further damage to the prospects for a viable Palestinian State and the UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process Mr. Tor Wennesland urging Israel to cease demolitions and evictions, in line with its international humanitarian law who also termed the latest forcible evictions of Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah as worrying, the brutality unleashed upon the protesting Palestinians is horrifying.
A video reported by TRT World shows how a Palestinian protester is held consonantly like George Floyd by Israeli Police when he was protesting against the forcible evictions in Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood. The bleeding face of an elderly Palestinian woman protester, the assault on a young girl Mariam Afifi who could be seen held from her hair and hijab and tossed from one point to the other by a police officer compels one to give a thought to the moral code Israeli forces practice. The inaction displayed by the same police in tackling ultra-orthodox Jews rioting, attacking bus drivers, hurling stones at public transport and different establishments while protesting against nation-wide lockdown due to Corona19 but at the same time barging inside Al-Aqsa with shoes on and firing tear gas shells inside the mosque thus injuring over 200 Palestinians overnight (who were also protesting against forcible evictions) one more time questions the morals of Israeli police. In addition to the violence perpetrated against Palestinian worshippers by the police, it provided protection to the rioting illegal settlers and right-wing Israelites calling for violence against Arabs publicly. The discrimination Israeli Police does can be viewed in an analysis by Yesh Din when he found that only 7.4% of reported attacks by Israeli citizens on Palestinian persons and property had led to indictments in the West Bank.
There indeed emerges a question as what yardstick Israeli government employs to measure the morality of its troops and other security forces ere making towering pronouncements as there’re hundreds of corresponding examples to show what Palestinians face and what treatment they receive at the hands of Israeli Police and Army. Neither killing and injuring children, women, elderlies and men indistinguishably could be viewed as something moral nor treating protesters differently utterly because one section belongs to your religion and the other does not is something the world would never accept as moral. This is high time that the Israeli government does some introspection before making such skyrocketing claims.
***
Hariz Aftab is an independent researcher, fiction writer and painter .He can be contacted at aftabhariz@gmail.com
The world knows what Israel does amounts to crimes, but no one cares since Israel is strong and serves their interests. My sincere to all muslims and their countries is to stop being self-serving, acting holier than thou and grouping together in forums like the OIC for self serving and sycophancy. Rather, industrialize, educate and grow strong and rich.