Targeting starving civilians, looting, and vandalism: The collapse of the Israeli army's code of ethics

CairoSince the controversial humanitarian aid distribution centers Run by an opaque foundation with ties to the United States and Israel, the attacks began in late May in Gaza. Episodes of deadly attacks by Israeli soldiers against groups of Palestinians searching for food to combat the hunger imposed in the Strip have followed one after another. The Gaza Ministry of Health has documented more than 400 deaths and hundreds injured.

Far from being isolated incidents, Israeli soldiers assured the newspaper Haaretz At the end of June, some army commanders ordered fire to be opened on Palestinian crowds near these distribution centers, simply to prevent people from approaching before the opening time, which is usually not announced, and to disperse them once they have closed.

The fighters themselves admitted that the crowds posed no threat, but were treated as a hostile force. Although the Israeli army is not inside the distribution centers, troops are deployed along their perimeter. Instead of being equipped with crowd control tools such as water cannons, they rely on live ammunition from tanks, snipers, mortars, heavy machine guns, and grenade launchers.

This appalling treatment of starving people has once again exposed the complete collapse of the Israeli army's ethical code, which still prides itself on being the most moral army in the world. Its military leadership insists that these actions are not based on directives from the general staff. But their recurrence reveals a growing discrepancy between professed values ​​and actual conduct, and demonstrates a breakdown in the chain of command that field officers exploit to wage war on their own initiative, unchecked or unwilling to restrain them.

This moral defeat is being exacerbated, moreover, at a time when the Israeli army's offensive in Gaza continues almost by inertia, without a clear direction, unable to achieve the release of the hostages held in the Strip, with practically no progress from a military perspective, and with each one having its own characteristics. of a genocidal campaign of ethnic cleansing.

The massacres near the four operational aid distribution centers, located in southern and central Gaza, have occurred alongside other massacres in the north following attacks by Israeli soldiers on crowds waiting for the few UN aid trucks entering the territory. From late May to late June, 175 people died in these circumstances and hundreds were injured, according to local health authorities.

Extremist ideology among field officers

Shortly after the investigation into attacks on Palestinian gatherings near aid distribution centers became public, the Israeli military declared that there was no centralized order to deliberately shoot civilians. But the statement ignored the fact that Haaretz He did not attribute the events to instructions from the military leadership but to field officers who exercise extraordinary autonomy in Gaza and who are often guided by their extremist ideology.

The branch of the military most frequently implicated in these episodes of violations is the southern command and its commander, Yaniv Asor, who is accused of ignoring such complaints, avoiding full investigations, and failing to take disciplinary action. In the case of the attacks in northern Gaza, another recurring name is Brigadier General Yehuda Vach, the commander of an army division with a long, documented record of atrocities.

Before the opening of the food distribution centers, Israeli soldiers had already carried out massacres of civilians gathered to receive aid. The most serious massacre caused more than 100 deaths in northern Gaza in February 2024, in what became known as the Flour Massacre. Other actions that have demonstrated the collapse of the army's code of ethics have included cases of vandalism and looting, indiscriminate bombing, and killing zones where everyone is considered a legitimate target.

However, the public impact of the attacks on food distribution centers has again generated alarm within the military and led its legal body to announce investigations into actions that may have violated the laws of war. In early 2024, this body also warned of potentially criminal misconduct following the dissemination of videos of looting.

However, human rights groups have extensively documented how the Israeli military uses these announcements of independent investigations to project internal accountability processes and adherence to the law of war, thereby avoiding international lawsuits against soldiers for alleged war crimes, and have suggested that it can prosecute itself. But these investigations are very rare. And in most cases, accountability is nonexistent.