On war crimes, now and then – Yoel Elizur in Haaretz:
‘Nuphar Ishay-Krien was the social welfare officer of two mechanized infantry companies stationed in the southern Gaza Strip during the first intifada (1987-93). She talked with the soldiers and they opened up to her. Four years later, I supervised her graduate research study of the companies' brutalization. She used confidential interviews to explore the moral drift, the brutalities and the consequent mental health issues. Our scientific article was later published as the first chapter in an edited book "The Blot of a Light Cloud: Israeli Soldiers, Army, and Society in the Intifada" in 2012.
The subsequent chapters reflected and expanded on our research. They were written by an interdisciplinary group of scholars in mental health, sociology, law, political science, communication, and philosophy. There were also writers, artists, and high-ranking retired army officers.
We identified five groups of soldiers based on personality traits. 1. A small Callous group was composed of ruthless soldiers, some of whom confessed to violence before the draft. These soldiers committed most of the severe atrocities. The power they received in the army was intoxicating: "It's like a drug ... you feel like you are the law, you make the rules. As if from the moment you leave the place called Israel and enter the Gaza Strip, you are God." They viewed brutality as an expression of strength and masculinity.’
(…)
‘"A new commander came to us. We went out with him on the first patrol at six in the morning. He stops. There's not a soul in the streets, just a little 4-year-old boy playing in the sand in his yard. The commander suddenly starts running, grabs the boy, and breaks his arm at the elbow and his leg here. Stepped on his stomach three times and left. We all stood there with our mouths open. Looking at him in shock ... I asked the commander: "What's your story?" He told me: These kids need to be killed from the day they are born. When a commander does that, it becomes legit."’
(…)
‘My examination of the data indicated a similar grouping of soldiers with some significant differences. Most notably, the Callous and Ideologically Violent groups appear to be larger, more extreme and to act out their ideology in defiance of IDF's standards and the weakened justice system.
The eulogies at Shuvael Ben-Natan's funeral, a reservist who was killed in Lebanon, illustrate this shift. One speaker referred to Ben-Natan's killing of a 40-year-old Palestinian who was harvesting olives with his children in the West Bank. Members of his military unit recounted how he boosted morale in Gaza by setting a home on fire without approval. They professed their commitment to continue with arson and revenge in Gaza, Lebanon and Samaria (the West Bank).’
(…)
‘Sde Teiman, a detention facility, is like a microcosm of brutalization in the current war. It became notorious when an Incorruptible veteran physician reported signs of severe sexual abuse in a detainee. Nine IDF reserve soldiers were subsequently detained on suspicion of aggravated sodomy and other forms of abuse.
According to media reports, there are 36 investigations regarding deaths of detainees who were held in Sde Teiman since October 7. Testimonies of released Palestinians gathered by the Israeli human rights NGO B'Tselem indicate harsh, arbitrary violence on a frequent basis, humiliation and degradation, deliberate starvation and other abusive practices. Soldiers expressed anonymously how a discourse of hatred and revenge normalized the abuse of detainees.’
(…)
‘In this context, our government's rhetoric of hatred and revenge, which has been reinforced by its determined undermining of the justice system, led to excessive retaliation and mass killing of civilians in Gaza. It provided a tailwind for atrocities by Callous and Ideologically Violent soldiers, increased their influence over the Followers, and sidelined the Incorruptible.’
Read the article here.
As to the historian Omer Bartov wrote in The Guardian a couple of months ago: ‘This is the logic of endless violence, a logic that allows one to destroy entire populations and to feel totally justified in doing so. It is a logic of victimhood – we must kill them before they kill us, as they did before – and nothing empowers violence more than a righteous sense of victimhood. Look at what happened to us in 1918, German soldiers said in 1942, recalling the propagandistic “stab-in-the-back” myth, which attributed Germany’s catastrophic defeat in the first world war to Jewish and communist treason. Look at what happened to us in the Holocaust, when we trusted that others would come to our rescue, IDF troops say in 2024, thereby giving themselves licence for indiscriminate destruction based on a false analogy between Hamas and the Nazis.’
See here.
There is no army immune against the deterioration of moral values, of all values, when the war grinds on and the leadership is as corrupt and criminal as the current leadership in Israel is, the criminal violence is the outcme.
Yes, there are worse cases of criminal leadership, but that’s beside the point. It’s not a valid argument.
Too many soldiers will swallow the lethal rhetoric, the stories of victimhood and supremacy, and such an attitude leads to unprecedented brutality, in almost all wars.
As we also know, this kind of widespread brutality will produce an unhealthy society, the word unhealthy here is an understatement needless to say.