What is Israel’s ‘most moral army in the world’ doing in Gaza?

The Israeli military, which styles itself arsenic the “most motivation service successful the world”, whitethorn beryllium routinely committing warfare crimes, according to analysts successful Israel and doctors who person worked successful Gaza.

While killings, beatings and the arbitrary apprehension of Palestinians are not caller to the Israeli army, a agelong process of dehumanisation, the infiltration of far-right ideologies successful the service and a deficiency of accountability person led to a script wherever Israeli soldiers tin bash arsenic they delight without adjacent needing an operational reason, analysts said.

“As acold arsenic I tin see, this is simply a caller phenomenon,” Erella Grassiani of the University of Amsterdam, who has written connected what she referred to arsenic the motivation “numbing” of Israeli soldiers during the 2nd Intifada of 2000.

“It’s not arsenic if Israeli soldiers haven’t beaten and arrested children for throwing stones before, but this is new,” she said.

“Previously, determination were immoderate benignant of rules of engagement, adjacent if they were loosely followed, but they were there. What we’re seeing present is wholly different,” she said.

War arsenic sport

Accusations of casual brutality by Israeli soldiers successful Gaza, and the occupied West Bank, are longstanding.

Israeli soldiers person posted societal media videos of themselves wearing the dresses of women whose homes they person raided, oregon playing with their underwear.

And determination are accounts of soldiers shooting civilians for “target practice” oregon simply to stave disconnected boredom.

In aboriginal August, the BBC investigated the cases of Israeli soldiers sidesplitting children successful Gaza. Of the 160 cases examined, 95 children had been changeable successful the caput oregon the thorax – shots that could not beryllium claimed arsenic “intended to coiled only”.

In summation to sidesplitting children, determination are accounts suggesting that Israeli soldiers person been utilizing the civilians who stitchery astir assistance organisation sites tally by the self-styled GHF for people practice.

“The GHF sites are acceptable up arsenic decease traps,” British surgeon Nick Maynard, who returned successful July from his 3rd travel to Gaza since the warfare began, told Al Jazeera.

“They’re compounds containing capable nutrient for a household to devour for a fewer days, but not for each of the thousands of radical they support waiting outside. They past unfastened the gates and fto the chaos, warring and adjacent rioting happen, which they past usage arsenic a justification to occurrence into the crowd,” helium said.

The quality of the shooting became wide to the doctors and exigency country medics astatine adjacent Nasser Hospital, wherever Maynard was working.

“I was operating connected a 12-year-old boy, who aboriginal died,” Maynard said.

“He’d been changeable astatine 1 of the GHF sites. I had a speech astir it with a workfellow successful the Emergency Room later, who told maine that helium and different medics had seen repeated and beardown patterns of coiled grouping,” helium explained.

Wound grouping refers to the improvement wherever respective patients contiguous with an wounded to the aforesaid portion of their body. The pursuing day, galore patients travel successful with a coiled connected a antithetic portion of the body, suggesting to Maynard that Israeli snipers were either playing oregon utilizing civilians to amended their aim, arsenic helium told Sky News previously.

No accountability, nary control

An investigation by the Israeli mag +972 successful July 2024 painted a bleak representation of Israeli soldiers with nary restrictions connected their quality to sprout astatine civilians successful Gaza.

“There was full freedom,” a worker who served successful Gaza for months told +972. “If determination is [even] a feeling of threat, determination is nary request to explicate – you conscionable sprout … it is permissible to sprout astatine their centre of wide [their body], not into the air”, the anonymous worker continued.

“It’s permissible to sprout everyone, a young girl, an aged woman.”

Of the 52 probes that the Israeli service said it carried retired into crimes it has been accused of committing successful Gaza oregon the West Bank betwixt October 2023 and June 2025, 88 percent were stalled oregon were closed with nary enactment taken, according to a survey by Action connected Armed Violence (AOAV).

Only 1 had resulted successful a situation condemnation against the accused.

According to AOAV, the 52 cases they examined progressive the sidesplitting of 1,303 people, the wounding of 1,880 radical and the reported torture of 2 more.

Even erstwhile determination was footage of an incident, specified arsenic what appeared to beryllium the pack rape of a Palestinian captive at the Sde Teiman Israeli situation facility, nationalist pressure, including from members of the Israeli cabinet, led to the accused’s eventual release.

Accusations that the Israeli service routinely tortures Palestinians day backmost to astatine slightest 1967, erstwhile the Red Crescent documented the systematic torture of prisoners successful Nablus Prison successful the West Bank.

There has besides been an summation successful the dehumanising connection utilized to notation to Palestinians that researchers present accidental is commonplace wrong the army.

As acold backmost arsenic 1967, Israeli figures specified arsenic David Hacohen, one-time Israeli ambassador to Burma, present Myanmar,, were recorded denying that Palestinians were adjacent human.

In 1985, a survey of 520 books successful Hebrew children’s lit recovered that 86 depicted Palestinians arsenic “inhuman, warfare lovers, devious monsters, bloodthirsty dogs, preying wolves, oregon vipers”.

Twenty years later, erstwhile galore of those present deployed to Gaza were apt astatine school, 10 percent of a illustration batch of Israeli children who were asked to gully Palestinians depicted them arsenic animals.

“The dehumanisation of Palestinians is simply a process that goes backmost decades,” Grassiani of the University of Amsterdam said. “But I’d accidental it’s present complete.

“We’ve seen incredibly cruel acts from the archetypal time to now, with Israeli soldiers seeking revenge for [the Hamas-led onslaught of] October 7,” she said.

“It’s similar a snowball moving down a elevation to which there’s nary bottom,” Haim Bresheeth, writer of An Army Like No Other, a publication astir the Israeli military.

“Every year, the unit is ratcheted up,” helium said. “The thought of utilizing civilians arsenic people signifier is the logical outcome.

“It’s a caller sport, a humor sport, and these sports ever make from the bottommost up,” helium said of Israel’s infantry.

“It’s twisted, murderous, and it’s sick.”