By Ralph Nader
August 2, 2024
Israeli
soldiers, like soldiers in other countries, bask in the self-serving
effusive praise showered upon them by politicians, but privately they
know BS when they hear it.
Right
from the start on October 7th, the soldiers knew that the sudden
collapse of Netanyahu’s state-of-the-art multi-tiered border defense
system left the door open for the Hamas attack. Still denied an official
investigation by Netanyahu, people know that had the border defense
been in place, all the terrible consequences never would have occurred.
(See, the open letter by six very prominent Israelis in the New York Times on June 26, 2024: “We Are Israelis calling on Congress to Disinvite Netanyahu.”)
The
soldiers also know that the small Hamas militia of some 25,000 fighters
hidden in tunnels, having only small arms with dwindling ammunition, is
up against the 465,000–person military armed with 1,500 F-16 fighter
pilots and nuclear weapons. The Israeli military is also equipped daily
by Biden with the most modern weapons. All this makes Netanyahu’s absurd
description of Hamas as an existential threat sheer propaganda designed
to protect his job.
The
evidence is on the bloody body-strewn ground of tiny Gaza and its
crowded 2.3 million people. The Israeli military has dropped over
100,000 precision bombs, countless artillery shells from hundreds of
tanks, and even naval missiles to kill over 300,000 innocent Gazan
civilians, mostly children, women and elderly, who had nothing to do
with October 7th. (See also my March 5, 2024 column “Stop the Worsening UNDERCOUNT of Palestinian Casualties in Gaza”).
Most of the remaining people in Gaza are sick, injured or both. (See
the open letter to President Joe Biden and the U.S. Congress titled, “45 American Health Workers’ Letter on Their Experiences in Gaza” dated July 25, 2024.)
How
many Israeli soldiers have died? The official figure is 395 IDF
soldiers – many from friendly fire in the fog of explosions, accidents
such as collapsing buildings, and diseases. The exaggerated “Hamas
battalions” send fighters popping up from their underground tunnels to
fire rifles or grenade launchers before most are immediately
extinguished by overwhelming firepower.
The
largest number of Israeli casualties are the soldiers suffering from
PTSD, including moral traumas, being treated in the thousands by Israeli
psychologists and mental health specialists. These are the soldiers who
will tell the stories of who they were ordered to kill and what they
were ordered to destroy. The lack of a truthful account of the
atrocities in Gaza— because of Netanyahu blocking war correspondents
from Israel and other nations from freely reportingthere— will be
brought to light by the reports of these soldiers.
To
be sure, the thirst for vengeance after October 7th animated most of
the soldiers at the outset – especially those screened for having no
qualms about killing innocent children, women and men and destroying
civilian facilities.
But
as the weeks became months, the Torah’s instruction of “an eye for an
eye and a tooth for a tooth” to limit escalating cycles of revenge,
according to Biblical scholars, became a hundred and then a thousand
eyes for an eye and a thousand teeth for a tooth. More soldiers and
generals are questioning why they are still there amidst the smoldering
ruins and ghastly slaughters.
Netanyahu’s
drive to remain in power has stoked the carnage in Gaza. Despised by
three out of four Israelis for earlier moving to weaken the judiciary,
under indictment for political corruption by Israeli prosecutors, and
soundly condemned for his defense failure on October 7th, ending this
one-sided annihilation of defenseless people would mean the end of his
political career.
Consider
what these soldiers have witnessed or done: Powerful precision bombs
blowing to bits babies, children, pregnant women, refugee camps,
apartments, schools, health clinics, hospitals, ambulances, water mains,
and electricity networks; Families starving on genocidal orders from
the Israeli military “no food, water, medicine, electricity, fuel”; and
Homeless people trapped, unable to escape, surrender or shelter.
The
soldiers have seen their bulldozers flatten critical civilian
infrastructure, even cemeteries and agricultural crops. F-16s have blown
up universities, government buildings and many schools, mosques and
historic churches. Snipers, among the most brutal of the army, kill
patients in broken hospitals and survivors desperately try to pull their
crushed families out from under the rubble.
Already,
several reservists have told reporters in Israel that the military has
no operating “rules of engagement.” They could blow up or shoot and kill
anyone who moves, including UN relief workers, journalists and health
workers protected by international law. The laws of war – the duty to
disobey illegal orders – don’t exist in Gaza.
Soldiers
saw the body parts of little children, heard the screams, the cries and
groans of the dying, smelled the stench of rotting corpses being eaten
by stray dogs, and saw their victims – mothers and fathers – begging in
vain for help to save their dismembered children.
Unlike
other wars, Israeli soldiers were not allowed to facilitate the
emergency rescue crews that still exist in Gaza such as those with
Doctors Without Borders, the Palestinian Red Crescent and several
internationally respected providers of food and water – themselves
subject to Israeli attacks. (See December 13, 2023, an open letter
titled, “Stop the Humanitarian Catastrophe” to President Biden by 16 Israeli human rights groups which appeared in the New York Times).
Soldiers
obeyed their commanders’ orders to repeatedly push hundreds of
thousands of desperate Gazans on foot, exposed to the stifling heat and
lethally polluted air, from one Israeli-designated area to another. The
treachery is unlimited.
Other
soldiers were told to block thousands of trucks ready to enter from
Egypt, packed with humanitarian aid of food, water, medicine and other
critical supplies. Still other soldiers were ordered to kidnap thousands
of Gazans, including women and children, and send them without charges
to be tortured in Israeli jails, as documented in a just-released UN
Human Rights Office report titled, “Detention in the context of the escalation of hostilities in Gaza.”
Of
course, there are plenty of soldiers happy to have such sadistic and
unlawful commands. How dare the Gazans revolt against the decades of
violent Israeli bombing, occupation, invasions and military embargoes?
That’s historically been the imperious attitude of cruel, colonizing,
land-seizing regimes. The ranks will grow to join past “refuseniks” who
in 2002 courageously declared their refusal to go and beat up people,
demolish homes and otherwise rampage against defenseless Palestinians in
the West Bank and Gaza.
[…]
We,
combat officers and soldiers who have served the State of Israel for
long weeks every year, in spite of the dear cost to our personal lives,
have been on reserve duty in the Occupied Territories, and were issued
commands and directives that had nothing to do with the security of our
country, and that had the sole purpose of perpetuating our control over
the Palestinian people.
[…]
We hereby declare that we shall not continue to fight this War of the Settlements.
We shall not continue to fight beyond the 1967 borders in order to dominate, expel, starve and humiliate an entire people.
[From The Combatants’ Letter, January 2002]
Dozens
of Israeli human rights organizations and leading advocates will record
these reservists’ recollections, their remorse, and their recurring
nightmares. The vicious omnicidal extremists who make up Netanyahu’s
ruling coalition will be exposed for their war crimes and destruction of
their own country’s freedoms. Returning war veterans have credibility
that will fortify the forthcoming entry into Gaza of international
commissions of inquiry and scores of investigative journalists. (See the
new documentary “The Night Won’t End”).
The
violent Netanyahu knows all this, which is why he is now scheming to
provoke a wider regional war by dragging spineless Biden and the U.S.
military directly into the fighting. Remember Biden’s intense backing
of the Bush/Cheney criminal invasion/war in Iraq.
If
you don’t care what Netanyahu is doing over there, you’d better care
about what he’s doing to America, our Congress, our tax dollars, our
freedom of speech and our national security.