FLASH
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Evidence and facts, is Israel committing war crimes in Gaza?
The Israeli military, which calls itself "the most moral army in the world," may be regularly committing war crimes, according to analysts in Israel and doctors who have worked in Gaza.
While killings, beatings and arbitrary arrests of Palestinians are not new to the Israeli military, a long process of dehumanization, the infiltration of far-right ideologies into the military and a lack of accountability have led to a scenario where Israeli soldiers can do whatever they want without needing an operational reason, analysts said.
“ As far as I can see, this is a recent phenomenon ,” says Erella Grassiani of the University of Amsterdam, who has written about what she called the moral “numbness” of Israeli soldiers during the second Intifada of 2000.
“ It’s not like Israeli soldiers haven’t beaten and arrested children for throwing stones before, but this is something new. Before, there were some kind of rules of engagement, even if they were loosely followed, but they were there. What we’re seeing now is completely different ,” she said.
War as a sport
Allegations of random brutality by Israeli soldiers in Gaza and the occupied West Bank have been around for some time.
Israeli soldiers have posted videos on social media showing themselves dressed in the dresses of women whose homes they have raided, or playing with their underwear.
And there are accounts of soldiers shooting civilians for "target practice" or simply to relieve boredom.
In early August, the BBC investigated cases of Israeli soldiers killing children in Gaza. Of the 160 cases examined, 95 children had been shot in the head or chest - shots that could not be claimed to be "intended solely to injure".
In addition to the killing of children, there are accounts suggesting that Israeli soldiers have used civilians gathering around aid distribution sites run by the self-proclaimed GHF for target practice.
" The GHF sites have been set up as death traps ," British surgeon Nick Maynard, who returned in July from his third trip to Gaza since the start of the war, told Al Jazeera.
" They are complexes that contain enough food for a family for a few days, but not for all the thousands of people they keep waiting outside. Then they open the gates and allow chaos, fighting and even riots to occur, which they use as an excuse to shoot into the crowd ," he said.
The nature of the shooting became clear to doctors and emergency workers at nearby Nasser Hospital, where Maynard worked.
“ I was operating on a 12-year-old boy who later died. He had been shot in one of the GHF sites. I later had a conversation about this with a colleague in the Emergency Room, who told me that he and other doctors had seen repeated and strong clustering patterns of wounds ,” he explained.
Clustering of wounds refers to the phenomenon where some patients present with an injury on the same part of their body. The next day, many patients present with a wound on a different part of their body, suggesting to Maynard that Israeli snipers were either playing around or using civilians to improve their aim, as he previously told Sky News.
No responsibility, no control
An investigation by the Israeli magazine +972 in July 2024 presented a grim picture of Israeli soldiers having no restrictions on their ability to shoot at civilians in Gaza.
“ There was complete freedom ,” a soldier who served in Gaza for months told +972. “ If there [is] a sense of threat, there is no need to explain - you just shoot... it is permissible to shoot at their center of mass [their body], not in the air ,” the anonymous soldier continued.
Of the 52 investigations the Israeli military said it conducted into crimes it is accused of committing in Gaza or the West Bank between October 2023 and June 2025, 88 percent were stalled or closed without any action being taken, according to a study by Action on Armed Violence (AOAV).
Only one had resulted in a prison sentence against the defendant.
According to AOAV, the 52 cases they reviewed involved the killing of 1,303 people, the injury of 1,880 people, and the reported torture of two others.
Even when there was evidence of an incident, such as what appeared to be the gang rape of a Palestinian prisoner in the Israeli prison of Sde Teiman, public pressure, including from members of the Israeli cabinet, led to the eventual release of the accused.
Accusations that the Israeli military regularly tortures Palestinians date back at least to 1967, when the Red Crescent documented the systematic torture of prisoners at Nablus prison in the West Bank.
There has also been an increase in dehumanizing language used to refer to Palestinians, which researchers now say is common within the military.
As early as 1967, Israeli figures like David Hacohen, once Israeli ambassador to Burma, now Myanmar, went on record denying that Palestinians were human. /Adapted from “Pamphlet” by “Al Jazeera”
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