IDF: Most Moral Army in the World

 Update (14-November-2023):

Palestinian Women, Children, and Babies Killed “Execution-Style” by IDF soldiers at Shadia Abu Ghazala School

A disturbing incident has taken place at the Shadia Abu Ghazala School in the al-Falujjah area, west of Jabalia refugee camp, according to footage obtained by Al Jazeera on Wednesday. Reports indicate that Palestinian women, children, and babies were allegedly killed in an “execution-style” manner, leaving the international community in shock and condemnation.

The Al Jazeera footage reveals a horrifying scene in which the victims, including women, children, and even babies, appear to have been shot “execution-style.” The exact number of casualties is yet to be confirmed, but early reports suggest a significant loss of life.

The incident has left the local community devastated and has garnered attention from around the world. The international community has expressed its outrage and demanded justice for the victims of this heinous attack.

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[Inspired from an AP report]

Israeli soldiers rummage through private homes in Gaza, destroy plastic figurines in a toy store, set food supplies on fire in the back of an abandoned truck, write racist graffiti on the walls of bombed out Palestinian homes, strip men of their clothes in winter weather and parade them like cattle. Troops with their arms slung around each other, chant racist anti-Arab slogans as they dance in a circle.

Several viral videos and photos of Israeli soldiers behaving like racist animals in Gaza have emerged in recent days, causing international outcry over this disgusting behavior and the rising civilian death toll in its genocidal war against Hamas.

Such videos are not a new or unique phenomenon. Over the years, Israeli soldiers, like their allies the American soldiers in Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan, have been caught acting in barbaric and dehumanizing ways against prisoners who are, more often than not, innocent civilians in the hands of sadistic soldiers who don’t give a hoot about the Geneva Convention and the rights of civilians in conflict zones.

Critics say the new videos reflect a national Israeli mood that is highly supportive of the war in Gaza and with little empathy for the plight of Gaza's civilians, under a barrage of dehumanizing language by extremist ultra-religious terrorists in the Israeli government. Just like the Nazis dehumanized the Jews to facilitate their persecution, Israelis, for the most part of German and East European stock, learned their trade from their former tormentors and in turn dehumanize their captive Palestinian population for the specific objective of making their persecution acceptable in the eyes of public opinion.

Germans treated the Jews as “Untermenschen”, or subhumans. Now Israelis treat the Palestinians as “Untermenschen” or “animals” in their propaganda to make it easier for them to persecute them without outcry by public opinion. “The dehumanization from the top [of the Israeli government] is very much sinking down to the soldiers,” said Dror Sadot, a spokeswoman for the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, which has long documented Israeli abuses against Palestinians.

More than 18,400 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, around two-thirds of them women and children, according to the Health Ministry of Gaza. About 90% of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been displaced within the besieged territory.

In one video, soldiers ride bicycles through rubble. In another, a soldier has moved Muslim prayer rugs into a bathroom. In another, a soldier films boxes of lingerie found in a Gaza home. Yet another shows a soldier trying to set fire to food and water supplies that are scarce in Gaza.

A video posted by conservative Israeli media personality Yinon Magal on X, formerly Twitter, shows dozens of soldiers dancing in a circle, apparently in Gaza, and singing a song that includes the words, “Gaza we have come to conquer. … We know our slogan – there are no people who are uninvolved.” The Israeli military blames Hamas for the civilian death toll, saying the group operates in crowded neighborhoods and uses residents as human shields. The British army of occupation could have used the same argument - The Irish republican Army (IRA) is terror organization - to bomb entire Catholic neighborhoods in Belfast, but it didn’t.

Magal said the video struck a chord among Israelis because of the popular tune and because Israelis need to see pictures of a strong military. It is based on the fight song of the Beitar Jerusalem soccer team, whose hard-core fans have a history of racist chants against Arabs and rowdy behavior.

“These are my fighters, they’re fighting against brutal murderers, and after what they did to us, I don’t have to defend myself to anyone,” Magal told The AP. But sinking down to your enemy's level of filth is not what civilized people do. Integrity and decency requires a civilized person to act in a moral way even when confronted with evil.

The videos emerged just days after photos and video were leaked of detained Palestinians in Gaza, stripped to their underwear, in some cases blindfolded and handcuffed, also drew international attention. One of the detainees was recognized as a reporter for an international press network. For its part, Hamas has come under heavy criticism for releasing a series of videos of Israeli hostages, clearly under duress. Hamas militants also wore bodycams during their Oct. 7 rampage, capturing violent images of deadly attacks on families in their homes and revelers at a dance party.

Eran Halperin, a Zionist professor at Hebrew University's psychology department who studies communal emotional responses to conflict, said that in previous wars between Israel and Hamas, there may have been more condemnation of these types of photos and videos from within Israeli society.

But he said the Oct. 7 attack, which exposed deep weaknesses and failures by the army, caused trauma and humiliation for Israelis in a way that hasn't happened before.

“When Israelis feel they were humiliated, hurting the source of this humiliation doesn’t feel as morally problematic,” Halperin said. “When Israelis feel like their individual and collective existence is under threat, they don’t have the mental capacity to empathize or apply the moral rulings when thinking about the enemy.”

That is what the Nazi Germans must have felt when they embarked on their final solution program.

Halperin is of course excusing Israel’s barbarity. He doesn’t dare do otherwise in the present climate of mass hysteria. But his statement can perfectly well apply to the Palestinians who for 75 years have been humiliated and dispossessed every day of their lives, and you have, according to this genius in psychology, a sound excuse for what Hamas did on October 7:

“When Palestinians feel they were humiliated [by decades of a brutal occupation], hurting the source of this humiliation doesn’t feel as morally problematic,” Halperin could have equally said. “When Palestinians feel like their individual and collective existence is under threat, they don’t have the mental capacity to empathize or apply the moral rulings when thinking about the enemy.” Hence Halperin is unknowingly justifying the Hamas attacks of October 7.

UN Secretary general Guterres said it, “The Hamas attacks did not happen in a vacuum”. The Hamas actions were not driven by wanton sadism. I am stunned by how stupid or hypocritical Israelis can be for not seeing, or for pretending not see, the other side of the same coin. As the Beatles said, “And in the end the love you take is equal to the love you make.” You harvest what you sow.