Advice to refuse orders to commit war crimes is already too late
JVL Introduction
An ex Israeli soldier advises current soldiers to refuse to follow orders that would mean that they would carry out war crimes but, as this article shows, many observers, commentators, scholars and jurists believe that war crimes have already been – and are continuing to be – committed. As this article also notes, the International Criminal Court has accused three Hamas and two Israeli leaders of war crimes and also notes that all three of the Hamas leaders have now been killed.
Nonetheless, this shows that there are people within Israel who are not pro Palestinian peace activists who are concerned about the future. Elsewhere there is evidence that many soldiers are disillusioned even after October 7th 2023, which was unquestionably traumatic for Israel as so much that preceded it and all that has followed has been traumatic for Palestinians. This recent Middle East Eye piece highlights the failure – or even refusal – by many soldiers to return to Gaza because of fatigue but also disillusionment must be worrying for those in charge of the Israeli State and its military apparatus.
LL
This article was originally published by BBC on Wed 23 Oct 2024. Read the original here.
IDF soldiers should refuse orders that may be war crimes, Israeli ex-security adviser tells BBC
IDF could be committing war crimes in northern Gaza, says Eran Etzion
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While Eran Etzion’s words in this interview may help some new recruits to the IDF to resist unlawful orders, they do nothing to stop senior, middle rank and junior officers giving them.
I think at this stage there are enough Israeli families worried about the safety and moral hazard of their relatives in the military and now prepared to listen to and act on more forceful messages from Etzion.
Those families ought to be given fair warning – in time to pass on the warnings to their loved ones – of the war crimes cases already started against IDF soldiers. Young soldiers (many IDF soldiers are under 25) may be better able to resist peer pressure and officers’ orders to do evil deeds if their families help them. Unless their families warn them these young adults may not realise people can be prosecuted for war crimes however old they are when they’re caught.
So Mr Etzion is warning that the IDF might be committing war crimes in Gaza. This comes after a year in which the IDF has killed at least 40 thousand civilians, and done so by means that include the use of 2000 pound high explosive bombs on residential buildings, which will inevitably cause multiple civilian deaths. (Israeli propaganda justifies this by claiming that Hamas is using the civilians as ‘human shields’, a nice piece of equivocation).
The fact that it has taken a year for someone in the Israeli establishment to criticise the actions of their government, even in this very mild way (they only ‘might’ be committing war crimes) tells us how far the moral sense of Israeli society has been eroded over the decades since its foundation as an enlightened, hopeful, democratic young state, full of idealism and enthusiasm. How long ago that seems. From socialism to fascism in 75 years.