I expect a professional military not to allow the growth of an ethical environment in which a group of its soldiers decide it’s OK to sodomize a prisoner, and I expect mobs not to leap to the defense of those that do. That’s reasonable. This was a professional failing at levels far higher than just the section or platoon directly involved. Accountability flows up.
This isn’t a case of one or two bad apples who were alone and unsupervised. A whole group is under investigation, meaning enough others knew and it wasn’t stopped when it should have been (I.e., before a prisoner in secure custody was sodomized).
In the safe and secure confines of a base well away from the fighting, there is far less room to show understanding of gross criminal excesses.
The thing is that the Israeli army has always allowed the torture and killing of Palestinians to happen without any or little repercussions (as far back as 1948 and before, Israeli soldiers have publicly addmitted to mass killing and rape with total impunity. I've posted their video testimonies from the Israeli documentary "Tantura" a while ago).
With this gang rape case at the Sde Teiman facility, it's horrific, the damage even reached the victim's lungs! Here's the Israeli doctor's testimony:
"confirmed that something round had been inserted deep into the detainee’s rectum, causing a tear in the lower bowel and damage to one of the lungs that required emergency surgery."
Apparently 3 of the 9 soldiers have already been cleared and released (believe it or not, but their lawyer claimed that soldiers acted in self-defense in this gang rape case!). In the video below, one of the released soldiers (Meir Ben Shatrit) boasts how his interrogation by the military police was only a sham and that he felt they wanted to thank him and applaud him for raping Palestinians".
And just today the Israeli Rights group, B'tselem, published a 120 report called "Welcome to Hell" labelling the Israeli prison system as a "Network of Torture Camps".
It indicates that "
At least 60 people died in Israeli custody. Forty-eight of them were detainees from Gaza, some of whom died in detention camps set up by the military and others before they even got there, apparently due to extreme violence by soldiers during their transfer from Gaza to Israel... another 12 Palestinians from the West Bank or from Israel who died in IPS custody"
Link to report website:
The stink runs all the way to the top with commanders fully knowing and ignoring. Last month, a well known Israeli magazine interviewed 6 IDF soldiers and published this article below. In it, Israeli soldiers describe the near-total absence of firing regulations in the Gaza war, with troops shooting as they please, setting homes ablaze, and leaving corpses on the streets — all with their commanders’ permission.
Israeli soldiers describe the near-total absence of firing regulations in the Gaza war, with troops shooting as they please.
www.972mag.com
Finally, and to prove the sense of impunity that IDF soldiers enjoy, here's a running thread (82 so far I think, you can keep scrolling up) where IDF soldiers, captains, commanders... Etc post publicly their genocidal intent of burning and destroying Gaza with no apparent reprimand:
So I'd never call the IDF a professional army. More like a genocidal occupation force.
apnews.com
