While I don’t trust much of anything Israel’s government says, if true this reminds me of how the Imperial Japanese military often operated. Junior officers were so confident they had the correct interpretation of the emperor’s will that they would go ahead and do what they thought best rather than doing what they were told. Idealogical fundamentalism is a cancer
Do you have further reading about this?
Supernova in the East by Dan Carlin. It’s a two part podcast.
Neato, ty ty
Also learned about this from Dan Carlin. It is worth noting that Dan is a journalist, not a historian. He drifts into the realm of bad history sometimes but his podcasts are entertaining and he uses a lot of primary source material to back up his assertions.
I literally was talking to a friend comparing Israels crimes to Imperial Japan. This is the message I sent her yesterday:
I read somewhere that the reason this incident happened is because commanders in the chain have absolutely no oversight, and they essentially do whatever they want with no repercussions. So while there was an order given in the middle level of command, it wasn’t given by a higher level command. At the same time, they are not reprimanded, and if anything, there is probably a culture of tacit encouragement. This has echoes to the Rape of Nanking by Imperial Japan, when Japan was asked to explain themselves they said the generals didn’t give the orders but rather they ‘lost control of the troops’. So while there is not a bureaucracy making explicit decisions at the highest level of authority to commit these atrocities, there seems to be an unwritten rule that the IDF follows, very similar to the crimes against humanity carried out by Imperial Japan.
The emperor screaming “they are Amalek” and “we are fighting human animals” and “there are no innocent civilians in Gaza”
Seems like the IDF is exactly following orders
Fuck Israel.
“There, we dealt with it. Can we pretend it didn’t happen and we’re the victims again? Surely further criticism of something we’ve resolved would be antisemitic.”
Firing them does nothing. We need a tribunal at the Hague.
Bullshit it’s against instructions.
Sure, sure. Now that you got in trouble for it, it was just a bad apple (who got caught), right? We can ignore the stink of rotting fruit behind the counter.
Fired for war crimes. The world will never forget that Israel passed the Nazi buck.
Ah, the old “it was just one or two bad apples” gambit.
How many good-apple IDF officers does it take to change a lightbulb?
Trick question. Good apples never change anything.
Fired with pay.
Never break the “don’t get caught and make us look bad” rule
It takes an Olympic level of mental gymnastics to pretend Israel has any morality at this point. Still, they say in the article twice that it was against protocol, stemmed from miscommunication, and was a mistake, but it is 100% consistent with Israeli behaviour of late.
What about the 40 beheaded babies story, or Israeli friendly fire on Oct 7, or the 3 Israeli hostages killed by the IDF while they were waving a white flag and shouting in Hebrew, the 7 journalists targeted and killed in Lebanon (or any of the 60-something journalists killed by the IDF since last October), or the >100,000 Palestinian casualties?
There have been a lot of investigations promised and none delivered. On the other hand, when Israel accused UNRWA workers of being Hamas without a shred of evidence, those workers were fired immediately and many countries cut funding to UNRWA. It’s extremely messed up but fits with the pattern of Israel wiping out Palestinians, including by making sure that international aid does not interfere with their ethnic cleansing campaign. Not only do aid workers literally get killed (or just fired if they’re “lucky”) but it creates a chilling effect for any organization that wants to provide food or medical aid to a population on the brink of mass starvation and death. That’s terrorism.
