The war crimes debate in Israel

An Israeli tank maneuvers during a deployment near the Israeli border with Gaza.

Octavia Nasr
CNN Senior Middle East Editor
AC360° Contributor

It was meant to be a private meeting in which Israeli soldiers talked with military school graduates about what it was like to fight in Gaza. They talked openly - more openly than anyone expected - about their frustrations and experiences that they compared to crimes. Some critics have now called them war crimes that should be prosecuted.

It was an extraordinary meeting.

"At first the specified action was to go into a house. We were supposed to go in with an armored personnel carrier called an Achzarit [literally, Cruel] to burst through the lower door, to start shooting inside and then ... I call this murder ... in effect, we were supposed to go up floor by floor, and any person we identified – we were supposed to shoot. I initially asked myself: Where is the logic in this?

That's one of the statements from Israeli soldiers that that a leading Israeli newspaper, Ha’aretz, published under the headline “Shooting and Crying.”  The soldiers' names were changed to protect their identity. None claimed that they personally committed any excesses. But for many Israelis, their comments have been shocking.

One described an army commander ordering unarmed civilians "taken out" for no specific reason. Another story describes a woman and her two children being shot at when they took the wrong path.

Israel Defense Forces Chief Gabi Ashkenazi categorically denied that soldiers harmed Palestinians in cold blood. But the soldiers' testimonies made headlines in Israel and around the Arab world.

The response from the Israeli press varied. An article in the daily Yedioth Ahronoth by Daniel Edelson provided accounts from other soldiers rebutting the claims generally- but not addressing the specific allegations. He quotes one soldier saying, “It is true that in war morality can be interpreted in many different ways, and there are always a few idiots who act inappropriately, but most of the troops represented Israel honorably.”

“It’s time to believe the war crimes allegations.” That's the headline of an edtiorial by Amira Hass, a prominent Palestinian affairs reporter for Ha’aretz. Hass questions why most Israelis reacted to the published allegations as if they’re hearing them for the first time. IDF Chief “Ashkenazi, like other Israelis, could have read the Red Cross' protest during the offensive, that the IDF prevented medical teams from reaching wounded Palestinians by shooting at them. He or his aides could have gone to the website set up by Israeli human rights organizations, which was full of reports and testimonies.”

Israeli human rights groups such as B’Tselem, known for their criticism of Israel’s activities in the Palestinian territories, called on the Israeli Attorney General to “Stop whitewashing suspected crimes in Gaza.”

Hersch Goodman is an Israeli military affairs analyst. He told CNN he didn’t consider the testimonies reliable and didn’t think they would harm Israel’s image. He told us, "There is a huge difference between a soldier misbehaving or three soldiers misbehaving or even a company of soldiers misbehaving because they are in an environment of killing and shooting and […] a State misbehaving.”

“If soldiers misbehave as per the newspaper article, you put them on trial," Goodman said. "But if the army as an institution used forbidden weapons, if the army as an institution targeted medical personnel, if the army as an institution targeted medical facilities, these are charges or these are things that really Israel will have to work on defending.” It is unclear from the transcript Ha’aretz published whether the soldiers were alleging misconduct just by specific soldiers or also by the army itself.

In the view of Arab media, this is a case of we told so. Complaints of major human rights abuses during the Gaza offensive were a daily part of reporting by Arab networks such as Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya. Both networks deployed local reporters inside Gaza as well as in Israel and provided their audiences with daily reports from both sides of the conflict. Although they brought in Israeli officials as guests, their reporting was emotional and focused mainly on the suffering of Palestinians as a result of the incursion.

Now the focus is on the latest developments – Al-Jazeera hosted yesterday an official from the international organization Human Rights Watch to discuss his group’s latest report, which accuses Israel of “repeatedly firing white phosphorous shells over densely populated areas.”

The Israeli army says it will investigate, but says it only used phosphorous as a smokescreen – not a weapon.

On the Saudi-owned Al-Hayat newspaper, an editorial by legal analyst Mahmoud Mubarak condemns both Israel and Arab governments: “Israel should be condemned for its crimes in Gaza,” Mubarak wrote. “Arab governments should also be condemned for being silent.”

And then there are the political cartoons. On the Saudi-owned London-based Asharq Alawsat, a cartoon of an Israeli soldier pointing his finger to his head as if shooting himself in the head. The testimony of Israeli soldiers, it suggests, will prove most harmful to Israel.