Israel's False Narrative: The Army Investigates Itself

The Israeli army announced on Sunday that it had taken significantly less punitive measures against the soldiers who perpetrated the massacre in the Tel al-Sultan neighborhood west of Rafah on March 23, which resulted in the deaths of 15 relief workers, including eight Palestinian Red Crescent paramedics, six Civil Defense rescue personnel, and a United Nations employee. These measures include recording a note in the file of the commander of the 14th Brigade and removing the deputy commander of the Golani Company from his position due to his responsibility as the force's field commander and his submission of a false report to the investigation team.

The investigation concluded that the decision to evacuate the bodies was reasonable given the circumstances, while the decision to crush the vehicles was wrong. Ironically, the Israeli army decided to keep the vehicles and crush them, while the bodies of the martyrs were hidden and buried while they were bound.

The IDF investigation revealed that the shooting in the first two incidents was carried out due to a mistaken operational perception on the part of the Israeli force, after they assessed that there was a real threat from an enemy force.

Despite this, the army, which is investigating itself, has decided not to put the soldiers on trial or hold them accountable. It has merely decided to dismiss one officer from military service. The army is unwilling to open a criminal investigation into the massacre perpetrated by the soldiers, who lied and distorted the facts.

Although eyewitness accounts after the massacre revealed that the Israeli army executed the Palestinian rescue crews by shooting them in the chest and head before burying them in a mass grave, autopsies clearly revealed that they had been shot in the upper body and then buried.

In an article published in Haaretz earlier this month, which exposed the Israeli narrative as false, the army's account was refuted, stating, "Here lies the lie." This came after an Israeli army spokesperson announced that the Chief of Staff had completed an initial investigation into the shooting of Palestinian medical workers in Rafah. The initial investigation revealed that the force had opened fire in response to a perceived threat based on a previous confrontation in the area.

After the New York Times published a video clip from a cell phone found on the body of one of the martyrs, which completely contradicted the army's initial account and exposed its falsity, the claims made in the Israeli army's response were revealed to be false. They were that the vehicles in the convoy that the soldiers fired on were not marking themselves with flashing lights, as is required for rescue vehicles. The video clearly showed that the lights were indeed working.

This lie is part of a series of propaganda policies and lies practiced by the Israeli government and army throughout the war of annihilation, ignoring the crimes committed in the Gaza Strip. The article quotes a senior Israeli army officer as saying that the narrative coming from the field has brought us all down. Now, the video reveals that the chain of command simply lied.

Since the beginning of the war of extermination, Israel has committed war crimes and continues to do so, despite the International Criminal Court's prosecutor issuing arrest warrants for both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes in the Gaza Strip. This has not deterred Israel from halting the war, which continues with the support of the United States and some European countries, which granted Netanyahu immunity during his trip to Hungary earlier this month.

What Israel is doing, according to the Military Advocate General, is that if action is necessary, disciplinary measures must be taken against soldiers. These measures are administrative, and they are the common punishment in the Israeli army after an investigation.

This is what happened in all the crimes committed, an example of which is the flour massacre at the Nabulsi Junction west of Gaza City, which occurred in February 2024, in which the Israeli army committed a massacre, during which approximately 104 civilians were killed and 760 others were injured.

At the time, Israel claimed that dozens of Palestinians were killed in a stampede when large crowds tried to seize food supplies from a convoy of 30 trucks carrying flour toward northern Gaza.

The Israeli military later retracted its initial investigation, claiming that the stampede caused significant harm to civilians, that soldiers had indeed opened fire on some who approached and posed a threat, and that a tank had also fired warning shots to disperse suspects. This was also the case in the attack on the World Central Kitchen charity convoy, which resulted in the deaths of five foreign aid workers.

Israel's history is replete with violations of international law and international humanitarian law. During previous cycles of Israeli aggression, no Israeli officials were held accountable. The international community failed to hold Israel accountable, and it failed to implement the recommendations of the commissions of inquiry formed by the UN Human Rights Council. These commissions deemed the Israeli military's investigations into suspected war crimes void.

Israel has a different understanding of the interpretation of international law, and the Israeli military's establishment of committees to investigate itself is an attempt to circumvent the possible outcome of international investigation committees formed by the United Nations to investigate the Israeli military's commission of war crimes.

Israel is proceeding with its own military investigation to avoid having Israeli officials summoned to the International Criminal Court, according to recommendations from a number of Israeli international law professors. This is in accordance with the "principle of complementarity" in international law, which stipulates that international or foreign judicial bodies shall not interfere in the investigation of suspected war crimes if the state directly involved in the events demonstrates the ability and willingness to conduct a serious investigation into the suspicions. In other words, an international judicial body replaces a domestic judicial body only as a last resort, and only if the state is unable or unwilling to carry out its duty to investigate and ensure that the perpetrators of crimes are brought to justice.