From now on, Israel Defense Force militants may fire on Palestinians who have thrown stones or firebombs even when they no longer pose any danger. Or, in the IDF parlance, when they’re escaping. These changes in the IDF’s Rules of Engagement (RoE) were exposed by Roee Sharon of Channel 13 on Sunday (Hebrew). This change requires three comments.
First of all, the timing. Sharon notes that the RoE were changed within the last few weeks – but the IDF allowed the publishing of the information only on Sunday. Why? Because of the crisis in the illegal outpost of Homesh, situated on the land of the village of Burqa, near Nablus. Following the killing of a settler, Yehuda Dimentman, and a wave of settler violence, hundreds of settlers attempted to reach the outpost, and clashed with the army, wounding one soldier by running him over (Hebrew).
The army knows it will likely have to remove the outpost soon, so it bribes the settlers: Here, you see, we made shooting Palestinians easier!
An interjection is essential here. On Saturday, the IDF militants shot 15 Burqa residents, protesting the mass emigration of settlers to their land, with rubber-coated bullets, and caused some 50 of them to inhale CS gas; on Sunday, the IDF militants again shot eight Burqa residents with rubber-coated bullets, and again caused some 50 of them to inhale CS gas. Needless to say, the Israeli media didn’t cover those incidents.
The IDF has a record of allowing the injuring of Palestinians in order to mollify settlers. In 2015, then-Brigadier General Tamir Yadai, then the commander of the AYOSH Division (West bank, but he’s been promoted since) told (Hebrew) the settlers of Halamish that he changed the RoE, saying:
“We’ve been a bit tougher with the people around here. Where we used to fire gas grenades or rubber [coated bullets], we now shoot Ruger [bullets] or live fire.”
Contrary to what Yadai implied, the Ruger 0.22 fires rounds which, while less powerful than normal ammunition, are still very much lethal. Note that it was to settlers, Yadai’s true clientele, that he announced the order for the use of excessive force – so as to mollify them.
Secondly, the use of excessive force, when you know it’s excessive, is a war crime. Shooting an escaping, unarmed, person who poses no threat to you is a war crime. These war crimes are committed essentially for public relation purposes. The IDF returns to the RoE it used in Operation Doorstep Keepers, the massacre on the Gaza border in 2018-2019 during the Great March of Return. Those RoE were changed quietly afterwards, because they caused the IDF public relations damage.
But now it’s time to bribe the settlers again; the IDF has become inured to committing war crimes; and it knows no one in Israel will complain, and that if it kills children who threw stones and escaped, the Israeli media will simply not report it, or at worse will run the IDF’s Spokesman daily lie. So what’s to lose?
And thirdly, the elephant in the room: While the official RoE does not discriminate between Jewish and Palestinian stone-throwers, the rules on the ground certainly do. No IDF militant will shoot to injure, much less kill, Jewish stone throwers. A soldier will not use live ammo, Ruger bullets, rubber-coated bullets, CS grenades, or stun grenades against Jews.
He will not do so if even if the Jewish rioters personally attack him, run him over. Not only will he not shoot at them, he will not even detain them.
Stones thrown by Jews are as damaging as stones thrown by Palestinians, but the procedures – and how can that be otherwise, in an Apartheid regime? – change according to the ethnic origin of the stone thrower. And the Israeli public grows inured to that, day by day.
To state the screaming obvious:
Further proof that ‘Israel’, is the very opposite to ‘a light unto nations.’ Indeed, as history and current events attest, it is the very essence of racism, i.e., continuous mass brutality, including murder, dispossession, torture, unjust imprisonment and expulsion of the essentially defenseless indigenous Palestinians (who including their ancestors, have lived between the River and the Sea for at least 15,000 continuous years) by Zionists of foreign origin.
No surprise here.
Let,s face it as far as all Zionist Jews are concerned Jews are higher on the pecking order than Arabs.
And they will still display self righteous anger when told they are running an Aparteid regime.
While that certainly does happen, let’s not forget that it isn’t supposed to happen even in a military court. If that were the case the Gulag in Guantanamo would have been emptied a long time ago and there would probably have been no survivors. If there is a legally binding rule of “distinction” that would prevent summary executions or categorize civilian Jewish stone-throwing children as “non-combatants” who are entitled to regular due process, then that same rule would have to apply to Palestinian children as well.
The Supreme Court of the United States reminded President Bush and Secretary Of Defense Rumsfeld that Common Articles 2 and 3 of the 4th Geneva Convention apply to non-international armed conflicts that arise between two or more contracting parties, even if a state of war is not recognized by one of them. The Conventions prohibit a number things “at all ties and in all places” including:
They noted that Bush’s Executive Order (EO) established Military Tribunals but prevented them from using the regular rules of order, evidence, procedure for discovery, and cross-examination of witnesses like the ones contained in the Uniform Code of Military Justice (10 U.S.C.) for everyone else. That in itself made the alternate rules in the Bush EO unconstitutional and illegal under both international and domestic law.
The settling of civilians in ’67 territories that Israel did not annex was a very deep mistake. It is an endless source of woe.
(Jerusalem, which was annexed, but not with a full heartfelt extension of an invitation to citizenship to its residents, is of course problematic, but still in a different category.)
There is no progress in sight in the post Netanyahu era. To Palestinians’ advocates the change of leadership of israel is of minor import, but to Israelis or people whose news cycle has a heavy dose of Israel news, it is no minor matter and Netanyahu’s shadow is still a concern.
by the way, just read the book, the netanyahus. anyone here read it?