Amid the ongoing Israeli war on the Gaza Strip, the Israeli authorities, media and pro-Israeli social media users have praised the IOF for adhering to the highest moral standards and have claimed that it’s “the most moral army in the world.” This article will discuss how the IOF has violated human rights and committed war crimes since October 2023 in the Gaza Strip.
A Tragic Human Rights Catastrophe
The creation of the IOF, was issued on May 26, 1948, and it comprises the Israeli army, navy, and air force. Since October 2023, Israel has waged unprecedented ground and aerial attacks on the Gaza Strip. At least 34,000 Palestinians have been killed at a historic pace, other than the enormous number of displaced population. The IOF has been continuously committing numerous violations of Palestinian human rights that were tracked and outcried internationally.
Dead people are not innocent and are being accused in Gaza too. The IOF has dug up Palestinian graves in Khan Younis in southern Gaza cemetery. Shockingly, the graves were damaged brutally. Several tracks of heavy vehicles were imprinted on the ground amid the rubble of crushed gravestones and human remains had been left without being reburied.
Such intentional destruction of religious sites such as cemeteries, violates international law. Cemeteries are given protections as “civilian objects” under international law and are afforded special protections, with limited exceptions.
The IOF said that its soldiers dug up the graves in the cemetery to see if dead hostages were buried there, and that Hamas uses cemeteries for military purposes.
The Israeli army has systematically targeted several cemeteries in the Gaza Strip, leaving widespread destruction and vandalizing graves in utter disregard for the sanctity of the dead.
Israeli Military Uses Injured Palestinian as Human Shield
Mujahed Azmi, a resident of Jenin, was seen tied to the bonnet of a military vehicle as it passed two ambulances on Saturday, in a video shared widely on social media.
The family of Azmi told Reuters that Israeli forces carried out an arrest raid in Jenin, during which he was wounded. When the family asked for an ambulance, the military took Azmi, strapped him onto the hood of their jeep and drove off.
The IOF was banned from using Palestinians as human shields by the Israeli Supreme Court but has been accused of using the practice multiple times since.
Francesca Albanese, the United Nations’ special rapporteur to the occupied Palestinian territory, called the incident “human shielding in action.”
“It is flabbergasting how a state born 76 years ago has managed to turn international law literally on its head,” she wrote in a post on X.
Surprisingly, the Israeli army acknowledged that the incident, saying that the "conduct seen in the video is not consistent with the [Israeli forces] orders and what is expected of its soldiers."
Israeli Soldiers Chanting Songs in a Mosque to Mock the Religious Sanctum
On December 14, 2023, several IOF soldiers were filmed chanting Hanukkah songs and Jewish prayers over the loudspeakers at a local mosque in the West Bank city of Jenin.
The clips, which were circulating on social media, show scenes of the mosque. In one recording, a song about banishing darkness, associated with the Jewish festival of Hanukkah, is heard sung in Hebrew through a loudspeaker. Another clip shows soldiers inside a mosque reciting a Jewish prayer down a microphone.
In a post on social media, the Israeli military wrote that the soldiers were “removed from operational activity.” It added, “The behavior of the soldiers in the videos is serious and stands in complete opposition to the values of the I.D.F.”
The Israeli attacks have destroyed 66 mosques and partial damage to 146 others, accounting for approximately 20% of all mosques in the Gaza Strip according to the Geneva-based human rights group.
Such attacks exposed the dangerous violations of the international laws and conventions that strictly prohibit targeting places of worship during the war.
IOF Committing War Crimes Against Journalists in Gaza
Since the start of its war on the Gaza Strip on 7 October 2023, Israel has made Palestinian journalists one of its primary targets and committed numerous crimes against them. approximately 150 Palestinian journalists have been killed in Gaza. These journalists have been targeted while wearing their press jackets, working in the field, inside their offices, in press tents erected next to hospitals for media coverage, or in their homes.
According to the deputy general secretary of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), Israel attacks journalists “to stop news getting out of Gaza”. In other words, journalists in Palestine face a range of brutalities intended to deter them from carrying out their work and to silence their vital reporting. Misbar’s team investigated the Israeli Restrictions towards International Journalists' Access to Gaza, and how Israel exploited the absence of journalists from the scene.
These violations against journalists contravene international law that requires the armed forces to treat journalists as civilians and do their utmost to ensure their safety.
U.N. says Israel may have violated laws of war
In a report released Wednesday, that examined six airstrikes conducted by the Israeli Defense Forces between October and December of last year during the opening weeks of the war in Gaza, the U.N. Human Rights Office has reported that Israeli air strikes in Gaza may have systematically violated laws of war, which mandate the protection of civilians and civilian infrastructure.
More than 200 people were confirmed to have been killed in the airstrikes, whose targets included residential buildings, a school, a market and refugee camps. The U.N. human rights office said Israeli forces "may have systematically violated the principles of distinction, proportionality, and precautions in attack."
The report said the six attacks involved the suspected use of heavy bombs between 113 kilograms and 907 kilograms. Separately, the head of a U.N. inquiry accused the Israeli military of carrying out an "extermination" of Palestinians.
However, Israel’s mission in Geneva rejected these findings, labeling them as “factually, legally, and methodologically flawed”, BBC reported.
Only this time, the level of impunity completely matches how Israeli officials and the military have been exposing their war crimes.
The Israeli Geneve mission defended the IOF, as an attempt to normalize genocide to the international community, asserting that their operations in Gaza adhered to international law and accused Hamas of unlawfully embedding itself within civilian populations.
On the other hand, the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said yesterday that at least 37,396 people have been killed in the territory during more than eight months of the offensive.
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