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View all search resultsIsraeli soldiers’ voices, a tool for peace?
The voices of conscientious scholars and IDF members have been drowned out in the domestic and global pro-Palestine and pro-Israel public opinion war.
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A Palestinian mother and her daughter rush for cover on July 4 during an Israeli strike in the Al-Bureij camp in the central Gaza Strip. (AFP/Eyad Baba)
J
uly brought joyful family holidays before the next school semester. But in war zones, families continued to lose loved ones; since late May alone, reports say, children were among some 700 Palestinians killed and over 4,000 injured at food distribution sites run by the United States with support from Israel’s government.
As one soldier told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz on their commanders’ orders they “fired machine guns from tanks and threw grenades” into crowds even while the unarmed civilians posed no visible threat. The government denied the unnamed soldiers’ statements but said it would investigate suspected war crimes implicating the Israel Defense Force (IDF). Following reports of more and more civilians killed while trying to get aid from the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, only one distribution site was left open for 2 million Palestinians in Gaza despite the risks.
The rare voices of such disturbed IDF members, long mocked as the “shooting and crying soldiers” by their compatriots, may nevertheless be the most believable source of testimonies of Palestinians’ experience for Israelis. Pro-Palestine media only draw disbelief and are dismissed by Israelis, likewise the proceedings of the International Criminal Court (ICC).
The ICC attributes only a small portion of blame to Hamas for the civilian casualties compared to that for Israel’s retaliation following the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks. The Holocaust trauma continues to drive the government’s war narrative, essentially to ensure zero threats to Israel’s security.
Therefore, as one Haaretz reporter told Al Jazeera, most Israelis, including soldiers, believe that the war is just, as many insist “there are no innocents” among Palestinians who largely support Hamas, which abducted 251 hostages and killed about 1,200 people in their attack.
Many Palestinians and their supporters, including in Indonesia, dismiss accusations of torture and rape of Israelis by Hamas-led militia. A United Nations mission had reported in March 2024 that there were “reasonable grounds” to believe sexual violence had occurred during the Oct. 7 attack.
Earlier this month a report by an all-women group of Israeli legal and gender experts stated that Hamas used sexual violence as “part of a deliberate genocidal strategy”. The Dinah Project cited testimonies of survivors, including former hostages.
