Repression campaign

The rapid investigation of testimony from Operation Cast Lead veterans who told of the killing of civilians, vandalism of property, and use of phosphorus bombs in Gaza shows that the military justice system can act quickly under public pressure. One week's worth of an expedited probe launched by the Military Police Investigation Department was enough for the Military Advocate General to rule that the soldiers lied and exaggerated their statements during a symposium of the Yitzhak Rabin pre-military preparatory academy, and to close the case.

The IDF's lightning-fast inquiry serves to heighten the significant public importance in reporting the transcripts of the soldiers' statements. Until that point, the army refrained from launching a criminal investigation into the killing of hundreds of Palestinian civilians in Gaza during Cast Lead. The head of the preparatory academy, Danny Zamir, passed the material along to the chief of staff two weeks before the story reached the press, yet it was only afterward that an investigation was launched.

Even then, the probe was accompanied by the chief of staff's declaration that he did not believe the accounts that were published.

The defense establishment was quick to rejoice at the closure of the case and the conclusion that soldiers had told tall tales or embellished unfounded rumors that they had heard elsewhere. The defense minister and the chief of staff repeated the cliched statement that the IDF is "the most moral army in the world."

It is difficult to accept this. If the ranks of the combat units are filled with liars and exaggerators, then the IDF has a serious discipline, if not moral, problem.

One cannot shake the impression that the swift probe and its findings are part and parcel of the IDF's and Israeli society's campaign of psychological repression. This repression is palpable in the wholesale rationalizations made in explaining away the harm to Palestinian civilians and their property as an unassailable, operational necessity in the fight against terrorism; in ignoring the grave accounts from Palestinians in Gaza, which were revealed by Amira Hass in Haaretz and presented by foreign journalists and human rights organizations, all of which is viewed as the product of hostile propaganda; and in the tendency to automatically deny every claim of illegal behavior by the IDF and its troops.

If the IDF aspires to be the most moral army in the world, it must "look the truth in the eye," in the words of Ehud Barak's election campaign, and genuinely and courageously probe the reasons for the killing of many "noncombatants" during the fighting in Gaza. It ought to punish those who deviated from their superior's commands and it must define rules of engagement that, above all, will ensure the protection of innocent individuals and their property.