Al-Jazeera’s Investigative Unit has just released an 80 minute film: Investigating War Crimes in Gaza, documenting Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza which is the most disturbing film I have ever seen. The aspect that takes it completely over the top is that a large percentage of the film is made up of video footage shot by Israeli military soldiers and posted on their social media. Al- Jazeera has a data base of over 2,500 individuals celebrating the cruel carnage, torture, mindless destruction and sadistic terror currently being inflicted upon the Palestinians of Gaza. Footage of aid trucks being attacked, of starving children, of living people buried in rubble, of men being raped in Israeli prisons, men raped by dogs – these utterly devastating acts of inhumanity are being posted on dating sites in Israel, and then reposted, set to music, obscenely cheered on by people who have lost all connection to their humanity.
It is impossible to watch this film – and every adult among us ought to watch it, as hard as it is – without feeling deep despair about the role of the West in arming and supporting this madness. According to the international law/international humanitarian law experts who speak in the film, 69% of the weapons Israel uses are from the US, 30% from Germany. The UK is deeply involved in surveillance missions flying from their base in Cypress over Gaza, providing AI- generated “target location” data, and Canada does its part as well, fulfilling existing contracts with the Israeli army and selling US weapons components to the US. We are utterly complicit by our failure to condemn, our failure to augment the world’s protest and take the drastic action needed to end this sociocide of a whole people, this utter annihilation of Gaza. And if you think I’m being overly dramatic, consider the fact that the number of aid trucks allowed into Gaza has dropped steadily since April of this year, from a daily average of 165 trucks to just 13/day. The average number of trucks allowed in before 10/7/23 was 500/day. Starvation of Gazans is intentional Israeli policy. (Helena Cobban, Just World Ed, citing UN-OCHA statistics, October 12, 2024.)
Those who feel they cannot watch this devastating film ought to see instead the ½ hour interview of Richard Sanders, the filmmaker, with Middle East Eye’s Peter Osborne (Youtube, October 3, 2024), and you will learn of the value of these soldiers’ posts as evidence for the International Criminal Court, given that they are being uploaded with soldiers’ real names and ranks. It’s not just rank & file soldiers; it’s also high-level military officers including a Battalion Commander and senior Israeli government officials. They may feel they can act with impunity right now, but most certainly, accountability will come.
When this ends, and at some point it will, what will you be able to say you did to stop this? Diana Buttu, Palestinian-Canadian human rights lawyer, and former spokesperson for the Palestinian Liberation Organization, who lives in Ramallah, says in the film that no one can say they didn’t know what is going on, no one. We can look the other way, we can do the “both sides are to blame” bit, we can stay silent for fear of the ever-useful accusations of antisemitism, we can tell ourselves we’re “not political” and offer up any number of excuses for our passivity and failure of courage. But the truth is that we have been deluded by propaganda and numbed to the suffering of other human beings if we fail to step up. Now is the time to
step up, after a year of this insanity. History will remember this as a very, very dark time. What do we want the young ones following us to know about our part, our morality, our humanity? Will we be like those Germans who, after the war were conveniently opposed to the Nazis, but did nothing to stop them during the Holocaust? Where is our integrity if we don’t demand a ceasefire, a total arms embargo, and an end to this genocide?
Israel is too far gone to help itself; it must have the severe censure of the international community, boycott, severance of aid, of funding, the complete halt of weaponry. It must be shamed and disempowered by a world community that says “ENOUGH NOW’.
Another eye-opening fact from Al-Jazeera is that a significant percentage of these sickening videos was shot by Israeli army members with dual citizenship, that is, people like the “lone soldiers”, soldiers who don’t have family in Israel. Soldiers whom we subsidize by giving huge charitable tax receipts to their sponsors (such as Canada’s Heseg Foundation for Lone Soldiers) and reward with university educations when they return home with blood, torture and the smell of death on their hands.
And lest we think that all Israelis are so hardened they are unaffected by this carnage and the celebration of it, apparently 30% of Israeli military injuries this past year are mental health ones. Clearly some are made sick by what they see and do. Those who aren’t are soul sick and my heart aches for them too. We must help everyone caught in this nightmare, this living hell, and each one of us has responsibility to take action. What will you be able to say that you did?
