The IDF & The Myth of The Most Moral Army In The World
The Israeli Defence Force (IDF) is frequently called the most moral army in the world, and this is something I’d like to examine further because to my untrained eyes and ears that assertion seems like absolute utter bullshit. Firstly, isn’t it a little bit disingenuous to call any army moral? An army is a military apparatus designed to kill people and to perpetrate war. Nothing moral about it. But the Israelis will insist on the morality of theirs. Words are awesome, and personally I love them. But actions are awesome too. And actions is where Israel’s army is found to be seriously lacking in morality as I will outline below.
Most of you are probably aware that there is a genocide happening in Gaza right now. So let’s talk about the role of Israel’s extremely moral army in that genocide. I have been pretty fixated (some might say obsessed) with what is happening in Gaza. I admit that while I was aware that shit was going down in the Occupied Palestinian Territories before 7th October, I wasn’t paying it a lot of attention. My bad. But I’ve made up for that in the last few months. I’ve been very active on Instagram and Twitter, interacting, liking, sharing and posting on behalf of the Palestinian people. My heart belongs to the Palestinian people. And it breaks for them. So what happens when you’re on Instagram and Twitter at least two hours a day for 116 days, advocating for a group of people who are being slaughtered in a bloody genocide, is that you see some shit. You see some horrendous, abhorrent, heart-stopping shit. And all of it, without exception, has been committed by the world’s most moral army, the Israeli Defence Force.
Before I let loose with a bunch of examples for you to check out, I do want to say that the IDF does not exist in a vacuum. The Israeli Defence Force is the military arm of what is currently the most right-wing government in Israel’s short but bloodthirsty history. And in a recent poll, 60% of Jewish citizens stated that Israel is not actually using sufficient force in Gaza. They believe that the Israeli government should escalate the amount of force it is using. I’m personally shocked at that, but I suppose I shouldn’t be, seeing as the Jewish citizens of Israel democratically voted in the current ultra-far right, Zionist government. This is what they wanted.
Before I start I want to say that everything I’m describing below is linked to a photo or video. Please don’t feel obliged to watch them, but of course if you feel up to it you are free to do so. You are also free to verify these videos for yourself. You do not need to take my word that they are authentic, though I have cross-referenced them myself. If you do find something that is inaccurate or inappropriately skewed I would really like for you to let me know because I want this to be a factual account of what’s going on with the IDF.
OK, so let’s start with this super charming little wartime tradition happening in Israel right now where for a few bucks, citizens are invited to write messages on the bombs that the IDF uses to destroy Palestinian lives. How delightful. Let me go grab my Sharpie.
Here’s a super romantic marriage proposal by one IDF soldier to another on a rubble-strewn Gaza beach. And another fantasy wedding proposal in front of a school that the IDF had just bombed and destroyed. The guy promises his wife-to-be that they will build their future home on these desecrated grounds.
Honestly, if my husband and I hadn’t eloped, I definitely would have scrawled our save-the-date wedding message in red paint on the remains of a destroyed Palestinian home. Isn’t that what every woman dreams of?
And the morality just keeps on coming. One Israeli major dedicates the demolition of a Gaza building to his two year old daughter on her birthday. Gee, thanks dad. Israeli soldiers whoop and cheer as they celebrate the bombing of a UN school, which had been housing thousands of displaced Palestinian civilians. Where will they go? Who cares. And here are some awesome, moral soldiers taking photos of themselves mocking and degrading a young Palestinian detainee.
Watch an Israeli soldier on a TikTok chat recount with absolute delight and unadulterated glee how she has personally killed two Palestinians and how she’d love to kill some more. And here’s another, older, video from 2007, in which a former Israeli soldier reaches back into the darkness of her memories and laughs disquietingly as she recalls her Lady Macbeth moment after killing a young Palestinian boy.
Yet another young woman serving in the world’s most moral army (coz equal rights = morality, yo!) giggling after committing the war crime of indiscriminately firing a grenade launcher at random homes in the Gaza village of Shuja’iyya. And then for some crazy reason, deciding to proudly post it on social media. And here, a video that I was initially very hesitant to include because I wasn’t sure if it was for real or not, but it does appear to be an authentic recording of an IDF soldier bragging about killing a 12 year old Palestinian girl and lamenting that there are no more Palestinian babies left to kill. This kind of shit is all over Middle Eastern media but nowhere to be seen on western news outlets in case you were wondering why you haven’t seen it on CNN. By the way, a lot of Zionist apologists piped up to defend this guy and say that he was just joking, of course. Ohhh, it’s a JOKE!!! So funny.
A very morally upright Israeli soldier uploaded this video of a Gaza university that was bombed moments later to his Instagram page with the caption: “Once upon a time there was a university in Gaza”. In the video he says, “We bombed them. That sucks. That’s how you will never become engineers anymore.” The IDF have been focussed on targeting Palestinian academics, killing at least 94 scholars. They have completely destroyed 95, and partially destroyed 295, schools and universities. Can you guess why? Because it’s the right thing to do??
Here’s one lucky gal bragging on a popular women’s Facebook group in Israel about her IDF boyfriend bringing her heaps of new make-up from Gaza!! One switched-on babe from the group, responded, “It’s better if you delete the post. It doesn’t do us a good name at all. Not because I care about the make-up of that Gazan woman who will never see the light of day again in her life, but because I care about that soldier, who can judge him for it or give him a headache”.
And here’s another video of an honourable, young IDF soldier looting the jewellery box of a Gazan woman who has been… who knows, displaced or killed. He chooses a beautiful silver necklace which he plans to gift to his lucky girlfriend Noa. I literally can’t think of a more romantic gift.
Hanukkah was pretty special last year for one group of IDF soldiers who spent it blowing up a bunch of Palestinian homes in Gaza. Afterwards, just for fun they desecrated the sanctity of a West Bank mosque by stomping all over the floor in their shoes, and singing Hanukkah songs and intoning Jewish prayers over the speaker. The extremely virtuous and noble IDF considered this unacceptable behaviour, suspending the soldiers in question. Round of applause! Obviously the soldiers in this video however, in which they mock, desecrate and destroy another mosque, did so in a far morally superior way and therefore they were not suspended by the IDF. Here are some more ethical celebrations of blowing up mosques.
And if you want to see some extremely upstanding IDF soldiers joyfully and heartily singing, “These are your homes, and we are destroying them” as they bulldoze Palestinian homes in Khan Younis, then you’re in luck. As a bonus, here’s a group of young IDF guns cheerfully mocking Palestinian life in an hilarious video, after which they playfully burn down someone’s home. And then think it’s a great idea to upload it to TikTok. WTF???
This jolly fellow thought it would be a bit of a laugh to get dressed up as Santa Claus while firing shells onto Palestinians on Christmas Day. I can’t think of anything more festive than that! Can you?? And finally, here’s a super fun video (accompanied by an appropriately upbeat soundtrack) showing an IDF soldier dressed up as a dinosaur loading shells into a tank and then bombing the shit out of the civilians in Gaza. Coz genocide is fun!!? I’m rendered speechless when I try to put myself in their shoes and figure out what the fuck they’re thinking when they film themselves doing this. I glitch.
I’ve seen way too many interviews of former IDF soldiers talking about how they treat Palestinians as less than human, inflicting physical and sexual abuse on them. Including children. This is just one sample in which a former IDF soldier describes how her comrades beat up a young Palestinian boy, putting cigarettes out on him, and how her commanding officer was told to cover it up. Moral as fuck.
So that was a small sample of the complete disregard and lack of respect IDF soldiers personally have for Palestinians. But when we talk about an army, we’re talking about a collective unit that has orders from high ranking officials, and ultimately the government. Maybe they’re not doing so great on an individual level. Perhaps, as they like to boast, on a macro level, the IDF could be considered the most moral army in the world?
No. I don’t think so.
Let’s talk about the neonatal intensive care unit babies that Israeli soldiers forced medical staff to leave behind when they violently evacuated Al Shifa hospital at gunpoint on 10th November 2023. One would think that since the IDF soldiers had forced the medical staff to leave the babies behind, they would have arranged for those babies to be taken care of somewhere else. And that’s what they’d promised. But that’s not what happened. They just left them there to die. And the babies died, and there are photos of their tiny little decomposing bodies online from when they were discovered two weeks later. What special kind of monster is capable of leaving behind crying, premature babies that are unable to breathe on their own, knowing that they are going to die a slow and excruciating death? Who does that? I’ll tell you who, it’s the IDF! It’s the most moral army in the world.
Is leaving a bunch of premature babies to die better or worse than what another IDF captain did, which was to take a newborn Palestinian baby girl from Gaza back to Israel with him after finding her in the rubble (that his unit had created). There is no way of knowing whether her parents are dead or alive, but the soldier has since been killed in battle, and the whereabouts of the baby girl are unknown. This doesn’t feel very moral either, does it?
During December I spent about two weeks tracking the atrocities committed by the Israeli Defence Force. Eventually I had to exercise my privilege and stop, because it just felt like the information and the images coming out of Gaza were becoming worse and worse with each passing day, and it was starting to take a toll on my mental health. And things haven’t become better since then, they’ve continued becoming worse. If you have only been following mainstream news outlets you might be shocked to read my observations from that period, but I can assure you that everything I write here actually happened. Each fact is verifiable, but again, if you discover any inaccuracies please let me know.
On 13th December, the bodies of 15 Palestinian men, women, children and newborn babies who had been sheltering at Shadia Abu Ghazala School were found piled up in the corner of a room. They had been shot, execution-style, at point blank range by moral IDF soldiers. They were not Hamas. They were not collateral damage. They were intentionally murdered.
On the same day, several Palestinians sheltering in a UNRWA school at Beit Hanoun were killed execution-style by IDF soldiers. Including babies. The most moral army in the world killed babies execution-style. Not with bombs from afar, not with shells. Not with a drone. Not even with hand grenades. But with bullets, from a gun, at point blank range. There are photos.
On 15th December, Al Jazeera cameraman Samer Abu Daqqa and chief Gaza correspondent Wael al-Dahdouh were working when they were targeted and hit by a missile from an Israeli drone. They were both wearing press vests. Both Abu Daqqa and Al-Dahdouh (whose wife, son, daughter and grandson were killed six weeks earlier by Israeli forces in a targeted bombing of the building they were sheltering in) were injured but only al-Dahdouh was able to make it to paramedics and survive. Over the next five hours Abu Daqqa lay on the ground and bled out. Paramedics attempted to approach him, but were shot at by snipers. The IDF knew that it was all being recorded, and they did that anyway.
Also on 15th December three Israeli hostages who had been separated from their captors tried to get the attention of the Israeli army. Doing their best to demonstrate that they were not Hamas fighters, they had taken off their shirts and were waving a white flag. Despite this, they were shot at by IDF snipers who thought they presented a “security threat”. Two of the hostages died instantly, while the third, injured, ran for cover in a nearby building calling out for help in Hebrew. When he came back out again, a soldier opened fire and killed him. Following the breaking of this story, there was a massive outcry in Israel, but I’m left wondering why there was no massive outcry when the IDF did the exact same thing to thousands of Palestinian civilians? The reporting of it in international media stated that the IDF had “mistakenly” shot the hostages, but that’s not what happened at all. They were deliberately shot and killed. Because it was thought that they were Palestinian.
On the 15th December, Human Rights Watch accused the state of Israel of starving people in the Gaza Strip. The NGO claimed that the IDF was deliberately preventing the delivery of water, food and fuel to Palestinians. That was six weeks ago. Conditions have now reached famine levels of starvation.
On 16th December 2023, outside Kamal Adwan hospital, IDF soldiers in bulldozers drove over and crushed several tents, in which sick and injured refugees were sheltering. Bulldozers! They buried them alive and then bulldozed over the top of them, killing dozens of innocent people in a sadistic act of senseless cruelty.
Also on 16th December, an IDF sniper shot and killed a woman seeking shelter with her adult daughter in the Holy Family Parish Catholic church. When her daughter ran out to help her, the IDF shot and killed her too. They were Christian. They were not Hamas. They were not collateral damage. They were murdered in cold blood.
On 18th December, IDF soldiers bombed the maternity ward at the Nasser medical complex in Khan Younis, a city in the south of Gaza. In case you missed them the first time round, I’m going to repeat the words maternity ward.
The attack was part of a greater scheme to destroy all of Gaza’s health facilities, including the targeting of doctors and their families. Several people, including many pregnant women were injured, and one 13 year old girl died. She is not a statistic. Her name was Dina Abu Mehsen, and a few weeks earlier she had lost both her parents and two of her brothers in an IDF airstrike on her home. She also lost one of her legs. Somehow, she hadn’t lost hope though, and while she was recovering in hospital following her amputation she said that she wanted to become a doctor so that she could help other children. On 18th December, an IDF tank shell ended that dream when it penetrated the ceiling of her hospital room and hit her in the head, killing her instantly.
Are you tired yet? You should be. This shit is relentless. On 21st December, Fatima and Ahmed al-Khaldi and their two sons Adam and Faisal ran to a neighbouring house to shelter with around 30 other people after their own home was shelled by the IDF. When the Israeli soldiers arrived, they threw two hand grenades into the house, after which they entered the room and started shooting indiscriminately. Fatima, who was seven months pregnant, bled to death. Her husband and young son Adam were also killed. Her other son, four year old, Faisal, was seriously injured after IDF bullets ruptured his intestine and bladder. He needs six surgeries. There are no hospital facilities left in Gaza to perform these surgeries. The IDF has destroyed them all.
On 23rd December, IDF soldiers used their favourite Caterpillar D9 bulldozers to desecrate the recent graves of Palestinians who had died in a northern Gaza hospital. They dragged the bodies through the dirt, and then used the blade of the bulldozer to crush the corpses. I can think of absolutely no reason to do something like this, except sheer psychopathy and depravity. The literal definition of immorality.
Also in northern Gaza on the 23rd December, a group of pregnant women walking in the rubble, were trying to make their way to Al-Awda Hospital to give birth, and raised white flags when they were approached by an IDF bulldozer. Each of the pregnant women were shot, and their bodies bulldozed. Why?? Ethics? Virtue?? Explain it to me like I’m five years old.
On Christmas Day, an Israeli photojournalist working with the IDF uploaded this video he’d taken of hundreds of civilians, who had been detained, ordered to strip to their underwear and kneel on the grass on the grounds of Gaza Stadium. In the background, bulldozers can be seen digging holes in the ground. Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor and the UN have both confirmed reports that the Israeli Defence Force carried out field executions of many civilians, lining them up on the edge of the bulldozed pits before executing them and burying them in mass graves. I don’t know why they would do this. I don’t know why they are doing any of it.
On 26th December the corpses of 80 Palestinians, which had been taken from various locations around Gaza, were delivered by the IDF to Rafah. The bodies, in various stages of decomposition, had obviously been tampered with and many were missing organs. This is a war crime, and it is a crime against humanity. It is an abhorrent violation of a human being’s sanctity, and a theft of their dignity in death. It is not the actions of a moral army.
On 28th December, the IDF admitted that the Christmas Day massacre they committed in Maghazi refugee camp, killing 70 Palestinians, was a mistake because “the type of weaponry used did not match the nature of the mission”. They also confessed that they had bombed buildings that were not actual targets, resulting in unnecessary civilian casualties. I take two things away from their statements. Firstly, there was no apology. Secondly, it’s implied that the 2000 pound (900kg) bombs they have been using on the rest of Gaza are considered appropriately matched to the nature of their missions. Which seems batshit crazy, until you realise that their mission is genocide. And then it makes perfect sense.
Also on the 28th December, it was reported that the IDF raided nine West Bank money exchanges, arbitrarily declaring them terrorist organisations that were funneling money to Hamas. In total USD25 million dollars has been reported to have been stolen by the IDF. Kinda reminds me a little bit of how the Nazis funded a third of their war effort with money stolen from Jewish people under the pretence of increased taxes. Same morality vibe.
I don’t know about you but I struggle to find anything (ANYTHING) moral about the way the Israeli Defence Force behaves when it comes to Palestinians. I find them despicable, deplorable and disgusting. But Israelis appear to have a different definition of morality than the rest of us. A sick and twisted definition. In October 2023 Israeli MP Galit Distel Atbaryan called for the complete destruction of Gaza in a Facebook post, saying “Revengeful and vicious IDF is required here. Anything less than that is immoral.” I recently watched another video of an IDF soldier questioning the morality of the Israeli army, but then turning around and saying that their morality problem was that they hadn’t killed enough. That the most moral thing for them to do would be to kill more Arabs. All the Arabs.
I think there’s something wrong with the narrative that Israelis are fed about Palestinians which feeds into an insane amount of hatred, vitriol and bloodlust. From a very young age, Israeli schoolchildren are taught that Palestinians are nothing more than unworthy refugees or primitive farmers. Or worse, terrorists. The school system teaches kids that Jewish people are superior to Muslims, and it teaches them how to hate Palestinians. It teaches them how to live with Israel’s occupation of over five million people and be OK with it. And sadly, the soldiers of the IDF are a product of that racist and bigoted system. Can we please stop pretending that there’s anything moral about that.
