Israelis Begin to Grapple with their Military, Leadership

As the IDF continues to kill Israeli hostages as well as Palestinians accidentally, the Israeli people are beginning to question the wisdom of their leadership under Netanyahu and the competency of the IDF.

The best way to change Israel is internally via the wiser minds of her people.  The shooting of 3 Israeli men trying to "surrender" to the IDF,  unarmed and shirtless and waving a white flag, might have opened some eyes to the way their military force operates.  They don't respect the rules of war like other military organizations.  They endanger their own people this way. and Americans.

They haven't earned the right to the weapons American supplies them.  When voters here cut off Israeli war funding, and the Biden administration no longer is in power making an end run around Congress in financing this latest war on Gaza, Israel will need to find better ways to police their country and its borders, without taking their killings to other lands and calling that "justice, Israeli-style".

Dror Sadot, a spokeswoman for B’Tselem, another Israeli human rights organization, said the problem did not lie in the military’s rules, but in the government’s policies.

“The policy is one of excessive use of force when we’re talking about Palestinians, shooting even if there is no risk to the soldiers,” Ms. Sadot said. With the exception of a few high-profile cases that draw the news media’s attention, she said, “soldiers act with impunity.”

More broadly, she said, “We know that Israel policy in Gaza right now doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants — we’re seeing this with the carpet bombing from the air.”

The Israeli military recently issued an apology about a Dec. 24 airstrike in which dozens of civilians were reportedly killed when jets struck buildings next to those where Hamas operatives were located. “The I.D.F. regrets the harm to uninvolved individuals and is working to draw lessons from the incident,” the military said in a statement.

And last month, when the killing of the three hostages was reported, several commentators noted that the shootings might never have come to light had the victims not been Israeli.

Avi Shamriz, the father of the slain hostage Alon Shamriz, 26, has accused the army of murder and lawlessness.

Alon Shamriz had served in the army and knew the rules of engagement, his father said. His son, the elder Mr. Shamriz said, had probably instructed the other men on what to do — remove their clothing and hold a white flag — but they were shot nonetheless.

“They cried out for help. They did everything right,” Mr. Shamriz said on Israel’s Channel 13. “It wasn’t neglect, it was lawlessness. Someone took the rules of engagement into his own hands and killed my son.”