Throughout the war against Hamas in Gaza, the Israel Defence Forces have killed civilians indiscriminately, shown no consideration for international law, and deliberately targeted and killed journalists and their families. To understand this level of brutality, one has to know the leaders who are permitting such a disproportionate and criminal use of military force.
The IDF Chief of the General Staff, Herzl (Herzi) Halevi lives in an illegal settlement in the West Bank called Kfar HaOranim, and is the first-ever settler to serve as the IDF commander. The Jewish News Syndicate defended his appointment by arguing that the settlement he lives in doesn’t vote far-right, and Halevi was indeed nominated as IDF Commander by the Minister for Defense, previous IDF commander and current Opposition MP, Benny Gantz of the current National Unity Party, who is also challenging Benjamin Netanyahu’s majority in the Knesset. Gantz is currently a Minister in Netanyahu’s “war unity cabinet”. Herzl Halevi’s appointment was approved by Yair Lapid, the previous Prime Minister, and current Leader of the Opposition, who is of the position that a two-state solution with the Palestinians should be reached by simultaneously annexing officially large illegal settlements with Jewish majorities. This is a more moderate position from Netanyahu’s coalition that outright refuses a two-state solution but still goes against international law.
There is no doubt that the IDF could have caused much more death and horror to the Gazan population if it wanted to, but this is not the point. The IDF’s practices as approved and conducted by Halevi are designed without any consideration of international law. Military analysts who know the IDF through their work have explained to me that the IDF considers any Hamas supporter as a legitimate target be it civilian or non-civilian and this policy also includes Gazan civilians who refuse to rat out Hamas to the IDF. This may also explain the high death toll in Gaza.
Ironically, Herzi Halevi once penned an article entitled “From the South will come good things”, but has ended up being at the centre of Israel’s most brutal war in decades. Now, Halevi is responsible for war crimes, even if it wasn’t him he deliberately signed off the death warrants for journalists – these actions happened under his responsibility and command and kept happening repeatedly despite well-publicized reports about these incidents. Halevi did nothing to mitigate the deaths of further journalists.
The DAWN Foundation (Democracy for the Arab World now), has submitted a request to the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to investigate Herzl Halevi and his officials for war crimes in Gaza.
Website Editor
Historian and Publisher
Leave a Reply