16.09.24, Haaretz Editorial, Haaretz
No Israeli of conscience could fail to be shocked by the fact that the defense establishment is using asylum seekers from Africa to perform various tasks in the Gaza Strip in exchange for assistance in obtaining permanent residency in Israel.
What this means is clear: Israel is creating its own version of Russia’s Wagner Group. In Russia, Wagner was a mercenary army comprised of thousands of prisoners who, in exchange for very dangerous military service, received a pardon and were freed from jail. In Israel, this criminal extortion is aimed at the weakest segment of society, asylum seekers from Africa: Carry out life-threatening tasks for an army that isn’t yours, in a war that isn’t yours, and you’ll be given permanent residency.
This report comes on top of the fact that the Israel Defense Forces is using Palestinian civilians who are snatched up randomly to search tunnels in Gaza. These miserable Palestinians are sent into the tunnels with their hands tied, cameras strapped to their bodies, to “clear” tunnels in place of dogs from the Oketz Unit, many of which have been killed during the war.
At least one Palestinian has been killed doing this; it is virtually a suicide mission. “Our lives are more important than their lives,” one IDF officer said. The report also said that the high command is aware of this practice.
The war in Gaza has become a lever that drags the state into heretofore unknown abysses of warped behavior. The fact that the IDF brass and other defense agencies are behind these actions, which are among the very worst of war crimes, makes this particularly egregious.
The Geneva Conventions forbid the use of civilians as human shields. Israel’s High Court of Justice also explicitly prohibited the practice in its ruling on the so-called neighbor procedure. But none of that is enough to deter officers in the Israel Defense Forces, which (falsely) purported to be “the most moral army in the world.” And after a year of fighting in the Gaza Strip, it can no longer even try to don the mantle of this empty pretension without become a bitter joke.
Now, the defense establishment has taken another step down the slippery slope by cruelly exploiting the weakness of asylum seekers’ situations to force them to risk their lives in place of soldiers. It’s hard to find words for the depth of this depravity, and it is likely to get even worse. Today they are extorting asylum seekers, and tomorrow it will be prisoners, who, as in Russia, also have little to lose.
Not everything about this practice has been cleared for publication. But what Haaretz was allowed to publish is sufficient to immediately demand that the IDF chief of staff and the General Staff immediately end all wartime operations that are based on threats and extortion. Even an army that is far from being “the most moral in the world” cannot continue using such despicable methods of warfare.
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