The most recent instance of a practice that is not unusual, is the killing of two unarmed Palestinian men as they gave themselves to Israeli soldiers in Jenin, West Bank.
The men, Al-Muntasir Billah Abdullah and Youssef Asasa, were shown that they had no weapons when their arms were raised and their shirts raised. They scurried back after being ordered by Israeli forces to turn around the building they had entered. Then, at close range, they were shot and killed.
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The Israeli military has promised an investigation as well as the image of the incident that was captured on camera. However, the far-right Israeli Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, said that the Israeli forces “acted exactly as expected from them: terrorists must die.”
Because Israel has a long history of shooting to kill when it comes to Palestinians, even when they are not armed, The case has become especially compelling as a result of the camera’s capture of the Jenin killings, but it also reflects a long-standing pattern of behavior.
According to Tirza Leibowitz, deputy director of Physicians for Human Rights Israel, “the mindset that led to this has existed for a long time.” It is the result of years of occupation, subjugation, and separation. Israeli society has simply adapted to it over time.
Violence history
Hind Rajab, 6, whose final hours were spent pleading for help over the phone with aid workers in Gaza in January 2024, was the subject of Leibowitz’s exposé. She had been seated in a car with family members who had already been killed by an Israeli attack. Later, Rajab and the Palestinian ambulance team who had been rescuing her discovered dead.
The killing of two unarmed men in March 2024, even after one of them repeatedly attempted to signal his surrender, is another incident from Gaza that is similar to those in Jenin and was captured on camera.
Mohammed Habali, a mentally ill man who was shot in the back of the head and killed as he ran away from Israeli soldiers in Tulkarem in 2018, was a notorious case. Additionally, Israeli police shot and killed Palestinian Eyad al-Halaq, a Palestinian with autism, in occupied East Jerusalem in 2020, while he was on his way to his special needs school.
Israelis have also lost a lot from the practice. Three Israeli prisoners who were in Gaza had escaped in December 2023. They were shot and killed by Israeli soldiers as they attempted to surrender, one of them holding a white flag.
Israel frequently announces investigations into these incidents, but most of the time, especially when it involves Palestinians, the shooters are allowed to leave. As a necessary response to those who are perceived as threats, killings are frequently justified.
Critics claim that the killings continue to be unsurprising given years of such incidents and little repercussion.
Leibowitz remarked, “It takes place with impunity.” National courts ignore it because they believe it is a security issue, so they won’t be able to intervene. The international community is now required to “check” [Israel’s] impunity.
The only difference between those [previous incidents] and this [most recent incident] is that it was captured on camera, Leibowitz said. “Israeli rights organizations, such as Yesh Din and B’Tselem, have been documenting and following up on these kinds of incidents for more than ten years with little or no media response.”
No one seems to care.
It’s unlikely that Israel will be in the news about the killings of Abdullah and Asasa in Jenin. Israel’s genocidal war against Gaza began with allegations of torture, rape, and the deliberate imposition of famine, but little was received by the Israeli public.
No one is concerned. No one is commenting, according to Palestinian parliamentarian Aida Touma-Suleiman.
I attempted to introduce a private members bill that would make torture illegal two weeks ago, she said, on the same day the UN was considering cases of torture against Israel. A government minister viciously attacked me, saying “I was trying to tie the state of Israel’s hands” when dealing with “terrorists.”
He was basically saying that Israel still uses torture, she continued.
Torture
The extent of the total disregard for Palestinian life goes beyond Jenin’s executions.
A number of Israeli-based rights organizations provided evidence of Palestinians receiving medical care while shackled and blindfolded in a report to the UN committee. Palestinians were allegedly forced to use nappies and were deliberately starved, according to other reports.
Israel denied any of the allegations.
The Israeli army received 862 complaints about alleged crimes committed by soldiers against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank between 2018 and 2022, according to the rights group Yesh Din. Additionally, there are attacks by settler groups, displacement, and land appropriation.
29 soldiers were the subject of 258 criminal investigations, or 30%, of which were opened by investigators.
A Palestinian killing was the only instance in which. That means that only about 1% of the incidents Palestinians reported were prosecuted, and that’s only the beginning.
The rate for fatal cases was even lower, with one indictment out of 219 deaths, or about 0.4 percent, being reported to the army.
In Gaza, Israel has since killed almost 70 000 people and forced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to emigrate there.
The UN’s Committee on Torture expressed concern over reports that “de facto State had a policy of organized and widespread torture and ill-treatment] of Palestinians” during the reporting period, which had seriously increased since October 7th, 2023.
According to Shai Parnes, director of public outreach at the rights group B’Tselem, the majority of Israelis can spend months or even years seeing Palestinians only through television coverage that promotes fear and resentment. He described an apartheid and dehumanization process that accelerated following the 1990 Oslo Accords before being used by the government following Israel’s attack on October 7, 2023.
A large portion of a nation’s society is either in favor of or indifferent to a genocide. And it is true that some aspects of Israeli society are committing genocids, according to Parnes, who commented on the soldiers’ video in Jenin.
