What appears to be a Star of David appears carved into the ground when it zooms in on newly released satellite images of what used to be farmland in northern Gaza.
In images of Beit Hanoon, a northern Gaza region that has seen a lot of fighting and losses for the Israeli military, can be seen the symbol of both the Jewish faith and the state of Israel.
Next to the star appears the numbers 7979, a possible reference to the Israeli military’s 97th Netzah Yehuda Battalion.
Track record of violations
An all-male ultra-Orthodox unit known as the Netzah Yehuda Battalion, which reportedly marched from the occupied West Bank to Gaza in January of last year, has operations in Beit Hanoon.
Prior to its deployment, the battalion had been accused of a number of violent crimes, including the killing of unarmed Palestinians and the sexual abuse of prisoners in its custody, according to some American officials.
Omar Abdulmajeed Asaad, a Palestinian American man in his 80s who was apprehended by the Netzah Yehuda Battalion in January 2022, was allegedly one of the battalion’s alleged victims.
After pressure from the US government, Israel agreed to pay compensation to Asaad’s family later that year. However, as part of the payout, the Israeli government insisted that no one in Netzah Yehuda be held accountable for Asaad’s death.
Bad intent
The Netzah Yehuda Battalion made the Star of David “for Google Maps, to be seen that they were here”, Hamze Attar, a Palestinian defence analyst, told Al Jazeera.
According to Attar, the battalion’s sanctioning plans by the administration of former US President Joe Biden may have been the catalyst for the action. Following objections from the Israeli government, the US Department of State closed its investigation into violations of its own Leahy Laws, which forbid the transfer of weapons to foreign military installations engaged in grave human rights violations, in August. Netzah Yehuda had been the subject of the investigation.
Elia Ayoub, a researcher and contributor to the Hauntologies newsletter, described what absolute impunity looks like in an army that has been given everything it needs to destroy Palestinian life. “As in any genocide, those responsible often enjoy displaying their superiority by imposing their symbols on their victims.” Religious figures who discuss the colonization of Gaza and the genocide of Palestinians are also used by the Israeli army as a form of worship.
The Israeli Ministry of Defense is in contact with Al Jazeera regarding the Star of David engraved in northern Gaza, but it was unable to provide a response by the time of publication.
An extensive pattern
Not the Israeli forces’ first sacrifice of a symbol is the Star of David. Images posted on social media show soldiers in Gaza adorning massive menorahs and adorning Jewish symbols in building rubble. Since Israel’s October invasion, soldiers have carried out the same operations in southern Lebanon.
“The]Israeli military] has rabbis on the ground, and soldiers have brought the menorah and shofar to the battlefield”, Ayoub said. “This is not new. It just is becoming much more common right now. These behaviors, according to the Israeli religious philosopher Yeshayahu Leibowitz, were Judeo-Nazis in the 1990s, with the warning that if they were not abated, they might become the norm. Sadly he was right”.
A ceasefire on January 19 brought an end, at least temporarily, to Israel’s attacks on Gaza carried out since the Hamas-led attacks in southern Israel of October 7, 2023. Those killed 1, 139 people and took about 250 people captive. Israel’s subsequent war on Gaza has killed at least 47, 306 Palestinians in Gaza and wounded another 111, 483 while displacing about 1.9 million of its 2.3 million people.
Since the start of the war, Israeli forces have destroyed 60% of all buildings in Gaza, according to research conducted by Jamon Van Den Hoek of Oregon State University and Corey Scher of the City University of New York. In Beit Hanoon, the figure is 70 percent.
Following US President Donald Trump’s suggestion that the Palestinians in the enclave be “cleaned out,” the issue of Gaza’s future after the war gained new relevance last week.
The Israeli extreme right has long been a pillar of the forced displacement of Gaza’s entire population.
Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who has often spoken of his desire to re-establish Israeli settlements within Gaza, welcomed Trump’s suggestion, pledging: “I will, with God’s help, work with the prime minister and the cabinet to ensure there is an operational plan to implement this as soon as possible”.
‘Ownership’
“Branding is about ownership. It’s about marking your territory”, said Chris Arning, the founder and director of Creative Semiotics, a consultancy specialising in the meaning of brand symbols. “Branding originated from farmers and business owners branding their cattle to represent ownership. Over time, that also included the branding of convicts and slaves”.
According to Arning, the star of David carving into Beit Hanoon’s soil serves as a form of symbolic violence, referring to the violence that the symbol represents in the local setting.
Source: Aljazeera
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