Israel’s attack on a humanitarian aid convoy in the Gaza Strip in early April, which killed seven aid workers from the US-based aid organization World Central Kitchen, sparked global criticism of Israel’s policy of engagement in the region. caused a fierce backlash. According to media reports, three missiles were fired in succession at three vehicles due to suspicions that there were Hamas fighters in the convoy.
Israel’s attack on a humanitarian aid convoy in the Gaza Strip in early April, which killed seven aid workers from the US-based aid organization World Central Kitchen, sparked global criticism of Israel’s policy of engagement in the region. caused a fierce backlash. According to media reports, three missiles were fired in succession at three vehicles due to suspicions that there were Hamas fighters in the convoy.
In Israel, the Israeli military investigation team described the incident as an accident, a “serious mistake resulting from mistaken identification, poor decision-making, and a serious failure due to an attack contrary to standard operating procedures.” concluded. In the humanitarian field, like Jeremy Konyndyk, president of Refugees International, who served in both the Obama and Biden administrations, this has meant that “Gaza can be seen as a free-fire zone with complete impunity for serious attacks on civilians.” It is seen as evidence of a culture of “handling”. , I suggested.
But for the discussion to be useful, it needs to move beyond these immediate interpretations and consider the deeper cultural patterns underlying such incidents. Most importantly, changes in military policy and mentality that can be traced back to the Erol Azaria incident of 2016-2017 must be scrutinized. Azaria was an Israeli conscript who was caught on video executing a wounded and incapacitated Palestinian attacker in Hebron. The Israeli military charged Azaria with manslaughter and sentenced him to 18 months in prison.
While the incident demonstrated the military’s adherence to its own code of ethics, it also sparked widespread protests from right-wing groups and a general backlash against military procedures. The military was accused of failing to support Azaria and creating a culture in which soldiers were reluctant to use force against Palestinian militants. To counter this claim, and from that point on, the military began announcing the number of Palestinian fighters killed during operations, showing that the military did not hesitate to engage.
From 2019 to 2023, under the leadership of Army Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi, the killing-based criteria were strengthened. Kochavi’s goal was to transform the army into a “deadly, efficient and innovative” fighting force – an army of death. He advanced this vision by increasing the accuracy of weapons systems, improving coordination between forces and intelligence, and increasing the rate of fire.
Kochavi’s instructions to field commanders to assess the number of enemy forces killed and the number of objectives destroyed at the end of each combat phase, rather than focusing solely on conquering territory, was a military This signifies a shift to necrotic tactics, where the primary purpose of military engagement is to kill the enemy. enemy. Murder becomes not just a result of war, but its main purpose.
The approach of using body counts as an indicator of success has been particularly strengthened during the current war. Immediately after the October 7 attack, the Israeli military began consistently reporting the death toll of Hamas fighters, similar to the way U.S. generals announced enemy death tolls during the Vietnam War. Ta. It is a scenario in which traditional metrics for evaluating combat success are elusive. Count key indicators of success rather than strategic goals achieved. This became especially evident as the Israeli death toll rose and the stated goal of dismantling Hamas looked increasingly unattainable.
In fact, the military appears to have set quantitative goals from the beginning. According to +972 magazine journalist Yuval Abraham, the Israeli military has developed an artificial intelligence-based program called Lavender designed to identify targets for assassination. The system has tagged some 37,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip as suspected militants and marked their homes (and by extension their families) for possible airstrikes. The report said Lavender’s deployment killed about 15,000 Palestinians in the first six weeks of the war.
By setting numerical targets, the Israeli military moved from viewing achievements as a measure of progress, such as neutralizing the threat posed to Israel from Gaza, to using body counts as its primary criterion. This trend was further reinforced by the widespread adoption of homicidal language among military commanders. “Now we’re going to move forward and kill them all,” the Brigadier said. One notable example is General Roman Goffman, who was quoted as saying just before ground operations in Gaza began:
As Israel faces an impasse in the Gaza Strip without a politically clear exit strategy, its reliance on killings and their quantification as indicators of success has become increasingly pronounced, leading to an erosion of operational constraints. There is. This change was evident in the recent attack on Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, which caused severe damage to Gaza’s most vital medical infrastructure. The search for Hamas members has to a large extent become an end in itself, complicating the dynamics of the conflict and prioritizing military objectives over a political solution.
This change lends some context to the tragic murder of the support convoy team, but it doesn’t make it any less disturbing. Once an armed person or two in a convoy is discovered, their neutralization becomes a top priority and is clearly an overarching strategic consideration, which should be incorporated at the tactical level. Element has been ignored. Fundamentally, such a situation is important to prevent civilian casualties, especially when there is no direct threat to Israeli forces, especially along the deconflict routes designated for the delivery of humanitarian supplies. This justified the intended approach. Moreover, given the potential impact on Israel’s global standing during the Gaza crisis, overarching political rationality should have prioritized protecting the humanitarian mission.
But as a report in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz vividly shows, the incident unfolded like an obsession with deadly action. After spotting one or two gunmen, Israeli forces targeted three successive vehicles from the air. After the first vehicle was attacked, the passengers moved to a second vehicle, which was hit by a missile. When the injured were transferred to a third vehicle, that vehicle was also fired upon. This appears to be a case of persistent murder confirmation, overshadowing the principles of necessity, proportionality, and the sanctity of civilian life.
The fundamental issue, therefore, is not simply to revise the rules of engagement or to monitor their application more closely, but rather that such measures alone prove insufficient to prevent future incidents. To do. The issue also goes beyond the mistaken assumption that any area of Gaza can be considered a free-fire zone where indiscriminate engagement with Palestinian militants is justified. What is important is to dismantle the pervasive culture that equates murder with military success.
