Open eyes to brutal occupation, genocide

Simin Williams

Opinion

Re: IDF ‘most moral army in the world’, January 17 column. 

Patrick Cooper asks, “Does the Israeli Defence Force deliberately rape, torture and kill Palestinian civilians”?

The answer is a definite yes and much more. These are well documented, many by IDF soldiers on their own cellphones, boasting of their crimes.

As just one example, a group of IDF filmed themselves recently torturing two Palestinian civilians with their hands on the wall, obeying their orders. They started by slashing their shirts with their knives, then proceeded by slashing their skins. Next, they started stabbing them in turn. One of them collapsed. The other one, an older man, was then poked in his neck artery and also collapsed. One of the soldiers then took a rock and smashed it on the fallen man’s head.

Patrick and other IDF supporters try to justify genocide of the Palestinians by accusing Hamas of rape and torture as well as killing civilians on October 7. These claims of rape and torture have now been debunked by Israeli and Jewish sources. Israeli eyewitnesses have also given testimonies that IDF tanks shelled them and killed hostages, their captors and innocent civilians, with the IDF still using its Hannibal Directive to stop kidnappings at any cost even to its own.

Crossing Israel’s wall by Hamas militants — itself something that many military experts, including Israelis, question the nature of — was the first of its kind. However, prior to this, IDF on a daily basis did such incursions to the occupied territories of Palestine, killing, kidnapping, attacking, damaging the property of Palestinians.

The many acts of genocide by IDF and settlers to push civilians off their properties and annex their lands to Israel are well documented by Israeli historians.

You say: “IDF goes to great lengths to avoid non-combatant casualties.” Quite to the contrary, IDF has levelled Palestinian neighbourhoods and cities, killing civilians indiscriminately.

The rest of your column, trying to justify this well-documented genocide by reciting previous crimes against humanity, is quite frankly reprehensible.

IDF also engages in acts of brutality in the West Bank, the other part of Occupied Palestine. There are no Hamas there, but that doesn’t stop the soldiers killing the civilians or kidnapping them and returning their tortured bodies, if at all! IDF brutality has been going on for 75 years, well before the formation of Hamas.

You say: “Before the Israeli offensive began, the IDF dropped 1.5 million leaflets on northern Gaza advising the population there to move south for their own safety; 900,000 Gazans complied.” You forgot to mention that subsequently many cities in the south, crowded with civilians running away from IDF bombardments in the north, were also bombed, killing many such innocent civilians, the majority of them women and children.

Also, it seems, you think dropping a leaflet stating your intention of carrying out criminal acts, will justify the criminal activity. Do you think if someone dropped a leaflet on your house, telling you to vacate, before flattening your house, would make them the most moral invader?

How about if they texted or emailed you? How about the “knock on roof” technique that you seem to relish so much? Would that exonerate the criminal and make them moral?

And please Patrick, save us from your propaganda pieces, when we all know Israelis destroyed most Palestinian hospitals and prevented medical supplies reaching Gaza, necessitating amputation of little kids’ limbs without any anaesthetic.

South Africa may still be suffering many afflictions from its Apartheid past, but it recognises the brutal occupation and the genocide taking place in Palestine. You can learn from their humanity and courage instead of cheering genocide from the comfort of your armchair.