Euphemistic practices: The IDF, killing aid workers and self-investigation

Few armed forces have managed to make murder and executions the stuff of procedural aberration rather than intentional practice. Killing civilians and unarmed personnel is the stuff of misreading and misunderstandings, albeit arrived at with good conscience. And so it was that the killing of 15 aid and emergency workers in Gaza by the Israeli army on 23 March could be put down to “professional failures, breaches or orders and a failure to fully report the incident”, a finding identified by an investigation conducted by the same organisation into its own personnel.

In marking its own report card, and giving it a credible pass, the Israeli army found, using the dulling terms that make murder an afterthought, that the deaths were of minor if regretful consequence. While not explicitly libelling the dead workers, the official press release teeters on excuse and general exculpation, making it clear that, on 23 March, “the troops were conducting a vital mission aimed at targeting terrorists.” The killings took place “in a hostile and dangerous combat zone, under a widespread threat to the operating troops.” The armed forces were presented with the dilemma of protecting medical and facilities (something the army has conspicuously failed to do), with the use by Hamas “of such infrastructure for terrorism, including ambulances to transport terrorists and weapons.”

The thick insinuation that the aid workers were more or less asking for it by being there in the first place emerges with unadorned rawness. And to suggest claims of execution or the bounding of any of the murdered before or after shooting were “blood libels and false accusations against IDF soldiers.”

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The army press release leaves an impression of forced thoroughness. There had been “extensive data collection from operational systems, the forces on the ground, and along the entire chain of command.” This had also included “relevant operational orders and directives, footage from various surveillance systems active during the event, radio recordings.” There was even a reconstruction of the events, the personnel involved questioned.

The inquiry identified three shooting incidents: the first involving troops firing on an alleged Hamas vehicle; the second, involving firing on a fire truck and ambulances close to the area where the troops were operating after the deputy battalion commander identified the vehicles as “employed by Hamas forces, who arrived to assist the first vehicle’s passengers”; and the third involving an attack by the army on a Palestinian UN vehicle “due to operational errors in breach of regulation.”

The inquiry did little to consider the damning evidence arising from a video of one of the slain workers, Red Crescent paramedic Rifaat Radwan, which prompted the army to change its initially fabricated story: that the vehicles had stealthily approached them without lights or markings in the menacing dark. It is hard to imagine, for instance, that “the deputy commander did not initially recognise the vehicles as ambulances” given “poor night visibility”. The vehicles were illuminated, the markings palpably visible. But no matter: of the 15 Palestinians butchered that night, six were Hamas terrorists. None were armed, but that hardly mattered.

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As for the subsequent gruesome treatment of the bodies, the inquiry also finds little fault. The battalion’s covering of the aid workers in shallow graves was intended “to prevent further harm” (well, they were dead, the harm well and truly done) while clearing the vehicles to allow “civilian evacuation”, another euphemism used by the public relations arm of the army to justify expulsions and displacement. Removing the bodies was deemed “reasonable”; the crushing of the vehicles, suggesting the workings of guilty minds, was not. There had been no intention to “to conceal the event, which was discussed with international organisations and the UN, including coordination for the removal of the bodies.”

In watering down the murderous significance of the killings, the matter of failings, breach of orders and inadequate reporting are eclipsed by the continued commitment to battle Hamas “while upholding IDF values, operational discipline and orders.” The Golani Reconnaissance Battalion had acquitted itself well, “operating with great distinction for a year and a half.” Troops had opened fire on “suspects […] after perceiving an immediate and tangible threat.” This is what happens when students grade their own papers, without invigilation and supervision by an independent authority.

The consequence of the inquiry will be mild and, as the entire process has proven to be, bureaucratic in its self-justification. The execution of 15 Palestinian emergency workers on the blood ledger will get you the dismissal of a battalion deputy commander for “incomplete and inaccurate reporting” and a reprimand for a brigade commanding officer, in this case the 14th Brigade. It’s a calculus fantastically obscene, but it is one repeatedly used in various forms when it comes to slaying Palestinians and those who fall victim to the doctrine of expansive force taken by Israel after 7 October 2023.

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