IDF provides contrary data, calls NGO misleading.
The NGO Yesh Din issued a report late Wednesday accusing the IDF legal division of serving as a whitewashing factory for avoiding war crimes allegations.
The IDF rejected the allegations, provided alternate data and called the report grossly misleading.
Yesh Din’s report said it included data for the years 2017-2021 regarding law enforcement against IDF soldiers who harmed Palestinians in the West Bank.
It said that the data showed that “the odds that a complaint concerning a soldier harming Palestinians will result in the filing of an indictment against the soldier is less than one percent and stands at only 0.87%.”
“Only 21.4% of all complaints filed resulted in the opening of a criminal investigation,” without even getting to an indictment, said the NGO.
In those rare cases that soldiers are prosecuted for killing Palestinians, Yesh Din said that they routinely receive very lenient sentences.
Moreover, Yesh Din said that the army does not even investigate all of the cases in which Palestinian civilians are killed, contrary to its official investigation policy, which states that every case of killing that transpired under circumstances that were not of actual combat must be investigated.
Yesh Din said that “Israel uses the military law enforcement system as a cover-up mechanism which legitimizes crimes that are being committed against Palestinians by Israeli soldiers and commanders.”
The IDF disputes Yesh Din’s findings
The IDF said that Yesh Din’s data was slanted and misleading, saying that it has filed 31 indictments against 36 soldiers from 2017-2022.
These indictments have been regarding a variety of allegations, from violating rules regarding weapons use, to violence against Palestinians, to harming Palestinians’ property.
Regarding the lenient sentences allegation, the IDF said that most of the proceedings result in serving some jail time.
This may be the source of part of the dispute between Yesh Din and the IDF as the human rights group may be looking for life sentences or decades in jail whereas typical IDF sentences may be measured in days, weeks or close to a year in manslaughter cases.
The IDF said that it opens criminal probes whenever there is a potential criminal charge and that even where there is no such suspicion, it opens an operational inquiry.
Further, the IDF said that all of its legal standards are in line with the High Court of Justice’s rulings.
This may also leave the sides in the conflict as the NGO often views the High Court as overly deferential to the IDF (just as Israel’s political right views the High Court as too left-leaning.)
Finally, although IDF policy is to open criminal probes in most cases where Palestinians are killed, the sides often disagree about when self-defense principles in an ongoing military operation come into play to exempt the IDF from such a probe.
Yesh Din’s report comes as there has been renewed global pressure on the International Criminal Court to make progress against Israelis relating to the conflict with the Palestinians.