The Hind Rajab Investigation

Quite a tumult is developing over the Hind Rajab case, in which seven members of a single family — including a five-year-old girl — were killed under Israeli shelling. It was a horrifying event, and now a criminal investigation has been opened by the Israel Defense Forces — and that’s where the case belongs. It would be a disaster to accede to the Hind Rajab Foundation’s wish to have the International Criminal Court intervene.Hollywood nominated a docudrama on the case for an Oscar, and IDF detractors insist on an outside investigation. The seven members of the Hind family, though, perished under an Israeli attack and only Israel needs to investigate it. We get that those who accuse the Jewish state of committing “genocide” in Gaza distrust self probes. Yet why did the IDF’s top attorney, Major General Itay Offir, wait so long to order a criminal investigation?Why, for that matter, were several other high-profile cases in Gaza described as serious IDF failures, but deemed short of criminal? Is the IDF planning a coverup that would wave off international prosecution? One reason for delaying Gaza war prosecutions turns out to be turmoil inside the IDF’s advocate general office. A scandal there, though, hardly points to lack of prosecutorial motivation. The opposite turns out to be the case.General Offir’s predecessor, General Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, overzealously hounded soldiers. She was fired after an unauthorized leak to the press of an edited video that crudely attempted to implicate IDF guards at a military prison in crimes against Hamas detainees. The leaked video made the rounds in Israel and beyond. As in the Hind Rajab case, the alleged abuse it depicted was presented as proof of a wider pattern of IDF’s cruelty. Far be it from us to join the chorus of critics who seem to judge from afar that specific case, known as the Sde Teiman affair. We don’t know if the prison guards were guilty of crimes. General Tomer-Yerushalmi, though, showed that rather than cover-up crimes, IDF prosecutors can be too eager, if anything, to prejudge soldiers. Allegations of prison abuse at Sde Teiman fed a worldwide anti-Israel campaign. Remember dog rape? Similarly, an audio tape of Hind, the little girl, begging someone, anyone to rescue her family, as their car was caught under Israeli fire, was heart-wrenching. “The Voice of Hind Rajab,” a film that listed as co-producers a host of Hollywood luminaries, put that tragedy under a magnifying glass. Now the IDF military police are looking into possible crimes committed in the consequent lethal firing on Red Crescent ambulances that came to the family’s rescue. When Jews attended synagogue this Shabbat, they turned to the weekly Torah portion of “Ki Teitzei.” That biblical passage is one of history’s first recorded attempts at dictating what is, and isn’t, morally allowed in war. When today IDF’s ethical code is violated in combat, soldiers must be — and are — punished. No military justice system is perfect. The Israeli army, though, has a credible system of justice, while its enemies do not.

The Hind Rajab Investigation

The Hind Rajab Investigation

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