On December 23rd, 2024, "Israel’s" Haaretz published an extraordinary investigation into the "impact" of Zionist Occupation Force "brutality" on the "mental health" of its own militants. Specifically, "moral injury" incurred by Tel Aviv’s soldiers while perpetrating unabashed genocide in Gaza.

While at significant pains throughout to paint Israelis as the ultimate victims of the 21st-century Holocaust they are committing, the outlet’s little-noticed reporting offered extensive, unprecedented insight into routine horrors casually meted out to Palestinians by the entity, before and after October 7th, 2023.

The article’s author, along with a ZOF "social welfare officer", decades prior conducted academic research into why Tel Aviv’s soldiers regularly commit the most sadistic atrocities imaginable against innocent Palestinians. This followed the First Intifada, 1987-1993, during which the entity brutally cracked down upon righteous Palestinian Resistance to "Israel’s" illegal, immoral occupation of their historic lands. The pair’s joint research effort provided a rich yield of first–hand evidence of Zionist cruelty, as ZOF soldiers "opened up" to them.

The pair identified separate "groups" of ZOF soldiers, "based on personality traits". First and foremost was a "ruthless and callous" faction, who "committed the most severe atrocities" and "viewed brutality as an expression of strength and masculinity." The "power" they felt serving in "Israel’s" genocidal military was "intoxicating". One boastfully described how he had "no problem" brutalising and murdering women, citing how he’d kicked a Palestinian female so hard bones in her groin "broke", and "she can't have children today":

"It's like a drug…you feel like you are the law, you make the rules. As if from the moment you leave the place called Israel and enter the Gaza Strip, you are God."

Meanwhile, another ZOF soldier "shot an Arab four times in the back" from a distance of just 10 metres, "and got away with a self-defense claim." This was, the killer admitted, "cold-blooded murder" - and "we did things like that every day." Another recalled how a young Palestinian was walking down a street calmly, minding their own business, when Zionist forces opened fire. "Bang, a bullet in the stomach," and he was "dying on the sidewalk". Israeli operatives then "drove away indifferently" as their victim died.

‘Flattening Gaza’

Per Haaretz, "these soldiers were remorseless and did not report moral injury." Nonetheless, a few of the genocidal war criminals involved were "convicted by military courts" for their horrendous actions, which left them feeling "bitter and betrayed." Those murderers who got away with it unpunished were tacitly assisted by "a small, ideologically violent group [that] supported the brutality." Despite not "taking part" in the killings, "they believed in Jewish supremacy and were derogatory toward Arabs," so looked the other way.

Meanwhile, a "large group" of ZOF soldiers "with no prior inclination to violence" became callous and inhumane due to the influence of their superiors, and the "norms" of their unit. "I felt like…a Nazi…it looked exactly like we were actually the Nazis and they were the Jews," one member of this contingent testified. Another bore witness to how a "new commander", during their "first patrol" together in the early hours of the morning, hideously mutilated a defenceless Palestinian child:

"There’s not a soul in the streets, just a little four-year-old boy playing in the sand in his yard. The commander suddenly starts running, grabs the boy, and breaks his arm at the elbow and his leg here. Stepped on his stomach three times and left. We all stood there with our mouths open…He told me, ‘these kids need to be killed from the day they are born.’ When a commander does that, it becomes legit."

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Still, there were some ZOF conscripts who "opposed the influence of the callous and ideological groups" on the "culture" of the Zionist entity’s military, who bravely "took a moral stand and went on to report the atrocities" they’d witnessed, if not participated in directly. Despite being "initially intimidated by brutal commanders," they blew the whistle. Their reward was to be "severely harassed and ostracized" by Zionist entity authorities. One truth-teller was discharged for their disclosures. "Traumatized" and "depressed", they subsequently fled Israel.

Another whistleblower, who dared make clear his personal opposition to official orders that amounted to "flattening Gaza", and necessitated "crimes against humanity", suffered "severe social ostracism" for his refusal to comply, and willingness to publicise the frightful objectives with which he was tasked. He was resultantly bullied and pressured out of his unit, and returned back to civilian life "mentally crushed". Such ill-treatment is only to be expected, given the ZOF’s wider institutional culture, and the innately genocidal nature of the putrid ideology of Zionism.

As Haaretz notes, multiple ZOF war criminals gave jubilant eulogies at the October 2024 funeral of Shuvael Ben-Natan, an entity militant neutralised during Tel Aviv’s invasion of Lebanon that month. One bragged their fallen comrade "entered Gaza to take revenge", while another exultantly recounted how Ben-Natan murdered a 40-year-old Palestinian "harvesting olives with his children in the West Bank." Others nostalgically recalled how their deceased friend "boosted morale in Gaza by setting a home on fire without approval."

‘Sadistic People’

Ben-Natan’s fellow war criminals psychotically used the occasion of his funeral to "[profess] their commitment to continue with arson and revenge in Gaza, Lebanon, and the West Bank." We see such sickening scenes playing out in real-time today. Meanwhile, other comparable, if not worse, Zionist atrocities are well-hidden from public view, perpetrated in mass "detention facilities" such as Sde Teiman. Haaretz refers to the "severe sexual abuse" to which Palestinian inmates are subjected at the site as "a microcosm of brutalization in the current war."

The rape and sexual torture at Sde Teiman was so widespread and merciless, a "veteran physician" reported this to authorities. As a result, nine IDF reserve soldiers "were subsequently detained on suspicion of aggravated sodomy and other forms of abuse." Haaretz suggests there are also 36 ongoing investigations into deaths of Palestinian Sde Teiman detainees since October 7th 2023. "Anonymous soldiers consulted" by the outlet amply testified to how "a discourse of hatred and revenge normalized the abuse of detainees" at the facility.

This included "harsh, arbitrary violence on a frequent basis, humiliation and degradation, deliberate starvation and other abusive practices." A "young student" called up for ZOF duty who witnessed the savagery at Sde Teiman first-hard referred to a profusion of "sadistic people" there, "who enjoy causing suffering to others." They stated it "was most disturbing…to see how easily and quickly ordinary people can detach themselves and not see the reality right in front of their eyes when they are in a difficult and shocking human situation."

A "reservist doctor" posted to Sde Teiman echoed their comments, referring to "total dehumanization" throughout the site. Strikingly though, their statements indicated intimate personal complicity in the very same horrendous acts perpetrated against innocent Palestinian detainees there, about which their coworker was so distressed. The doctor’s evident lack of remorse over their personal maltreatment of captives was writ unambiguously large. They laconically justified their actions due to "normalization" of horrific abuse at the detention facility: 

"You don’t really treat them as if they are human beings…the hardest thing for me is…what I didn’t feel...It bothers me that it didn’t bother me".

Another ZOF reservist posted there - described as "restrained" by Haaretz - was said to have maintained her "standards" morally "by escaping the facility." She claimed to have been "scared" by widespread "dehumanization" and "dangerous attitudes" she encountered there. Her discoveries were so "traumatic", she managed to be "discharged" from duty "with a psychiatrist's help." More widely, such perspectives, she lamented, have "become more normal in our society." Haaretz concurs, noting government officials routinely engage in "rhetoric of hatred and revenge."

This open, state-level encouragement of slaughter - which constitutes incontrovertible proof of the Zionist entity’s genocidal intent - is coupled with a "weakening" of "Israel’s" "civilian and military justice systems." Evidence of monstrous acts by ZOF militants is voluminous. Frequently, they gleefully film themselves abusing and killing captives, shooting Palestinians waving white flags, massacring women and children, looting abandoned homes, wantonly destroying private property, and more. Despite this wealth of evidence though, official investigations into ZOF abuses, let alone prosecutions, have been "miniscule".

Mainstream news outlets are committed to a conspiracy of silence on the Gaza genocide. Distancing, evasive language, omission, and other duplicitous chicanery is systematically employed to downplay or outright justify the entity’s ferocious erasure of the Palestinians. The disclosures and condemnation of the Haaretz probe would never appear in the Western media. Yet, it is clear that its author believes the ZOF’s abuses to be fundamentally aberrant and heretical, the result of "corrupting influence of…callous and ideologically violent soldiers". 

In reality, atrocities are and always have been hardwired into the ZOF. After all, Zionism is dependent on ethnic cleansing, population displacement, and land theft. Its military will therefore invariably act accordingly. Partition of Palestine was first proposed by Britain’s October 1937 Peel Commission. Many Zionists were angry that the portion of Palestinian territory granted to them was too small. However, David Ben-Gurion, widely considered the father of "Israel", and its first Prime Minister, robustly dismissed their concerns:

"It does not hurt our feelings that by this acquisition we are not in possession of the whole land…This increase in possession is of consequence not only in itself, but because through it we increase our strength, and every increase in strength helps in the possession of the land as a whole. The establishment of a state, even if only on a portion of the land, is…a powerful boost to our historical endeavors to liberate the entire country."