Human rights abuses earn IOF commanders senior positions, promotions!
4 Min Read
A CNN investigation finds that commanders from the Netzah Yehuda battalion are now training occupation forces and leading operations in the war on Gaza.
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Israeli occupation soldiers of the Ultra-Orthodox battalion Netzah Yehuda take part in their annual unit training in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights in 2024. (AFP)
Ex-commanders of the Netzah Yehuda battalion, implicated in grave human rights violations in the occupied West Bank by the United States, have been promoted to high-ranking positions within the Israeli occupation army and now oversee the training of field forces and commanding operations in Gaza, a CNN investigation found.
Netzah Yehuda, an all-male unit of Orthodox Jewish nationalists that operates exclusively in Ramallah of the occupied West Bank, is accused of crimes, including sexual assault and beating a number of elderly Palestinians to death after detaining them.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced in April that the United States is considering sanctioning the battalion for "human rights violations." However, the Biden administration later backtracked on the issue without offering an explanation.
Read more: Netanyahu to fight against US-imposed sanctions on Israeli battalion
CNN's report revealed that the Netzah Yehuda commanders were promoted and given leading roles to train occupation forces involved in the war on Gaza even after Washington threatened to impose sanctions on the battalion.
According to testimony from a former soldier of the unit who spoke with CNN, the commanders of the Netzah Yehuda battalion encouraged a “culture of violence” and “the “collective punishment” of Palestinians. The soldier gave an example of the battalion’s forces assaulting a Palestinian village and invading random homes with stun and gas grenades to take revenge on children who had thrown rocks.
'Palestinians have no rights'
Talking to the American broadcaster, one of the group's soldiers, who asked not to be identified, admitted, “A lot of us probably did not see Arabs, Palestinians in particular, as someone with rights – okay, like they’re really the occupier of some of the land and they need to be moved."
He said that this was encouraged in the battalion, especially by the commander - Lt. Col. Mati Shevach. He added that the unit carried out “collective punishment of Palestinians," and that is known.
Read more: UN Committee accuses Israelis of sexual abuse, dehumanizing prisoners
A soldier from the battalion earlier admitted that his unit killed 78-year-old elderly Palestinian-American, Omar Asad, in January 2022, according to recordings obtained by The Grayzone.
As cited by CNN, the occupation army found in a self-investigation that "Assad was held gagged and with his hands tied for a period before being freed and left unresponsive by soldiers from the unit." He died from a heart attack while being detained.
Current and former US officials informed the news channel that the State Department identified more Israeli military units, such as Yamam special police commandos, Police, and Israeli Internal Security Forces, involved in human rights abuses. Despite this, Blinken's State Department has not suspended US military aid to these units.
Read more: Internal US memo suggests 'Israel' violating int'l law: Reuters
In one incident, a 15-year-old boy was raped by an interrogator from the Israeli Internal Security Forces at the Russian Compound detention facility in occupied al-Quds in January 2021. A charity reported the rape to the US State Department, which deemed the allegation credible and raised it with the Israeli government.
“And do you know what happened the next day? The IDF went into the [charity’s] offices and removed all their computers and declared them a terrorist entity,” Josh Paul, a former director of the State Department’s political-military affairs bureau, told CNN.
Paul emphasized that there is "not even the slightest basis” that suggests that the Israeli units accused of human rights violations have taken any steps to reform.
He criticized the US for never imposing sanctions on any Israeli military unit, which said reflects "a lack of political will and moral courage to hold Israel accountable."
