Smiling Israeli soldiers on the wrong side of history

Judging by an extraordinarily tone-deaf collaboration between a New York photographer and the Israeli army, the past seven months have been an endless round of fun and laughter for the Israeli soldiers delivering death and destruction on an industrial scale in Gaza.

Shot against the background of the carnage in Gaza, the images of “The Smiling Soldiers Project” have to be seen to be believed.

So far, photographer Menachem Geisinsky has taken more than 15,000 photographs showing the young men and women of the Israeli army smiling, laughing, kissing and generally having fun, “just like any other 20-year-olds.”

The aim, according to Geisinsky, “is to show the world the humanity of the IDF, the true side — the happiness, the smiles, that the world media tries its best to hide.”

The effect, however, is to convey the impression of a force of young conscripts so surreally detached from the reality of its bloody handiwork that it appears to have given up all pretense of being a disciplined, professional army and instead become little more than a trigger-happy mob.

Forensic analysis last week by the BBC of the shooting of an unarmed 8-year-old boy in the West Bank is among the most graphically documented evidence to date that the Israeli army, whose rampage through Gaza has so far claimed a shockingly disproportionate 35,000 lives, is a morally bankrupt force operating entirely outside the accepted parameters of modern warfare. Ben Saul, the UN special rapporteur on human rights, has said the shooting of the child has all the hallmarks of a war crime.

It appears to have given up all pretense of being a disciplined, professional army and instead become little more than a trigger-happy mob

Jonathan Gornall

On Monday, ­seven independent UN human rights experts issued a joint statement condemning “the continued and systematic onslaught of violence committed against Palestinians in Gaza.” The irony of the timing of this statement, issued one day after Israeli Jews commemorated Holocaust Remembrance Day, appears to have gone largely unrecognized in Israel.

The closing ceremony of Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day was held at a kibbutz in northern Israel called Lohamei Hageta’ot, “the ghetto fighters.” The community was founded by survivors of the Warsaw ghetto uprising of 1943, which cost the lives of only a handful of German soldiers but saw an estimated 60,000 Jews killed or deported to death camps.

Eighty-one years later, a disturbingly similar disproportionality is evident in Gaza.

The Israeli army says that, as of May 6, 266 Israeli soldiers have been killed since the start of ground operations on Oct. 27. Compare this to the 34,488 Gazans, including 14,500 children and 9,500 women, who had been killed by the end of April.

This is not the work of a professional, disciplined force. It is inconceivable that the taking of innocent lives on such a scale can be considered as anything other than a war crime.

And history teaches that such crimes, carried out with the willing or unwilling complicity of a multitude of players — including, in this case, thousands of young Israeli conscripts, many of whom will doubtless be traumatized by the atrocities they have either witnessed or taken part in — will eventually be exposed.

Ultimately, the events still unfolding in Gaza will not only be added to the international roll call of shame that includes such infamous massacres as Katyn, My Lai, Bloody Sunday, Srebrenica and Sinjar, but will also dominate it, by virtue of the sheer scale of the killings.

It is inconceivable that the taking of innocent lives on such a scale can be considered as anything other than a war crime

Jonathan Gornall

At Katyn in 1943, Soviet troops executed 22,000 Polish prisoners. At Srebrenica in 1995, more than 8,000 Muslims were murdered by Bosnian Serbs. Between 2014 and 2017, some 5,000 Yazidis died at the hands of Daesh. All of these massacres rightly earned the condemnation of the international community.

Yet, Israel’s body count in Gaza is already far higher than the death toll in any of these outrages and, with Netanyahu’s rejection this week of a ceasefire deal and the unleashing of an offensive against Rafah, is certain to grow even larger.

The supposedly happy, smiling Israeli soldiers, to say nothing of their commanders and political masters, would do well to pay heed to events currently unfolding in the UK.

Thanks to a former soldier, for whom the weight of conscience had become too much to bear, damning evidence has emerged that British special forces operating in Afghanistan more than a decade ago regularly murdered unarmed Afghans, including children, planting weapons on their bodies to justify their killing.

Justice is coming for the soldiers of the Special Air Service who were involved, their commanders who turned a blind eye and perhaps even for the politicians who tried to cover up the crimes.

On its website, the British army boasts that it has “an excellent reputation across the world, built on trust.” Its soldiers must “obey the law, all the time, wherever you are serving ... You must always keep your self-control, however angry or provoked you might be, because no soldier is ever above the law.”

Now, the murders of dozens of unarmed detainees in Afghanistan between 2010 and 2013 by members of Britain’s most elite fighting force is the subject of an independent judge-led inquiry, which is widely expected to lead to criminal prosecutions.

The Israeli army has a similar website — illustrated with several photographs from “The Smiling Soldier Project” — devoted to promoting its “fundamental values,” which include a commitment “to protect human dignity.”

Every Israeli soldier, it says, is expected to “recognize the critical importance of human life and behave in a safe and measured manner at all times.” They “will not use their weapon or power to harm uninvolved civilians and prisoners and will do everything in their power to prevent harm to their lives, bodies, dignity and property.”

Except, it seems, in Gaza, where the young Israeli soldiers find themselves tragically and irredeemably on the wrong side of history.

• Jonathan Gornall is a British journalist, formerly with The Times, who has lived and worked in the Middle East and is now based in the UK.