Israel’s mass grave controversy – the real problem

The idea that Israel carried out mass summary executions and covered them up in mass graves is preposterous.

There is not only no evidence connecting Israel to such an act, but the IDF, with all of the criticism, has shown unprecedented openness to international media to see and learn what it is doing in Gaza.

In fact, many of the accusations from global critics have come not only from Palestinian social media reports, but straight from IDF public admissions or exposure.

So actual mass executions or mass graves is not Israel’s real problem with the controversy.

The real problem is that, according to The Jerusalem Post’s findings to date, it seems that Israel and the IDF did not adequately vet and calibrate its policy of searching for dead Israeli hostages in Palestinian graves with  international law and perceptions abroad of acceptable conduct.

Put simply, international law permits exhuming bodies in certain circumstances such as Israel’s search for dead Israeli hostages. But the IDF did not always follow the nuances of the law or it did not present its adherence to those nuances to the world in a way that would promote a belief in Israeli good faith.

Exhuming bodies allowed for certain ‘necessities’

Let’s start with explaining why the mass graves claims are demonstrably nonsense.

The IDF has facilitated hundreds of media visits to Gaza and while only a small number have been on the very front lines during close combat, there have been enough to give a pretty clear account of how Israel has fought the war: the good, the bad, and the gray.

Israel has admitted to a significant number of errors that countries which actually commit atrocities – like Russia, China, or Iran, work hard to deny.

The worst past incidents, such as Israel’s alleged October 17 attack on the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital, were proven to be false – in the end proven to be caused by an Islamic Jihad rocket misfire.

Also, when Russia carried out mass executions and dug mass graves in Ukraine, there were a variety of real time reports and indicators. There were also communications intercepts of Russians bragging or feeling guilty. Incidents on that scale simply cannot be suppressed in this modern age.

In contrast, in Gaza, there are clear Palestinian reports that the Palestinians themselves initially dug the graves in question.

The problem it seems is that too many bodies were later found in the mass graves after Israeli operations or sometimes specific bodies said to have been buried alone next to a specific tree were later reburied in mass graves.

In other words, someone added bodies to the graves originally dug by the Palestinians, and that someone might sometimes have been the IDF. The IDF has not denied this possibility to the Post.

Once again, it does not mean that this third party, which could be a mix of the IDF and other Palestinians, killed the additional victims.

In fact, there are indications that Israel (or disparate Palestinian groups) might have added dead Palestinian bodies to the mass graves after opening graves to search for Jewish bodies.

But this would mean Israel found and moved dead bodies, not that it killed people.

Why exhume and rebury bodies?

What is the point of exhuming and reburying bodies elsewhere?

Not fully wrestling with this question could be the Israeli error.

If there was specific intelligence, such as a confession by a captured Hamas member, that a specific hostage was reburied in a certain mass grave, there would likely be no international law problem with a targeted exhumation of part of a preexisting mass grave.

But if there were 150 Palestinian bodies buried in the grave and Israel was only searching for one hostage and the intelligence was uncertain, could Israel legally exhume under those circumstances?

Maybe. But it would be debatable, so a very clear procedure should have been set down in writing containing a legal opinion for someone to examine if questions about the procedure subsequently arose. Best of all a third party observer should have been involved who could testify afterward about how humane Israel was.

Instead, the IDF issued laconic standard written statements commending its own humanity with no backup. Not that the Post has evidence that the IDF was not generally humane, and it probably was, but the IDF left no real paper trail to defend itself from skeptical critics.

It just seems that, overwhelmed by a variety of fateful war decisions, top IDF and non-military officials agreed that exhuming bodies in such circumstances was legal, moral, and necessary to get back hostage remains.

It seems some general orders were issued about exhuming bodies humanely and about avoiding offense to the dignity of Palestinian dead, but not much more than that.

It seems that no top official was supervising the procedure in the field and ensuring that bodies were reburied in the same grave from which they were exhumed, as long as it was in the same general area.

A generous explanation might note that after significant battles destroyed a given neighborhood area the IDF might no longer recognize how the area looked beforehand, and that returning things to “the way they were” may not have been entirely possible.

But this could have been admitted and tracked, especially with a third party observer on hand, to credibly argue afterward that Israel did its best in difficult circumstances.

If this mind-blowingly negligent practice was how Israel went about exhuming bodies, it was a glaring blunder simply from the perspective of public relations, not to mention that in some cases there could be some legal violations.

The IDF already knew it was being accused of destroying cemeteries, in at least 16 different incidents, according to CNN.

Since the IDF has provided specific explanations of fighting terrorists in some of the destroyed cemeteries only, Israel helped create a perfect storm of doubt about its intentions where it could have laid out evidence and maintained the moral high ground with a laser clear focus on hostages’ bodies.

The IDF has disclosed a few instances in which it recovered buried hostages’ bodies, but that was nothing compared to the number of IDF exhumations.

Should the IDF have halted exhumations when it saw that its intelligence was not terribly accurate?

At this point, one of the few ways the IDF may be able to regain credibility might be to disclose some of its intelligence failures in this area.

It is embarrassing and can expose some intelligence sources, but it could be worth it at this point to heal some of the wounds that a lack of sensible procedure and openness may have caused.

When the IDF exposed its failures in the World Central Kitchen incident, it restored some credibility it had lost with the US and other allies.

Israel faces real long-term strategic threats over aspects of its handling of this war: it is way past high time to start being proactive about owning any areas where the IDF was imperfect or clumsy, especially where imperfect can replace accusations of: “illegality” or “war crimes.” And if there were any rogue incidents/individual legal violations, better to own up to them sooner rather than later. 

JPost