Israel is not known for objective investigations into its own military’s actions. Expectations are low for this round too. – 2 Articles
(1/2) The IDF’s Gaza Investigations Are Political Theater, Not a Pursuit of Justice
Ha’aretz lead editorial: The IDF does not want to genuinely investigate and punish those responsible. Rather, it wants to distance itself from the criticism it faces from the media and in world public opinion, perhaps to protect its soldiers from arrest and prosecution abroad
Reposted from Haaretz, August 21, 2026
The Israel Defense Forces Spokesperson’s Unit issued a statement Wednesday (August 19) detailing the results of an examination of five incidents in which noncombatants were killed during the fighting in the Gaza Strip. According to the statement, the five were among 150 incidents whose reviews by an IDF General Staff investigative mechanism have been completed.
By a remarkable coincidence, all five incidents had topped international news broadcasts, drew condemnation and managed to break through the wall of indifference of Israel’s mainstream media, which throughout the war had systematically ignored the harm caused to innocent civilians in Gaza.
Three of the incidents involve international organizations: two in which employees of Doctors Without Borders were killed and a third in which aid workers from World Central Kitchen died. The two others involved Palestinians: the killing of Hind Rajab and members of her family, and the killing of several paramedics. They were among the most widely covered such incidents of the war, probably because they were documented in real time.
The IDF said the latter two cases have been referred to the military police for criminal investigations; the files on the others will be closed after being deemed disciplinary investigations.
Four of the five incidents occurred in the first six months of the war, and their investigation continued for two and a half years.
Israelis should be asking why the IDF chose to publicize these five incidents. What happened to the other 145 incidents that were reviewed? Why is it that precisely the most widely covered incidents have been referred from criminal investigation? Could it be that the IDF is choosing not to investigate and prosecute incidents that did not lead the evening news across the world?
The inescapable conclusion from the selectivity of these investigations is that the IDF does not really want to genuinely investigate and punish those responsible. Rather, it wants to distance itself from the criticism it faces from the media and in world public opinion, perhaps to protect its soldiers from arrest and prosecution abroad.
The Sde Teiman affair proved that the military law enforcement system does not want or is incapable of investigating service members who committed crimes against Palestinians.
No less, it showed that Israeli public opinion, inflamed by extremist, ultranationalist politicians and media, will not allow effective investigation and punishment.
But a chief of staff who does not want to be remembered as the one who turned the IDF into a militia, must fearlessly insist on genuine investigations, the filing of indictments and the imposition of effective punishment.
(2/2) MSF condemns Israeli military decision to deny investigation into the killings of our staff in Gaza
The decision makes clear that there is no prospect of accountability within the Israeli legal system for the killings of our staff, nor for the genocide against Palestinians.
Reposted from Doctors Without Borders, August 20, 2026
These cases regard attacks on an MSF convoy in Gaza City in November 2023, which killed two people, and a February 2024 strike on an MSF shelterin Khan Younis that killed two people and injured six others.
This does not come as a surprise. These responses come nearly two years after MSF submitted its request, which was followed by a submission to the Israeli High Court of Justice challenging MAG’s failure to provide any answer to our formal requests.
This is not justice. Two years of silence — followed by closures that raise more questions than they answer — is unacceptable. However, it is the predictable output of a military apparatus investigating itself — a system which has demonstrated it is unwilling to respond to the extent of violations that may amount to war crimes in Gaza.
MSF staff and their family members are dead. Their names are known. Their locations were shared. Their vehicles were identified. We have always maintained that all elements point to the Israeli army’s clear responsibility for the deadly attacks. And yet, those responsible for their deaths have declined to pursue any criminal investigation.
One of the two MSF staff family members killed in the convoy attack in November 2023, Alaa Al Shawa, was also a volunteer supporting MSF medical teams at Al-Shifa Hospital. The attack on MSF’s shelter in Khan Younis in February 2024 killed the daughter-in-law and wife of an MSF colleague. Six other people were injured in the attack on that shelter, five of whom were women or children.
With its decision, MAG has made clear that there is no prospect of accountability within the Israeli legal system for the killing of our staff, just as there has been no accountability for Israel’s ongoing genocide against Palestinians.
No internal military review can substitute for genuine accountability
A total of 15 MSF staff members have been killed in Gaza by Israeli forces since October 2023. This is just a fraction of the 1,700 health care workers who have been killed in that time. Israeli forces continue to kill civilians with impunity, made clear by MAG’s decisions.
The decision to “close” these incidents must be understood in their proper context. In Gaza, tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed. Health care facilities have been destroyed. Humanitarian convoys have been struck. Journalists, medical personnel, UN personnel, and aid workers have been killed in numbers unprecedented in any recent conflict.
MSF reaffirms what it has stated since the start of this violence: There is no military objective that justifies the wholesale sacrifice of civilians. And there is no internal military review that can substitute for genuine, independent, and impartial accountability.
We demand that the cases involving our colleagues be reviewed by an impartial investigative body.
To our colleagues we have lost, and to the civilians and humanitarian workers who have perished in Gaza: We will not let your deaths be filed away as procedural inevitabilities. You deserved protection. You deserve justice.
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