The Zionist regime’s black record of distorting the massacre of civilians

The killing of doctors and medical staff in Gaza is the latest in a long history of the Zionist regime’s distortion of the narrative of the killing of civilians.

According to the Guardian, the latest investigations and reports show that the Zionist regime has martyred 15 Palestinian doctors and civil defense forces in the past month; a familiar and long-standing pattern in high-profile cases related to the killing of Palestinian civilians.

In most of the cases mentioned, the Zionist regime’s army first denies any involvement; in the case of Gaza, the Zionist regime’s army claims that resistance missiles hit by mistake and caused casualties.

Otherwise, it claims that the victims were members of the Palestinian resistance or were collateral victims of resistance forces being targeted.

The killing of doctors and paramedics in Gaza is the latest example of the Israeli regime’s attempt to distort the true story of an apparent murder.

The same process followed in the fatal shooting of Shireen Abu Akleh, a prominent Palestinian-American journalist in the West Bank in 2022.

Initially, then-Prime Minister Naftali Bennett claimed that Abu Akleh was likely killed by Palestinian resistance forces; a day later, the Israeli cabinet issued a statement condemning the shooting of Abu Akleh by an Israeli soldier as a hasty, misleading, and irresponsible accusation.

Subsequently, the Israeli army, under pressure from witnesses at the scene of the crime, admitted that an Israeli soldier had shot Abu Akleh, claiming that Abu Akleh was not the target, and that the journalist was accidentally shot.

The history of the past few decades shows that the Israeli army changes its story as soon as evidence is obtained to challenge its report, to show that the situation was not the result of military orders or systemic issues, but an individual mistake, not an organizational one.

The Israeli army’s initial explanation for the killing of Palestinian aid workers on March 23, due to the discovery of the bodies of the martyrs in a mass grave, was that their vehicles were advancing towards the Israeli soldiers in a suspicious manner without headlights or emergency signals.

This is despite the testimony of those present at the scene and the cellphone footage of one of the martyred doctors showing that this report is false and that the ambulances were moving with their lights on and with the aid workers wearing identification vests.

In such circumstances, the Israeli regime claimed, without providing evidence, that six of the martyrs were somehow connected to the Palestinian resistance, although they were not armed at the time of the crime.

Last week, Israeli media briefings were revealed about one of the most familiar claims the Israeli military has made over the years: that it feels threatened and that the Palestinian resistance is using ambulances for military purposes.

The Israeli military’s shifting narrative in such cases is often supported by claims made by pro-regime social media accounts.

The same thing happened with the killing of aid workers in Gaza, but the effort was thwarted by a fact-check by German broadcaster Deutsche Welle.

The pattern of obfuscating the history of Israeli crimes serves a larger purpose: to muddy the waters when investigations begin.

As a result, when the Israeli military does launch investigations through the military attorney general’s office, the results are often vague and rarely lead to serious charges.

According to an analysis last year by Yesh Din, a human rights organization based in the occupied territories, the Israeli army’s General Staff mechanism for investigating alleged war crimes is designed to avoid accountability while creating the impression that an investigation process is taking place.

A Yesh Din review of all complaints forwarded to the Israeli army during Israel’s major military conflicts over the past decade found that at least 664 complaints were forwarded for investigation.

Of these, 542 (81.6 percent) incidents were closed without criminal investigation, the organization says, and only 41 (6 percent) resulted in criminal investigations.

This led Yesh Din to conclude that the results of the work of the Israeli law enforcement mechanism over the past decade rarely initiate investigations against lower-ranking soldiers and completely refrain from investigating decision-makers at the highest levels of command.

All of this has raised urgent questions about the actions of the Israeli military, even among its closest allies. “There are now very important questions about the actions of the Israeli military,” German Foreign Ministry Spokesman Christian Wagner said Monday after the release of video footage of the incident involving the doctors.

“An investigation and accountability of the perpetrators is essential,” he said, adding that a full investigation into the incident “is a question that ultimately affects the validity of the Israeli constitution.”

As Amos Harel suggested in the Zionist newspaper Haaretz earlier this week, all the maneuvering presented about the incident may hide a more brutal truth: that all Palestinians in Gaza, including civilians, are considered a threat to be met with lethal force.

A few days ago, a video surfaced showing an Israeli battalion commander talking to his soldiers about to return to the besieged area: “Everyone you encounter there is an enemy; you eliminate anyone you identify.”