The IDF’s age of accountability is over, marking the beginning of a bloody dystopia

Image grab obtained from Palestine TV footage, shows two Palestinian men raising their hands in apparent surrender before Israeli forces, moments before being seemingly shot by soldiers during a military operation, November 2025

Iris Leal writes in Haaretz on 30 November 2025:

Despite the recoiling it aroused in me, I watched over and over again the footage of Border Policemen shooting dead two Palestinians in Jenin after they surrendered. A bulldozer blade opens a shutter wide: Two people, whom an IDF spokesperson would later call “wanted men who committed terrorist acts,” crouch down from the opening, expose their upper bodies to show they are unarmed, raise their hands and let the Border Policemen take control of them without resistance. The soldiers order them to lie on their stomachs at the entrance to the building and then shoot them at close range.

The horrifying incident, which once would have made headlines, shaken the military and the political system and ended careers, is now something everyone will forget in a couple of days. The army has opened an investigation and may sharpen procedures, who knows. But because Israel has turned into a murderous dystopia in the past two-to-three years, in which killing unarmed men has apparently happened dozens of times, it will be absorbed into the general atmosphere and leave no scar.

This is exactly what an execution looks like. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, therefore, said he “fully backs the Border Policemen and IDF soldiers who fired at the wanted terrorists who emerged from a building in Jenin. The soldiers acted exactly as expected of them; terrorists should die.”

What would the families of Alon Lulu Shamriz, Samer Fuad El-Talalka and Yotam Haim, the three hostages who escaped from Hamas but were shot by Israeli forces as they emerged from the building where there had been in hiding, waving a white flag, bare-chested and shouting, “Help!”, say?

It doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Commanders and soldiers have recently said that IDF Central Command decided to apply in the West Bank the methods used in Gaza, and that Maj.-Gen. Avi Bluth ordered the shooting of anyone who appeared to be a suspect. Hence, it’s possible to learn to be trigger-happy or, as it’s said, expand the open fire orders that applied in Gaza and cost the hostages’ lives.

Obeying procedures, soldiers shot to death a woman in her eighth month of pregnancy and wounded her husband when the drove up to an IDF roadblock near Tulkarm. According to the IDF inquiry, it happened because the woman “looked suspiciously at the ground.” The fetus did not survive.

And what would the family of Yuval Doron Kastelman, who arrived at the scene of a terrorist attack in Jerusalem, killing two terrorists with his personal weapon and then got shot, say? The shooter, Staff Sgt. (res.) Aviad Frija, argued that he fired because he thought Kastelman was one of the terrorists.

But the indictment against him states that he continued to shoot “when he no longer held the pistol,” and after Kastelman stopped, “knelt on the road, raised his hands, took off his coat, then raised his hands and waved them.” Later, the deceased bent down to the road and placed one of his hands on the ground and immediately afterward raised his hands up again and waved them.”

Think about the soldiers of Force 100 and the abuse video that former Military Advocate General Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi leaked and the subsequent madness. The enforcement authorities are paralyzed at best. The cautious step that Tomer-Yerushalmi dared to take, after dozens of cases were not investigated, cost her two attempted suicides and will likely end in jail. No one now dares to rush to file an indictment against soldiers. Who wants to end up like her?

What unites the incident in Jenin and multiple other abuses is the camera. And because, at the time of writing, opposition leaders have not commented on the incident and there has been no particular shock in the media or social media, we may cautiously assume that we are so completely exhausted as a society, so sick to the core, that the investigation will be redirected to the only crime recognized here: distribution of the video and the search for traitors.

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