etos.media: Israel’s image as a Western-style liberal democracy is based in part on its democratic checks and balances. Please talk about the extent to which the Israeli legal system is able or willing to prosecute Israeli crimes against Palestinians.
Sarit Michaeli: I’ll start with the past. We would argue that for many years, the Israeli authorities established a pretence of accountability whereby they invested a vast amount of resources, work, paperwork, primarily in order to create a sort of facade of a functioning law enforcement system. For example, all of the different investigations against soldiers that were undertaken by the military police investigative unit, but never led to any actual prosecution. Before 2016, B’Tselem often contributed to the opening and conduct of these investigations. But then, we decided to stop cooperating with them because we reached the conclusion that they were functioning as a whitewash mechanism rather than a legitimate way for us to tell the truth and hold perpetrators accountable in a meaningful way, i. e. having an effective mechanism. So, since 2016 we stopped promoting cases with the investigative authorities. We’ve been working a lot to show how the system functions as a whitewash mechanism. These days it’s become, on some levels, even superfluous, because the central elements of the government itself are basically saying the same thing.
The best example is that the Minister for National Security (Itamar Ben-Gvir, editor’s note) has said that border police officers and police officers shouldn’t be held accountable for anything they do to Palestinians. We had now a mob of far-right activists invading the Sde Teiman military base in order to try and „rescue“ soldiers who were suspected of very serious sexual assault and abuse of a Palestinian detainee.
What has happened to those soldiers? Has there been any follow-up with that?
B’Tselem doesn’t have systematic information to follow up with these cases any longer. In the past, there was some sort of a facade that there was a functioning legal system. There was a kind of a delicate balancing act between giving soldiers a free hand to use violence against Palestinians; as part of the obvious fact that in order to maintain a permanent occupation you have to use a lot of violence; and giving some lip service to the idea of democracy. These days, after what we saw in the Sde Tieman military base, and after a whole range of government politicians’ statements about the law enforcement system, it’s become very clear that there is simply no possibility for any sort of real effective accountability for members of the security forces.
How would you address the issue of ongoing impunity for Israeli soldiers for their actions taken in Gaza and the West Bank, especially concerning civilian casualties and alleged violations of international law?
When you look at what’s been going on in Gaza, when there are soldiers posting videos of themselves, openly doing things that are blatant crimes and nothing is done again and again. Or soldiers killing Palestinians with impunity in the West Bank and virtually nothing is done. Every so often there’s a military police investigation open. I think it’s very clear that the system is just not capable of, and not interested in, doing anything like that because there would be such a public outcry if a soldier is actually charged or prosecuted or seriously dealt with by the system and that is absurd.
I would want to go a bit beyond that because just investigating suspected wrongdoing by soldiers isn’t the whole system. If we’re looking at the numbers of Palestinians who have been killed by the Israeli army in the past year, you’ll see that the majority were killed, not as a result of decisions by individual soldiers on the ground. The vast majority have been killed as a result of illegal decisions by policymakers, by politicians, but primarily also by military officials and by the legal echelons in the military that enabled certain sweeping changes to the open fire orders. Also to the interpretation of what is collateral damage, of what is acceptable collateral damage. There’s a sort of formula for collateral damage. Those are policy decisions. Additionally, other things that led to the vast killing of civilians were the policy of bombing the homes of people in Gaza while the family was present in order to kill an individual militant.
Finally, on this point, policy issues, as a rule, are not investigated by any of the military’s investigative bodies. The decision to impose a complete blockade on the Gaza Strip, the decision to not allow food or water or electricity in, to impose hunger, to starve a population, is not investigated. All of those policies led to the killing of many uninvolved Palestinian civilians, but they can’t be investigated by the current investigative Israeli bodies. So, if in the past our criticism was on both issues: the decisions on the ground and also on policies, these days it’s become abundantly clear that the number of people killed as a result of all of these things is so much, it’s just so exceptionally, shockingly high that it seems obvious. Any serious, honest look at the Israeli system should inevitably point to the conclusion that the Israeli system is unwilling and unable to investigate itself.
I believe the chief prosecutor of the ICC reached the same conclusion and therefore he requested arrest warrants. We are still waiting to see whether the pretrial chamber is going to actually approve the request. (The interview was conducted before the ICC’s 21 November decision to actually issue the arrest warrants against Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, editor’s note).
I want to mention maybe one final thing, the FFA, the fact-finding and assessment. It has a mechanism to look at what it calls exceptional cases during wartime. Not during occupation, which is when the military police look into things, but when there’s an armed conflict. We know that there are dozens of cases still being investigated by this. But it’s not really an investigation. There is an analysis both by B’Tselem and Yesh Din, another Israeli organization, of how just completely inappropriate this mechanism is for investigating these suspected crimes.
What is the work that B’Tselem does to promote international accountability, given this environment of wide-spread impunity of the Israeli system?
All of the material that we have uncovered is available online to anybody that wants it or needs its in order to hold Israeli policymakers accountable. We have also stated clearly the legitimacy of the ICC process. We’ve made several statements together with other Israeli human rights organizations about the legitimacy of the ICC process because we believe that crimes have been committed. From our perspective, it is a very legitimate process and the international community should allow and respect the independence of the court and should stop any sort of Israeli meddling and not cooperate with this.
We also view the ICC case against Hamas’s leaders as a legitimate case. They clearly have committed crimes, both war crimes and crimes against humanity and our position has always been that they should also face consequences for these atrocities and crimes that they have perpetrated. However, Israel has already killed all three Palestinians whose arrests were sought by the ICC chief prosecutor. That’s why these cases are not going to go ahead. But they should have also been held accountable for the horrors that they inflicted.
In the panel hosted by Amnesty International in Berlin, you said that after October 7 Israel turned a large part of its prisons or bases into a network of torture camps. Could you please talk about that systematic use of torture?
This is the conclusion of a recent report that B’Tselem issued about the way that Israel has treated Palestinians since October 7th in its incarceration system. The report is called Welcome to Hell. I can comment on a tiny fragment of what we’ve done. We based this report on the testimonies of 55 Palestinian prisoners who were either detained after October 7th or were already in detention before. These Palestinians were not just from Gaza. On the contrary, they were from throughout the region: Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and some from inside Israel. They all experienced very similar conditions and treatment.
We would characterize what Israel has been doing in its detention system for Palestinians as torture in terms of the physical abuse, emotional abuse, the conditions in which they are held, the starvation and the different kinds of violence and pressure inflicted on them. We assess that it’s reached the threshold of torture and abuse, which is obviously prohibited. A lot of it wasn’t actually even a secret. It was a policy inspired by the Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, and his long-term project of inflicting harsh conditions on Palestinian prisoners. This is part of the broad phenomenon we’ve seen where the Israeli government has cynically manipulated the horrific trauma that Israelis went through on October 7th in order to pursue a political objective that they have been pursuing even beforehand. That’s our analysis of the situation for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli detention since October 7th.
Contrary to its leadership, a big chunk of the Israeli public still seems to care about the more than 100 hostages who remain in Gaza. You’ve mentioned that B’Tselem is advocating a „hostage swap“. Could you please explain to our readers what this means, and how does it relate to the hostages that Israel holds?
It bears explaining because there’s a culture of war around Israel, and the hostages are viewed as a kind of struggle that Israel is using against the Palestinians. When you look at what the situation is inside Israel, the struggle of the hostages and their families and the Israelis like myself who support them, it’s actually an opposition struggle. It’s amazing, considering that there are Israelis whose lives are slowly whittling down and diminishing because of the conditions Hamas, Jihad, and other armed groups in Gaza hold them in. It is a shocking situation.
The basic issue is that stopping the Israeli attack on Gaza has to be a top priority because every day of this continues to bring terrific loss of life to Gaza. Bringing back the Israeli hostages is also key and a pressing moral and human rights issue. There are approximately 101 Israelis that are hostages, but of them, it’s assumed about 50 are still alive. Others have been either killed during their captivity, and some were killed on October 7th, and their bodies were taken by Hamas. Those lives should also be rescued. Some of them are civilians, some of them are soldiers, but they’re all held illegally by Hamas because holding hostages is illegal. They should release them unconditionally, but we know they won’t. The only way that we currently can anticipate a de-escalation is through a hostage deal. This would involve releasing the Israeli hostages and releasing Palestinians who are in prison. This is just the sheer reality of the historical conflict between Israel and Palestinians. It’s happened many times in the past. And it would also have to involve a ceasefire and an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.
These are the demands of Hamas. I don’t support these demands. I think that it’s an outrage. But if you’re realistic about protecting and trying to save those Israeli lives, you have to work for a hostage deal. There is no other way to bring back these Israelis, other than through releasing them in a deal, because it’s become abundantly clear that the military pressure is killing them. I don’t like it, but that’s the reality. Anyone who wants to bring back the Israeli hostages has to accept that there is a price to pay. The price is stopping the war and releasing Palestinian prisoners. I personally, as an Israeli, think it’s a price worth paying in order to save these lives of people who were taken hostage by Hamas, partly as a result of the fact that the Israeli government abandoned them.
Now that’s not to justify obviously what Hamas has done. Absolutely not. The holding of hostages is also a war crime. The Israeli government failed to protect residents of the south and the partygoers of the Nova rave. The majority of Israelis are aware that in order to bring the hostages back to their families and the bodies of the dead hostages back for proper burial will involve releasing Palestinian prisoners and stopping the war. According to public opinion surveys, the majority of Israelis accept this and support it. But it’s become very clear that the government is not willing to do this because they want a perpetual war in Gaza. They want to reoccupy Gaza; they don’t want to stop the war or remove the army from Gaza. So, that’s pretty much where we stand at the moment on this issue.
In the Berlin panel, you mentioned that there is a cynical exploitation of the safety of Israelis and Jews, could you elaborate on this in light of the recent so-called anti-Semitism resolution passed by the German parliament?
We’ve written a letter together with other NGOs explaining our position. I’ll say it very shortly because the letter reflects it much more eloquently. It’s absolutely clear that there is real anti-Semitism. No one is arguing about this. There’s anti-Semitism from the anti-occupation camp, and there’s anti-Semitism from the far right. It exists. I would argue, and many experts would argue as well, that the risk of far-right anti-Semitism is systematically belittled in comparison with the risk of antisemitism that comes from the left.
I don’t think there’s any serious disagreement that there is antisemitism in Germany. But the systematic and deliberate conflation of criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism is not only not helping combat real anti-Semitism, it’s also devastating any sort of possibility of having an informed public debate in Germany about the occupation. It’s also harming our work because it’s constantly placing us in a situation where our legitimacy is being challenged by German interlocutors. Not just my legitimacy as an Israeli, but also my friends and colleagues who are living in Germany, who are Israeli Jews, some of whom, like myself, lost relatives in the Holocaust, and yet they are constantly accused of anti-Semitism. It silences any sort of debate and it’s clearly cynically manipulated by the Israeli government. The Israeli government is in bed with some of the worst far-right neo-fascist forces in Europe that are now beginning to re-emerge, and they’re joining forces on the basis of their shared Islamophobia and hatred of Palestinians.
How has the reliance on specific definitions of antisemitism, such as the IHRA definition, influenced political discourse and free speech, particularly in Germany and the West?
German politicians again and again fail the test because of intra-German issues and because of intra-German politics. The best example of this is the unacceptable reliance on the IHRA definition of antisemitism and specifically on the way it conflates legitimate criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism. I’ll put it differently, it has become quite controversial in recent years because there are many scholars, very serious scholars, whose credibility is not questioned, who point to other definitions of anti-Semitism as more appropriate. For example, the Jerusalem definition of anti-Semitism, and there are many others as well.
We see how in practical terms in the West this supposed campaign against anti-Semitism is serving to eliminate free speech, to eliminate criticism. We see it in action. We’ve seen it in the United States, we see it in Europe. The shared letter that we signed reflects our position on this issue. And also, as an Israeli, like many other Israelis, I lost my great-grandparents in the Holocaust. They were Polish German Jews. It’s becoming abundantly clear to those of us, Israelis, Jews and internationals, whose fundamental lesson from the Holocaust is that this must never happen again to anyone; that this a universal message, which is slowly being eroded.
Israel, as a declared Jewish state, is now being plausibly suspected of committing genocide, and the judges of the ICJ, even plausibly see the need to take measures to prevent genocide. It’s just historically absolutely shocking and a moral outrage. The German politicians who are kowtowing to this may be doing it for the right reasons, but the ultimate result is that democratic forces are being silenced and anti-democratic forces are being allowed to flourish.
Sarit Michaeli is International Advocacy Lead for the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem. You can follow her on X and Instagram.
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