‘This isn’t gentle war’: Ex-Israeli army chief reveals genocide’s absolute disregard for intl. law

Former Israeli army chief has revealed the army’s absolute disregard for the principles of the international law during Tel Aviv’s October 2023-present war of genocide on the Gaza Strip.

“This isn’t a gentle war. We took the gloves off from the first minute,” The Guardian reported on Friday, quoting retired general Herzi Halevi as saying recently.

“Not once has anyone restricted me. Not once,” he added.

Those refusing to put a check on the army’s aggression, he added, included advocate general Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, the so-called top legal authority within the regime’s armed forces.

Even if the advocate general would issue restrictive orders, he “hasn’t the authority to restrict me,” the former commander said.

The remarks fly directly in the face of the regime’s claims that its incessant attacks “comply” with the international law.

‘10%-plus of Gaza’s population killed, injured’

According to Halevi, the war has so far led to the death or injury of more than 200,000 Palestinians, a figure that resembles data from Gaza’s health ministry.

The casualties, he added, equal “more than 10% of Gaza’s 2.2 million population.”

The ministry’s latest figures show that the genocide has so far claimed the lives of more than 64,750 Palestinians, mostly women and children.

Hundreds of the victims have perished due to the regime’s near-total siege of the territory that runs concomitantly with its incessant bombardments of the densely-populated coastal sliver.

Thousands of others are, meanwhile, unaccounted for, feared to have either been trapped under the rubble or subjected to forced disappearance.

The regime, though, often dismisses the ministry’s casualty figures.

Leaked Israeli military intelligence has also suggested that more than 80 percent of the fatalities were civilians, contrary to Tel Aviv’s claim of exercising care not to target non-combatants.

Kill first, justify later

The general went on to suggest that the regime would first go ahead with committing illegal aggression, and then seek to throw an aura of justification and legality around it.

“We will know how to defend this legally in the world, and this is very important.”

According to Israeli human rights lawyer Michael Sfard, the remarks confirmed that military lawyers acted as simple “rubber stamps.”

The regime’s Ha’aretz newspaper recently reported that Halevi’s successor, Eyal Zamir had also ignored Tomer-Yerushalmi’s so-called advice to delay implementation of mass displacement orders across the Gaza City.

The city, the Gaza Strip’s largest urban area, is subject to the Israeli military’s most ferocious assault yet throughout the genocide. The assault seeks to bring the entire city under Israeli occupation by either killing or forcing out its one-million-strong population.

The military has so far razed scores of residential towers across the city after issuing their occupants last-minute so-called evacuation orders.