Israeli army tries to forestall international probe of Gaza massacre, Hannibal Directive

Israel’s chief military prosecutor, Major General Danny Efroni recently announced he may initiate a criminal investigation of the deadly Gaza civilian massacre that followed the capture of Leutenant. Hadar Goldin during Operation Protective Edge on 1 August, 2014.  It came to be known as Black Friday, one of the most lethal days of the entire war. According to the Palestine Centre for Human Rights and al-Mezan Israel killed 190 Gazans between 1-2 August.  Haaretz uses the inexplicable number of 40 dead.

This “investigation” is not meant to determine the truth of what happened. It’s certainly not to hold any army commanders culpable for the mass mayhem. It’s meant to derail any referral to the International Criminal Court, which the Palestinian Authority recently joined. ICC protocols say it may only accept cases in which the country in which the violation occurred cannot or will not pursue the case itself. The Israeli army strategy is to announce an investigation, which rapidly concludes its activity and finds no infraction. This, Israel believes (falsely I maintain), obviates any chance of an ICC referral.

After Goldin was reported missing and presumably captured, the Israeli army invoked the Hannibal Directive. Though the meaning and substance of the Directive, first devised in 1986, is in dispute because it has never been made public, the result was clear to the horror of the world.

The Israeli army carpet-bombed the entire Rafah neighbourhood where the incident occurred, after Hamas militants had burst from a tunnel and attacked an army unit. In particular, the army, believing Goldin might require medical assistance, attacked everything that moved in the vicinity of the nearest hospital, including ambulances and other rescue personnel.

There were several purposes to the Rafah assault. One was to kill those who captured Goldin; another was to collectively punish the neighbourhood from which the attackers came; but the most important purpose as far as Israelis are concerned was to kill Goldin.

That may sound cynical, even diabolical to some. But the overwhelming evidence and my own Israeli sources confirm that the main purpose of Hannibal is, once a soldier has been captured by the enemy, to kill him.  Indeed, this is how one of the three authors of Hannibal, General Yossi Peled described it in a rare interview on the subject:

“…[Peled] denied that it implied a blanket order to kill Israeli soldiers rather than let them be captured by enemy forces. The order only allowed the army to risk the life of a captured soldier, not to take it. ‘I wouldn’t drop a one-ton bomb on the vehicle, but I would hit it with a tank shell,’ Peled was quoted saying.”

Anyone attempting to bridge the contradiction between the first two sentences in this passage and the last should give up hope. It’s clear the first two are obfuscation and the last sentence goes to the heart of the matter.

There are many reasons which, to Israelis, justify this macabre procedure. Historically, the State of Israel had adhered to a sacred mission: it never left a soldier behind. Until it knew a captive had died it moved heaven and earth to retrieve him. Even after death, it would do all in its power to redeem his body.

As a result, Israel paid a heavy price in the exchange. To free Gilad Shalit, for example, Israel freed 1,000 Palestinian prisoners. Additionally, Israel society faced the excruciating dilemma of every day seeing placards and protests seeking to keep the captive in the public’s consciousness.  It was exhausting and debilitating. You can only take so much of this before an entire society collapses into hopelessness.

Hannibal changed the terms of battlefield procedure. Henceforth, rather than restrain fire in an attempt to save the life of captured soldiers, the Israeli army would massively respond without regard to the life of the soldier. Such a strategy would deprive the hostage-takers of their prize by killing him; while maximising the army’s opportunity to eliminate those who initiated the attack.  The goal was to tell the enemy that anyone planning such an attack would be wiped out.

Israeli generals and journalists have painstakingly attempted to obfuscate the Goldin case and Hannibal itself. We see a perfect example of this in the Haaretz article by Gili Cohen:

“The directive clarifies the procedures to be used immediately following the possible abduction [sic] of a soldier. It calls for an intense focus on rescuing the kidnapped soldier, even at the cost of putting his life or the lives of other soldiers at risk.”

This interpretation claims, almost literally, that the Israeli army intends to save the captive by killing him. I don’t see many other ways to interpret it.

Into this mix comes Major General Efroni. There are some important facts to note about his statement. He didn’t say the Israeli army would launch an investigation. He said it might.  Presumably, the decision would be influenced by how much his announcement mollified the target international audience. The entire process is an exercise in damage control. The goal is to find the Israeli army innocent.

Though Efroni is the Israeli army’s chief military prosecutor, his real role is not to prosecute. Instead, his role is to advocate. A prosecutor would not lie, as he appears to do in the Haaretz article. Only an advocate would.

As for pursuing real prosecutions, he says the only cases he’s pursuing are against three soldiers for looting. In other words, his main, in fact only, brief is to keep Israeli army commanders out of the dock at The Hague. To this purpose, Efroni makes the following claim:

“…When a soldier is kidnapped, the directive does not constitute a green light to violate international law or to respond disproportionately.” 

If this were true, then how do you explain the massive assault on Rafah and the huge civilian death toll? Did this happen accidentally?

He continues with this statement, apparently hoping the world will buy it:

“…What’s important for me to clarify is that in contrast to some of the reports, the directive does not permit the use of live fire to cause the death of the kidnapped soldier,” Efroni said. “No less important, when a soldier is kidnapped this directive does not permit the violation of international law, or breaches of the requirement to act proportionately and to attack [only] military targets.”

In a devastating moral indictment written during the war, Haaretz’ Zvi Barel took issue with Efroni:

“…The army…invented the Hannibal Directive. A perverted, satanic product which, in common parlance, we may describe as: “let the world go to hell and the kidnap victim too, as long as we’re not shamed.”  

“…There is no intent to save [the soldier] in the Hannibal Directive, and certainly no ethics or basic [moral] value.  The falling of a person into captivity obligates that we do everything to free him…from captivity, not from life itself…”

“… The Hannibal Directive contradicts in an absolute manner this approach.  It must be repudiated immediately.”

Another report from the Israeli media outlet NRG describes how Hannibal functioned in the Goldin incident:

 “Givati forces recognised that a kidnapping [sic] had occurred and… activated the Hannibal Directive, according to which the IDF lays down fire in the direction of the kidnappers [sic].”

“Afterward, they commenced heavy fire in that direction, which it appears struck all the fighters [both the Hamas cell and captured Israeli army soldiers].”

“…As a result of activation of the Hannibal Directive, three IDF soldiers were killed…”

In other words, Hamas’ attack on the Israeli army unit did not kill the soldiers.  It was the Israeli army response that did.

Writing in Haaretz, Uri Misgav further elaborates on the moral and political implications of Hannibal:

Even before Rafah, the evidence in the field was clear: Hannibal was meant to take down the captor and the captive; to kill them. The chance to free someone…became a dead letter.”

“Firing and aerial bombardment and artillery barrages are meant to kill. In other words, the captive becomes, at the moment the directive is invoked, a dead man. For all intents and purposes, he is considered part of the cell that captured him…In practice, he becomes a terrorist, a Hamasnik. After he dies it will be possible to praise and eulogise and sanctify him (as Goldin has been). But first you must ensure he’s dead.”

“…This isn’t Hannibalism. This is cannibalism. An army prepared to kill its own.”

It’s also important to understand that the Goldin case is not the only one in which the army deliberately killed one of its own. In fact, it wasn’t the only instance in which the Israeli army deliberately killed a soldier during Protective Edge. The death of Sergeant Guy Levy, was also caused by Israeli army fire after he was captured by Hamas.

Hannibal led to the killing of a soldier during Operation Cast Lead in 2009 as well. Here is what NRG reported then:

“During the war [Cast Lead] there was a case where the Hannibal directive was invoked. An Israeli soldier was shot and injured by a Hamas fighter during a search of a house in one of the neighbourhoods of Gaza…According to testimony by soldiers who took part in the incident, the house was then shelled to prevent the wounded soldier from being captured by Hamas.”

“…The meaning of this testimony is that [the shelling of the house] eliminated any chance the soldier could be freed alive.”

It was invoked in the incident which spurred the 2006 Lebanon war, when Hezbollah attacked an Israeli army border patrol and captured two soldiers. Though the soldiers likely died during or shortly after the fire-fight, the Israeli army didn’t know that. As a result, it laid down massive fire on the retreating Hezbollah attackers to ensure neither they nor the captives survived. An Israeli official said at the time:

“If we had found them, we would have hit them, even if it meant killing the soldiers,” a senior Israeli official said.

Hannibal is a massively cynical, immoral military doctrine. It was developed in secret and implemented in secret.  Even today, much of the Israeli media speak about it using smoke and mirrors.  This prevents an informed democratic society from debating what policies its military and political leaders should follow.

As horrifying as the deliberate murder of your own is, Hannibal also has come to mean massive collective punishment of enemy civilian populations, the very definition of a war crime. The Israeli attack on Rafah was the equivalent of the allied bombing of Dresden. It was an act of savage vengeance; a crime that cries out for adjudication by the ICC.