The false accusations of Israeli malice and international-law flouting have been hysterical
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As Russia continues to bombard Ukraine, with an emboldened madman at the helm; as Hezbollah continues to fire rockets at the northern border of Israel, making it uninhabitable to its tens of thousands of residents, and threatens regional war, and as Iran continues its nefarious plotting to strengthen the West’s mortal enemies, here in Britain the focus this week has been on one tragic accident: the killing by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) of seven aid workers, three of whom were British, employed by the World Central Kitchen in Gaza.
This was a terrible, deeply upsetting blunder and it should not have happened. The aid workers’ loved ones are doubtless distraught and angry.
Israel agrees that its army should be held to account, and the IDF lost no time in launching an inquiry, with two soldiers already sacked. “I want to be very clear – the strike was not carried out with the intention of harming the WCK and workers,” said the IDF’s Chief of General Staff Herzi Halevi. “It was a mistake that followed a misidentification – at night during a war in very complex conditions. It shouldn’t have happened.”
While the grief and anger surrounding this tragedy will understandably remain strong, the IDF inquiry, sackings and statement is where the matter’s geopolitical ramifications ought to end. It seems rare to find an armed forces responding as honestly and fully in the heat of war, and shows that the IDF has already factored in the far more exacting expectations applied to it than perhaps any other army on earth.
