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Ha'aretz
Written by: Yeniv Kovovich, 9/2/2022
It was about nine in the evening when a car with members of a Palestinian family was traveling down the street near the entrance to the Ofra settlement. Several soldiers who were in the area ordered the driver to stop on the side of the street. “They pulled him out of the car and started beating him like crazy,” said an eyewitness to the incident, an Israeli soldier. “At a certain point the driver started shivering on the street and they saw that he was losing consciousness.” The soldiers we are talking about are from the Netzah Yehuda Brigade. This is not the incident of Omar Abdul Majeed Asaad, the 80-year-old who died last month after being tied up by the soldiers of this battalion. It is another incident that happened here nine months earlier, in April 2021. And this time it did not end in death. It also did not end up taking any action against the soldiers involved. This is another example among the many examples of the disorderly operation of this unit, which no one in the army seems to control. Haaretz has followed up on many cases in recent years that show how the fundamentalist Nahal Brigade has turned into a kind of independent militia that wears the uniform of the Israeli army, but it is not under its command or subject to its instructions. The April 2021 incident appeared at first glance to be relatively normative, Suspicion of a run-over operation. This is how Netzah Yehuda soldiers explained that the car was parked on the street from the beginning. But that's a complication. According to eyewitnesses, there was nothing suspicious in the photo in which the car was traveling. In addition, half an hour after the incident, they told the window, the police, and the Central Command that it was not a run-over operation. This did not change much on the ground. “There were people who tried to treat the Palestinian who was in a bad situation because of the beatings,” he retrieved the soldier from another unit who was at the scene. “They called a nurse from Netzah Yehuda to help with the treatment, but he refused, on the pretext that this was a “terrorist.” Even the water they asked for to treat the Palestinian, they refused to give it to them. This was a crazy accident.” According to him, many of Netzah's leaders were present at the place, and "none of them spoke." Only two hours after the arrest, the driver and his family were released. He was taken by a Palestinian ambulance for treatment. They wanted to leave the place in their car. But then the family discovered that the car key had disappeared. They turned to the soldiers, who told them they didn't know anything about it. “They searched for the car key for more than an hour,” said a person who was at the scene. “Only after an hour and a half, when the deputy battalion commander arrived and began searching, the key was found at their location near the rooms. An hour and a half lying to the world, and that never mattered to them.” People who know the battalion's behavior may be shocked by the details of the incident, but not just by its occurrence. Officers and commanders, past and present, who served in Netzah Yehuda or know its behavior, testified that over the years a battalion developed and set itself a moral, ethical, and professional level different from the level the army set for its soldiers, all while ignoring the army leadership. “We used to go out for routine activity in the villages. And suddenly a friend decided that he was going to throw a stun grenade at a house or at a traveling car,” said a Netzah Yehuda battalion soldier who was discharged nearly two years ago. “This is mainly for fun and for the stories we hear about what the battalion veterans did. It is important for those in the battalion to show all the time that they are a different force in the sector, that unlike all the brigades, which change every few weeks, we live in this sector and know what to do.” Of the testimonies that confirm his words. For example, the village of Singel, near Ramallah. There the Palestinians reported that a Netzah Yehuda force broke into a Palestinian house by smashing windows and threatening the family members with weapons. “It was an investigation into this incident. All the behavior there was not proper from an operational point of view,” a source in the Central Command said. “After the investigation was completed, the instructions and procedures were clarified to the fighters.” Another investigation, another clarification, another incident, without penalty. A security source mentioned a discussion that took place in the Central Command two years ago, after another problematic incident involving the soldiers of this battalion. There was displayed an internal document in which he wrote that “most of the soldiers of the battalion belong to families who live in the area. This makes it difficult for them to differentiate between their personal positions and the operational demands of their leaders.” In the discussion the question was raised what is the solution to what is happening there and how we will move forward. Among other things, the dissolution of the battalion and the integration of its soldiers into the army was discussed. “We quickly understood that dissolving the battalion would be a declaration of war for the settlers’ leadership,” said the source familiar with the details of the discussion, “The view of the settlers in the area is that this battalion belongs to them. And it is a force that works for settlement.” It seems that no one in the army objects to that. “On normal days, the heads of the settler leadership are free to enter the battalion and talk to the soldiers,” the source added. Rabbis enter their site and roam freely, give lessons and talk to soldiers about operational events. This is a kind of militia. The discussion is not only about security forces that have come to this understanding. The publication presented last month by MK Bezalel Smotrich shows the ideological relationship between the residents of the settlements and the outposts and the soldiers who roam in them. “As a settler, I say that settlers are happy every time Netzah Yehuda is placed in their sector,” he wrote. “This period is characterized by relative calm and security on the roads, because our friends there know exactly their mission, who is the enemy and who is the brother. They do not mix things up, they seek confrontation and create deterrence.” Spitting on policemen, in June 2021, confrontations erupted between settlers and Palestinians near Oz Zion outpost. When a Border Police soldier arrived to separate them, soldiers from Netzah Yehuda who were on the scene decided to intervene by sound. “You must abuse the soldier now,” they shouted at the settlers, encouraging them to touch him. A few days passed and this time the focus of the confrontation between settlers and policemen was Emqa. “The soldiers of the Netzah Yehuda Brigade started shouting at the soldiers and security forces: “Do not criminalize the soldiers,” “traitors,” “evacuate the Jews,” said a military source familiar with the matter. Incident details. “There was a soldier from the battalion who spat at the security forces.” Sometimes it's not just about exchanging words. “On weekends more than once, soldiers from Netzah Yehuda came and participated in violent incidents with Palestinians or security forces that arrived at the scene,” said a reserve officer who served in this sector for the past two years. “In one of the evacuations of the “Adi Ad” outpost, the owner of the building went out to the police and said that his son was an officer in Netzah Yehuda and that the building that was erected was for his son’s wedding. There are unreasonable cases.” “The political ideology of Netzah Yehuda soldiers plays a major role in their behavior,” said security forces who spoke with the newspaper. “There was activity in a village near Ramallah,” one of them said. “In the briefing, the soldiers were told that they were going to pass through agricultural areas of Palestinians, on Palestinian land, so they should act accordingly.” According to him, “At that time, one of the leaders of Netzah Yehuda rose and said to all the participants: This is the land of the people of Israel and it will be returned to the people of Israel soon.” According to what this source said, no one mentioned these statements, as if nothing had happened. “You should not generalize about all those who serve in this battalion,” a senior security source said. “But the truth must also be told. A large number of them are people who come from a situation of distress or difficulty facing their families. Some of them enlisted under pressure from the family to prevent them from roaming the Cats Square in Jerusalem or participating in riots in the outposts.” According to this source, they live in illegal outposts and enlist and have a position and take a clear position in the conflict: “They did not come to change their vision, but in some cases, recruitment is a method for embodying their ideology on the ground.” Sometimes it is not ideological, but rather Just problematic criteria. This was the case, for example, when soldiers from Netzah Yehuda were summoned to the West Bank square at the entrance to Ramallah in January 2021 due to a disturbance in order. This event ended at first sight as usual. But after him, the Central Command received a complaint from the news agency “IB,” which said that Netzah Yehuda soldiers who were at the scene stole the agency’s tripod, who was putting his camera on it. The soldiers denied this when asked by the commanders. However, those who spoke with Haaretz said that the issue of the complaint reached high levels in the army, and it was decided to send the commander of the district brigade to examine the matter. In the search that was carried out on the site, the Qaim was found; It was located near the soldiers' residence. “It ended with the soldiers being reprimanded, and nothing more than that,” said a former soldier from Netzah Yehuda who knew about the incident. The buildup of this reprimand almost naturally joins the events of recent days and the lighthearted dealings of the senior officers with the soldiers involved in the death of Omar Abdel-Majid Asaad. It is true that the incident was considered “serious and unfortunate, an evaluative failure of strength and numbness of the senses,” but the case ended with only a light punishment for the leaders, the most serious of which was for the company commander and the faction leader, who will have to wait two years in order to take the next leadership position, as it seems in the context of Netzah Yehuda. Haaretz also learned that the entire role of the company commander and faction leader in the story has not been made public. It turned out that as part of the results of the leadership investigation, the faction commander testified that when he and his soldiers wanted to leave the place, he noticed that Asaad was not responding and appeared to be unconscious. It is true that he stuck to his story that he did not understand that Asaad had died, but rather thought that he was asleep. However, he said, he informed the company commander of Asaad's lack of response. This commander, according to the investigation, said he did not remember it. In any case, what the commander of the faction said did not reach the knowledge of the IDF spokesperson or the briefings given to the media. Not everyone is surprised by this interesting piece of information. “In the IDF, it is the same as in the IDF,” said a former senior military source. “They choose to treat the mosquitoes, not drain the swamp.” In general, since the publication of the investigation, the leadership has taken an interest in the army to lavish praise on the battalion with statements by senior commanders and articles in the media. “In the battalion there are excellent soldiers, and I do not see a militia in this battalion,” Central Command Commander Yehuda Fox said in his briefing to military reporters. But also what the military courts have done, this is what the verdict issued in November 2019 shows us. In this incident, a soldier from the battalion attacked Bedouin people at a gas station in the south of the country “without prior challenge on their part. He also wrote that his colleagues in the unit were at first in the bus and got off the bus with weapons and in a few minutes attacked people who were in the place by beating and pointing the charged guns at them. But this incident ended with a month and a half imprisonment for the soldier who started the attack and a disciplinary punishment for the rest. “The accused is a soldier who enlisted in the army, even though he could have chosen to continue biblical education,” thus the judges justified the light punishment. Another example of the light punishment imposed eight months before that On March 19, 2019, soldiers from Netzah Yehuda appeared before the court, who filmed themselves abusing Palestinian detainees suspected of aiding an operation near the Givat Assaf settlement outpost, in which their friends in the unit were killed. This incident ended in a bargain. The soldier who led the actions was sentenced to four and a half months in prison, the others only received a disciplinary punishment. As part of this process, commanders and rabbis provided testimonies about the soldiers involved. “According to the rabbi’s impression,” he wrote in the sentencing, “the accused and his co-accused have learned their lesson. To their advantage, we must attribute the sacrifice they made in their decision to enlist with all the family and social costs that accompany it.” The battalion commander at the time of the incident, Lieutenant-Colonel Neti Okshi, also referred to the “complex background from which the battalion soldiers come.” "The arrest of the soldiers was a shock that also led to lessons being learned," he said. The judges demanded that they use mercy in view of their contributions and the many rights they have accrued.” The army spokesman stated that “The Netzah Yehuda Brigade carries out operational activities in the West Bank, and thus contributes to the security of the State of Israel. Considerations in the position of the battalion are determined in light of the operational need while preserving the religious lifestyle of the soldiers. We do not know about the alleged entry of the settlers' chiefs. The rabbis who enter the battalion are the only rabbis who are allowed to do so, according to the army's approach. Soldiers who commit any offense while on vacation are dealt with immediately, as required by law, like any citizen of the State of Israel.”