Does Israel hold its own soldiers accountable for killing Arabs?

“Israel never holds its own soldiers accountable for killing Arabs.”

It does, and it built the case law to do it. The clearest example is Kfar Qasim, 1956: Israeli Border Police shot 49 Arab-Israeli civilians, among them 23 children, returning home from the fields unaware that a curfew had been imposed hours earlier (Jewish Virtual Library). Israel court-martialled the officers and convicted eight of murder, with sentences up to 17 years, and the trial produced a doctrine still binding in Israeli military law today: a soldier must refuse a “manifestly illegal” order, one over which “a black flag flies.” That is the opposite of impunity, and it is not a relic: Israel’s military courts, and a Supreme Court any Palestinian can petition, have prosecuted soldiers and struck down state decisions for decades. Accountability is imperfect, as in every army; the claim that it is absent is simply false.

Where the claim comes from

The charge predates Israel’s modern military altogether. Arab governments framed Israeli forces as inherently lawless from the first Arab-Israeli war onward, and Kfar Qasim itself became the first real test of whether that was true. It wasn’t: the killings were prosecuted within months, not buried. The claim resurfaced in a stronger form after the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre in Lebanon, when Christian Phalangist militias, not Israeli soldiers, killed hundreds of Palestinian civilians in refugee camps while the IDF held the perimeter outside. Israel’s own government convened the Kahan Commission, which found in February 1983 that Defense Minister Ariel Sharon bore personal, indirect responsibility for failing to foresee and prevent the massacre and recommended his removal; he resigned days later. No other army in the region has forced a sitting defense minister from office over a massacre it did not commit.

The record, case by case

The strongest version of the claim points to real numbers: most complaints filed against Israeli soldiers over Palestinian deaths, especially in Gaza combat operations, do not end in an indictment. That is true, and it is also true of most Western militaries investigating deaths in active war zones, where the legal bar is intent or gross negligence, not the fact of a death. What the claim leaves out is the cases that did end in conviction, including ones that split the country. In March 2016, Sergeant Elor Azaria shot and killed Abdel Fatah al-Sharif, a wounded and subdued attacker, in Hebron. Israeli military police opened a homicide investigation within hours; a military court convicted Azaria of manslaughter in January 2017 and sentenced him to prison, over the public objection of sitting cabinet ministers, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who called for a pardon (Jerusalem Post). A justice system that convicts a soldier over the stated objection of its own prime minister is not one engineered to protect soldiers from consequences. The same system convicted Amiram Ben-Uliel of murder in 2020 for the 2015 Duma arson attack, which killed a Palestinian toddler and both his parents, part of a wave of settler violence that Israel’s own Shin Bet investigated and prosecuted; the Supreme Court rejected his appeal and upheld the life sentence (The Media Line). Outside the criminal courts, Israel’s Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled against the military itself on Palestinian petitions, ordering the separation barrier rerouted around Beit Sourik in 2004 and striking down a closure of Route 443 in 2009, both petitions brought by Palestinian villagers directly against the Israeli army.

Who pushes the claim today

Today the claim functions less as a standalone accusation than as the premise beneath larger legal campaigns. UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese and UN Human Rights Council commissions of inquiry argue Israeli military justice is structurally incapable of accountability, a framing that also underwrites the war crimes allegations pressed at the ICC and South Africa’s case against Israel at the ICJ over the genocide charge. Activists compress the argument into one line: “the IDF investigates itself and clears itself.” It spreads because it is simple, but it runs straight into the record above: murder convictions, a forced resignation, and a Supreme Court that rules against its own government’s military on Palestinian petitions.

What the record doesn’t hide, and why it still refutes the claim

Fairly stated: the Kfar Qasim sentences, initially as long as 17 years, were sharply reduced on appeal and pardon, no convicted officer served more than three and a half years, and the brigade commander who ordered the shootings received a symbolic fine rather than prison time. Investigations into Palestinian deaths in Gaza operations frequently close without charges, and human rights groups have documented cases where they believe the threshold for prosecution was set too high or reviews took too long.

Those are legitimate criticisms of an imperfect system, not evidence of one built for impunity, which is the specific claim this article addresses, and which the murder convictions, the forced resignation, and life sentences for Jewish terrorists who kill Arabs all refute.

A state that prosecutes its own is not the lawless caricature

No army’s internal justice is perfect, Israel’s included, and real cases of under-punishment can be named. But “they never hold anyone accountable” is refuted by the record, from the murder convictions after Kfar Qasim to a Supreme Court that hears Palestinian petitions against its own government. A state that prosecutes its own is not the lawless caricature.