Five Israeli army units found violating human rights much before Hamas raid

The United States, which continues to arm Israel and shield it at the UN, has concluded that five Israeli military units committed serious human rights violations against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank much before the Hamas raid on October 7.

Four of these units have taken remedial measures, the State Department deputy spokesman Vedant Patel said on Monday, with consultations under way with the Israeli government over the fifth unit.

"After a careful process, we found five Israeli units responsible for individual incidents of gross violations of human rights," State Department added.

All of this behaviour took place before the October 7 Hamas attack and it was not in Gaza, he noted.

Patel declined to identify the units or say what measures the Israeli government had taken against them.

Press reports have identified one battalion called the Netzah Yehuda, with a lengthy history of misconduct, influenced by an ideology ingrained in settler-colonialism, as being accused of abuses.

US law bars the government from funding or arming foreign security forces against which there are credible allegations of human rights abuses.

United States is the main supplier of military and monetary assistance to Israel, giving its ally $3.8 billion in annual military dole.

It declared its full support for Israel since the beginning of the war last year. US never holds back in arming Israel, regardless of alarming Gaza civilian casualties.

Genocide in Gaza?

The Palestinian resistance group Hamas says its October 7 blitz on Israel that surprised its arch-enemy was orchestrated in response to Israeli attacks on Al Aqsa Mosque, illegal settler violence in occupied West Bank and to put Palestine question "back on the table."

In an assault of startling breadth, Hamas gunmen rolled into as many as 22 locations outside Gaza, including towns and other communities as far as 24 kilometres from the Gaza fence.

In many areas, they are reported to have confronted numerous soldiers as Israel's military hurried to mount a response, resulting in the killing of some 1140 Israelis, hundreds of them soldiers.

Hamas fighters took some 240 captives to Gaza as well. Dozens of them were later exchanged for Palestinians incarcerating in Israeli dungeons. Presently 130 captives remain in Gaza, including 34 who the Israeli army says are dead, some of them killed in indiscriminate Israeli strikes.

Since October last year, Israel has heavily bombarded Gaza from air, land and sea, killing more than 34,400 Palestinians, mostly children and women, wounding more than 77,600 and displacing most of 2.3 million people in the tiny coastal enclave.

For their complicity in the Gaza massacre, the International Criminal Court (ICC) is likely to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and senior military officials, according to multiple media reports. Already, the International Court of Justice has found it is plausible that Israel has committed acts that violate the Genocide Convention.

Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the rights situation in the Palestinian territories, says there are reasonable grounds to believe Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.