ISRAEL’S top brass must respond to the damning accounts given by its own soldiers concerning the military conduct during the offensive in Gaza. Throughout the carnage, the Israeli government insisted it did all it could to prevent civilian casualties, but the soldiers who witnessed the wanton killing of women and children tell a different story. If the troops in Gaza opened fire so easily on civilians and killed them in cold blood, only two conclusions are possible. Either they had the authorization to do it from the higher authorities or the troops have been indoctrinated, as is the case with the ordinary Israelis, to the extent that they perceive the Arabs to be demons deserving of no mercy.

Now everybody knows how brutal the 22-day offensive was. The total of 1,417 Palestinians killed, 926 of them civilians, was a bloodbath, for sure.

But the recent revelations by Israeli soldiers who were there on the ground illustrate that what the military did was worse than previously suspected. Clearly, the army was working under permissive rules of engagement that would not hold them to account. So confident were the soldiers that the relaxed rules of engagement would protect them that they went berserk.

They became involved in a massive and unfettered assault, with no concern whatsoever as who is being killed or why or the disproportionate number of casualties they would inflict. As long as a Palestinian was on the other side of the battle, that was good enough, no matter the victim’s age, sex, or inclination. Israeli soldiers felt simply entitled to use unrestricted force.

During the fighting, the military indeed acknowledged loosening the rules of engagement, aiming to reduce casualties among Israeli troops. This is an overt admission by the Israeli Army that the lives of Palestinians are much, much less important than the lives of Israeli soldiers.

What was most disturbing in this matter was the perception of certain units that all is permissible when you are dealing with Palestinian homes, property and, in thousands of cases, also their lives.

The recent testimonies undermine persistent Israeli claims that troops took care to protect noncombatants and that their troops observed a high level of moral behavior during the operation. On the contrary, this is an army with very low norms of value, for Israel’s assault did not distinguish between civilians and combatants.

Despite the body of evidence of war crimes, Israel has so far failed to investigate violations of the laws of war in Gaza. Now it is for the UN or the International Criminal Court to initiate action.

Despite all the Palestinians who were killed and wounded in Gaza and the eyewitness proof as to the murderers, punitive punishment is unlikely. Israeli soldiers faced with previous charges of killing and maiming Palestinians and destroying their property are usually allowed to go scot-free. They are wholly protected by laws that totally ignore Palestinians.

The recent accounts have shocked commanding officers. This is not enough; their shock must be coupled with action, fast and firm.

From the outset, Israel consistently claimed most of the dead were legitimate targets, but it never offered any evidence. Now there is evidence that takes a completely opposite direction. The UN or the ICC must take the path where the compass points.

Barack Obama: A trying week

PRESIDENT Obama is right to make the opening to Iran, said The Guardian in an editorial yesterday. Excerpts:

If the American journalist Bartle Bull, writing in the forthcoming issue of Prospect magazine, is correct, Barack Obama may be less the new Abraham Lincoln or the new Franklin Roosevelt than the new Jimmy Carter, the Democrat who became a byword for high-minded failure and was ousted after a single term.

If yesterday’s video message to Iran is rebuffed by Tehran and scorned by the new right-wing government in Israel, Obama may find himself mocked as naive, with his Farsi greeting a trigger for American anger, not pride. It could get a better reception than that: Obama was smart enough to couch his message in cultural, rather than explicitly political, terms. And with critical elections coming up, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may find it in his political interests to treat the approach warmly. But it remains true that attempts at normal dealings with revolutionary regimes, inherently suspicious of foreign powers and always fearful of domestic criticism, are as difficult with regard to Islamic Iran as with Jacobin France or Bolshevik Russia.

Once again, however, some objectivity is in order. Obama is right to make the opening to Iran, right to offer diplomacy and a constructive approach, and right to talk respectfully about one of the world’s seminal cultures. Right too to head to the Muslim world after the G-20 in London. To have an American president who can speak to other nations with political clarity and sensitivity ought to be a source of optimism. Obama gets some things wrong. But he is doing the big things right. Give him time.