For decades, the cornerstone of Israeli hasbara (public diplomacy) has been the assertion that the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) constitute “the most moral army in the world.” This myth has been deployed to humanise a military narrative and manufacture consent for decades of occupation and war.

By Andrew Klein

10^th May 2026

Dedicated to my wife, my light even in the darkest of times.

For decades, the cornerstone of Israeli hasbara (public diplomacy) has been the assertion that the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) constitute “the most moral army in the world.” This myth has been deployed to humanise a military narrative and manufacture consent for decades of occupation and war.

Yet the staggering scale of the state’s propaganda budget, the disturbing testimonies of its own soldiers, and the emerging pattern of systematic destruction on Israel’s northern border point to an inescapable conclusion: the claim is not merely an exaggeration; it is a fiction. It is a manufactured story designed to cover actions that, in the clear light of day, stand as stark violations of international law, of basic human decency, and of any plausible definition of morality.

I. The Propaganda Machine: Hasbara and the Manufacture of Myth

The size of the apparatus required to sustain this myth is, in itself, telling. Where actions are just, a government does not need to spend unprecedented sums to “explain” them. Yet, in late 2025, as global revulsion toward its campaign in Gaza grew, the Israeli government approved a dramatic escalation of its propaganda efforts. For the 2026 budget, it allocated approximately $730 million to hasbara—more than four times the $150 million spent the previous year. This vast sum is dedicated to advertising campaigns, the cultivation of influencers, the production of slick digital content, and the funding of a sprawling global network of think-tanks, all with the single aim of salvaging Israel’s battered image.

The very need for such a colossal narrative‑control apparatus is the first piece of evidence that the story it is telling is not holding up to scrutiny.

II. The Consequences: Gaza, A Killing Field

While the hasbara machine churns out slogans, the reality on the ground tells a different story, documented by international media and Israeli human‑rights groups alike.

1. Testimonies from Within: “From ‘Heroes’ to ‘Monsters’”

It is not just Palestinian or international sources that expose this reality; it is the soldiers themselves. In April 2026, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz published a series of confessions from soldiers who had served in Gaza. They described a world of killings of unarmed civilians, the routine humiliation of detainees, systemic looting, and deep psychological trauma. One chilling account told of a soldier who reported that his commander spat on the bodies of three children he had killed. Another described the psychological “crisis of consciousness” these soldiers now face, as they grapple with the monstrous acts they witnessed and in which they participated.

2. Targeting Children: The BBC Investigation

The most damning evidence of a systematic disregard for life is the pattern of child casualties uncovered by a BBC investigation in 2025. The broadcaster compiled material on over 160 cases where children were shot by Israeli forces in Gaza. Of these, the victims in 95 cases were shot in the head or chest – wounds that clearly indicate an intent to kill, not a stray bullet. Most of these children were under the age of 12. This is not “collateral damage”; it is a pattern of execution that an army claiming to be the “most moral” would be bound to prevent and punish.

3. Mass Detention and a “Stadium of Shame”

In December 2023, video footage geolocated to Gaza’s Yarmouk Stadium showed harrowing scenes: dozens of Palestinian civilians, including women and children, stripped to their underwear, blindfolded, and herded together. The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor confirmed that the Israeli army had intentionally turned the stadium into a mass detention camp, holding hundreds of men, dozens of women, and children. The images were a visceral, visual indictment of a campaign’s morality.

4. The Cruelty of “Smart” Warfare

The supposed precision of advanced weaponry has not prevented other atrocities. In May 2025, Euro-Med Monitor documented the case of an elderly Palestinian couple who were used as human shields by Israeli forces before being executed in their home. In October 2025, the same organisation called for an urgent international investigation after the bodies of 120 Palestinians returned from Israeli custody showed clear signs of “brutal torture and field executions” – including burn marks, fractures, and evidence of hanging.

These are not the actions of a moral army. They are the actions of one acting without constraint.

III. The Historical Precedent: A Legacy of Violence

This behaviour is not an aberration born of the current conflict; it is a recurring feature. Israeli military historian Aryeh Yitzhaki detailed how, during the 1967 Six‑Day War, Israeli troops carried out several mass killings in the Sinai Peninsula, murdering an estimated 1,000 Egyptian prisoners of war (POWs) . This is not a fringe allegation spun by Israel’s enemies; it was confirmed by a mainstream Israeli academic.

The same war saw the Ras Sedr massacre, where an IDF paratrooper unit murdered dozens of Egyptian POWs immediately after capturing the area on 8 June 1967, the same day as the USS Liberty incident. Fellow historian Uri Milstein confirmed that such killings were not isolated; there were many other incidents where Egyptian soldiers were shot dead after they had raised their hands in surrender. Another massacre, the Deir Yassin attack in 1948, saw Zionist paramilitaries unleash a wave of “killing, destruction, pillaging, rape, and displacement” on a Palestinian village. This is a pattern that precedes the state itself.

 IV. The Ideological Driver: The “Greater Israel” Project

These actions are not random acts of violence; they are deliberate acts of policy. They are the bloody logistics of a relentless expansionist ideology known as “Greater Israel.”

This is not a fringe concept. It has long been part of mainstream Zionist thought. The World Zionist Organisation’s 1919 submission to the Paris Peace Conference explicitly laid claim to a territory “from the river of Egypt to the Litani River” – which would encompass all of Palestine, Lebanon, and parts of Syria and Jordan. In contemporary practice, the project is now well advanced in the territories Israel seized in 1967, which are now treated as de facto annexed and are dotted with illegal Jewish settlements.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has openly described his policies as a “historic mission” to realise this vision of a “Complete” or “Greater” Israel. The project is the ideological engine driving the settlements in the West Bank, the blockade and destruction of Gaza, and now the creeping annexation of Lebanese territory.

V. The Ultimate Justification: Invoking the Divine

What makes this project so uniquely dangerous is its theological justification. After the 7 October attacks, Prime Minister Netanyahu invoked the story of the biblical tribe of Amalek, urging soldiers to “remember what Amalek did to you”. In the Bible, the command is to “blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven” – a religious warrant for total, genocidal war.

This was not a solitary reference. Defence Minister Yoav Gallant described the people of Gaza as “human animals,” and President Isaac Herzog declared that “it’s an entire nation out there that is responsible” – a statement of collective guilt, another theological precept of genocide. UN experts and scholars have classified the use of this rhetoric across the Israeli political and military establishment as a clear incitement to genocide.

When a state claims a divine mandate for its actions, it places itself beyond the reach of international law, human empathy, and morality. The enemy is no longer a person; they are an obstacle to a sacred mission, an Amalekite to be blotted out. This is the ultimate corruption of power, and it has taken root.

VI. The Lebanon Pattern: The “Gaza‑fication” of the North

The danger of this ideology is not confined to Gaza. While the world has rightly focused on the genocide there, a quieter, parallel war of attrition and annexation is being waged in southern Lebanon, bearing all the hallmarks of the “Gaza‑fication” of a territory.

Even during a fragile ceasefire, the destruction is methodical. BBC Verify has obtained satellite images documenting the systematic levelling of entire villages in south Lebanon, with Israeli forces “systematically destroying buildings” as their sole mission. Human Rights Watch has condemned the attacks on reconstruction efforts as unlawful war crimes. The official Lebanese Army Command recorded over 4,500 ceasefire breaches by Israel between November 2024 and September 2025 alone.

Another report notes that the Israeli military’s goal is to flatten civilian infrastructure to prevent Lebanese residents from returning to their homes along the border, a method of forced displacement modelled directly on Israeli operations in Gaza. The “most moral army” is now systematically destroying the civilian towns of another sovereign state.

Conclusion

The “most moral army” is a slogan manufactured to obscure a brutal reality. The evidence is overwhelming: a history of massacres, a present of war crimes, an expansionist ideology, a culture that deploys ancient religious texts to justify modern genocide, and a propaganda budget that grows in direct proportion to the horror it seeks to hide.

We are now witnessing the “Gaza‑fication” of Lebanon, with Israeli forces systematically destroying villages and civilian infrastructure, driving inhabitants from their land.

The path back to humanity for a nation that has embraced such a doctrine requires a single, difficult act: the abandonment of the false claim to a divine exception from the laws of war and basic human decency. No state, and no faith, is above the law.

— Andrew Klein

Sources and References

Propaganda and Hasbara

· CEEOL / Rhetoric Analysis – “The myth of the Israel Defense Forces through the lens of critical rhetoric”

· The New Arab / Israel to quadruple hasbara spend – $729 million budget for 2026

· Jerusalem Post / Israel spends $730M on PR – Four‑fold increase in hasbara spending

Gaza Atrocities – Field Executions and Detentions

· Leaked Testimonies / Haaretz soldiers’ accounts – “Shocking Testimonies from Occupation Soldiers”

· Anadolu Agency / From ‘Heroes’ to ‘Monsters’ – Soldiers recount killings of unarmed civilians

· Antiwar.com / Soldier on commander spitting on children’s bodies

· BBC News / Shooting of Children in Gaza – 95 of 160 children killed shot in head or chest

· Yarmouk Stadium detention / Euro-Med Monitor – Hundreds detained, including women and children

· Euro-Med Monitor / Elderly couple used as human shields

· Euro-Med Monitor / Bodies show signs of torture and field executions

Historical Massacres (1967 War, Deir Yassin)

· Washington Post / Israeli troops killed 1,000 Egyptian POWs in 1967 War

· Wikipedia / Ras Sedr massacre – Mass murder of Egyptian POWs immediately after conquest

· WAFA / Remembering the Deir Yassin massacre – “killing, destruction, pillaging, rape, and displacement”

“Greater Israel” Ideology

· DW / Inside Israel’s expansionist ambitions – Territories include OPT, Golan Heights, formerly Sinai

· Middle East Eye / What is ‘Greater Israel’? – Vision of expansion into all of Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan, parts of Syria, Iraq, Egypt and Saudi Arabia

· Al Bawaba / Netanyahu on “historic mission” to realise Greater Israel

Lebanon – Ceasefire Violations and Systematic Destruction

· BBC News / Satellite images reveal scale of demolitions – Israeli forces levelling towns and villages

· Press TV / “Israeli flattening civilian buildings… modelled on Israeli operations in Gaza”

· Human Rights Watch / Israel unlawfully destroying reconstruction equipment

· Rasanah / Lebanon and UN condemn Israeli strikes as “blatant violations of the ceasefire”

· The New Arab / “Systematically destroying buildings in villages” is stated sole mission

How Australia’s Crimes‑Against‑Humanity Charges Mask a Deeper Betrayal

By Andrew Klein

Dedication: To my wife, who sees the pattern behind the headlines.

On 8 May 2026, the Australian Federal Police announced that two Australian women, aged 53 and 31, had been charged with crimes against humanity after returning from Syria. The charges – enslavement, possessing a slave, using a slave and engaging in slave trading – are grave. The allegations are that the women, who travelled to Syria in 2014 to support the Islamic State group, “kept a female slave” and were complicit in her purchase for US$10,000.

The arrests were swift. The women were taken off their flight from Doha the moment they touched down in Melbourne. Police had been planning their prosecution for nearly a decade. Counter‑terrorism investigators described the case as a “very serious allegation” and Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke accused the women of making “a horrific choice to join a dangerous terrorist organisation”.

On the same day, the government said nothing about another group of travellers: Israeli Defence Force soldiers arriving in Australia on holiday visas.

I. The Swift Sword for Some

The contrast could not be starker.

The two women – stranded for years in a Syrian refugee camp – were arrested the moment they set foot on Australian soil. Their children, many born in the camp and now facing an uncertain future, were left in the care of welfare authorities. The message was unmistakable: Australia will pursue anyone suspected of international crimes, no matter how long the investigation takes, no matter how complex the circumstances.

That is not, in itself, objectionable. Crimes against humanity must be prosecuted. But the government’s selective enthusiasm demands scrutiny.

II. Open Arms for Others

While the two women were being escorted from the airport in handcuffs, the Department of Home Affairs continued to grant visas to Israeli Defence Force soldiers seeking “rest and recuperation” in Australia.

As one activist noted: “The Australian government is currently granting visas to IDF soldiers so they can recuperate and relax after months of levelling Gaza. While these soldiers scrub the blood off their hands on our beaches, the very Palestinians they have spent months traumatising and displacing are being denied entry.”

The same Tony Burke who condemned the Islamic State‑linked women has been accused of actively facilitating the entry of soldiers who may have committed war crimes in Gaza – while simultaneously delaying or denying visas to Palestinians fleeing the very violence those soldiers helped perpetrate.

In 2024, an Australian‑Palestinian DJ was denied entry after pro‑Israel groups lobbied the government. Burke simply “didn’t approve or deny it on time. He just left it.”

This is not a conspiracy. It is a pattern.

III. The Legal Reality: Australia Has Jurisdiction

Under Division 268 of the Commonwealth Criminal Code, Australia has universal jurisdiction over war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. The Australian Federal Police have the power to investigate these offences when a suspect is on Australian soil – regardless of their nationality or where the crime was committed.

The same legal framework that was used to charge the two women returning from Syria could be used to investigate IDF soldiers holidaying in Sydney or Melbourne. Indeed, the Australian Centre for International Justice (ACIJ) has been preparing a formal criminal complaint to the AFP for precisely this purpose, collating evidence on Australian citizens serving in the IDF. Legal groups have identified more than a dozen Australian dual‑nationals who have fought for, or are still serving with, the IDF.

Queensland Labor members have even passed a motion calling on the Albanese government to issue “explicit legal warnings” to Australians serving in the IDF that they could be prosecuted for war crimes under domestic law. Yet the federal government has done nothing.

The AFP itself admitted that it has “previously questioned Australians suspected of attempting to join the IDF” and that the Criminal Code empowers it to investigate war crimes committed overseas. But questioning is not arresting. And arresting is not charging.

IV. The Distraction: Why This Matters

The Albanese government is not ignorant of the double standard. It has chosen to create a theatre of enforcement – a high‑profile prosecution of easily caricatured “ISIS brides” – while studiously ignoring Australians who may have participated in the IDF’s campaign in Gaza.

The effect is twofold:

1. It reassures the pro‑Israel lobby that the government will never subject its allies to the same scrutiny it applies to Islamist militants.

2. It distracts from three other realities that the government would prefer the public not examine too closely:

· The cost‑of‑living crisis (inflation at 4.6%, fuel at $2.46/L, milk up 20c/L).

· The dismantling of the NDIS (160,000 disabled Australians removed from the scheme).

· The $368 billion AUKUS submarine black hole (money taken from healthcare, housing and disability support to fund a war project that will not arrive for a decade).

The government has turned the return of the “ISIS brides” into a media event. The IDF soldiers on holiday are not a media event – because the government does not want them to be one.

V. The Prime Minister’s Silence

Anthony Albanose has not been silent on Israel. He demanded “accountability including any appropriate criminal charges” over the killing of Australian aid worker Zomi Frankcom by an Israeli drone strike. He has even “pressed” Israeli President Isaac Herzog on the matter.

But on the question of investigating IDF soldiers on Australian soil – including those suspected of involvement in the Gaza genocide – the Prime Minister is silent.

When asked about the ICC arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant, his Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade issued a carefully worded statement reaffirming “respect” for the ICC but carefully avoiding any commitment to enforce them on Australian soil.

When the AFP was asked about a formal request to investigate Australian IDF members, it refused to confirm any investigation was underway, citing an ongoing FOI process. The result is a black hole of accountability.

VI. The Damage: Justice Perceived as Partisan

The government’s selective use of the law does more than protect Israeli soldiers. It undermines faith in the legal system itself.

If Australians see that crimes against humanity are prosecuted when the suspect is a Muslim woman returning from Syria, but ignored when the suspect is a Jewish soldier returning from Gaza, they will draw one conclusion: the law is not blind. It is political.

That conclusion is corrosive. It breeds cynicism. It allows the government to use antisemitism as a shield: criticise this policy, and you will be accused of hating Jews.

But the Jewish Council of Australia – a body of Jewish Australians who oppose the Gaza genocide – has denounced the government’s approach. Real antisemitism is not the same as criticising Israeli policy. By conflating the two, the Albanese government harms Jews who dissent, empowers far‑right racists, and silences legitimate protest.

VII. The Pattern: Extraction and Distraction

This double standard is not an anomaly. It is the same logic that underpins:

· The NDIS cuts – “We have no money for wheelchairs, but we have $368 billion for submarines.”

· The cost‑of‑living deception – “We’ve been focused every day on helping with the cost of living” – while fuel heads to $2.46/L and families spend $250 a week on groceries.

· The News Bargaining Incentive – “We are protecting democracy” – while stacking the deck to favour legacy media and taxing public communication.

Extract from the vulnerable. Distract the rest. That is the government’s playbook. The “ISIS brides” prosecution is not justice – it is stage management.

VIII. What Is to Be Done

We cannot expect the government to change course. It has shown no interest in applying the law equally.

What we can do:

1. Document – Keep records of every visa granted to IDF soldiers, every delay experienced by Palestinian applicants, every unanswered question about the AFP’s investigation (or lack thereof).

2. Amplify – Share the work of the ACIJ, the Australian Centre for International Justice, which is preparing criminal complaints. Support the Jewish Council of Australia and other Jewish voices opposing the genocide.

3. Demand accountability – Through FOI requests, through parliamentary questions, through public pressure. The government may ignore us, but the record will remain.

4. Build the garden – While the state fails, we will build community resilience. Independent media, mutual aid, local food, local care. The extractive state cannot survive if we stop feeding it.

Conclusion

Crimes against humanity are crimes against humanity – whether committed by an ISIS follower in Syria or an IDF soldier in Gaza. The Australian government has the legal power to investigate both. It has chosen to investigate only one.

The “ISIS brides” case is not the problem. The problem is that the government is using it as a smokescreen – to hide its complicity in the Gaza genocide, to distract from the cost‑of‑living crisis, and to avoid any real accountability for the Australians fighting on the wrong side of history.

We are not fooled. We see the pattern. And we will not stop documenting it.

Andrew Klein

9 May 2026

Selected Sources and References

· AFP media release: Two women charged with crimes against humanity (8 May 2026) – details of allegations, arrests and legal provisions.

· Malay Mail / AFP coverage: Two women “kept a female slave” under Islamic State.

· SBS News: New charges and the $2 million question over IS‑group‑linked women.

· Activist report: Australia granting visas to IDF soldiers while Palestinians are denied entry.

· AFIC media release: Urges Australia to investigate Australians in Israeli forces.

· Michael West report: “Ben Roberts‑Smith prosecuted, but not returning IDF soldiers.”

· Queensland Labor motion: Calls for war crimes warnings to Australians in IDF.

· Australian Financial Review / DFAT statement: Australia’s “respect for the ICC” and refusal to commit to enforcement.

· Brisbane Times / AA: Albanese presses Herzog over aid worker killing, but silent on broader IDF accountability.

· ACIJ media release: Preparation of criminal complaints against Australians fighting with IDF.

· Commonwealth Criminal Code Act 1995 (Cth), Division 268: Universal jurisdiction provisions for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.