cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/14741297
When NatSec Daily asked Israel Defense Forces spokesperson NADAV SHOSHANI whether Israel plans on investigating, he at first waived off the question, calling the reports “fake news.”
Asked if that means Israel won’t investigate the mass grave reports, Shoshani said: “Investigate what?” He then added that Israel has already looked into the matter and found that there was no wrongdoing. “We gave answers. We don’t bury people in mass graves. Not something we do.”
Shoshani didn’t provide details of that investigation or who Israel provided answers to specifically.
“The Israelis have told us privately what they’ve said publicly, that they totally reject the allegations,” a U.S. official told NatSec Daily, granted anonymity to detail private conversations. “We aren’t in a position to validate that, and would like a thorough and transparent investigation into the reports.”
Generally, countries do initially investigate themselves because it’s actually one branch of management investigating someone who reports to them.
If this were the UK and there were allegations of war crimes against army personnel, I would expect the army to do that investigation. Then I would expect the government to investigate the army and if that is not satisfactory then you’d expect external bodies to investigate further.
The problem here is that the crimes have the backing of the higher ups so steps one and two aren’t about whether a crime had been committed but about how they deny the accusations?