Why Aren't IDF Pilots Being Prosecuted for War Crimes in Gaza?
The Moral and Legal Challenge of Prosecuting Gaza War Crimes: From Bombs to Accountability
The images from Gaza are haunting: collapsed schools, bombed-out hospitals, and the heartbreaking toll on children. For many watching, a pressing and morally urgent question arises:
How can the pilots who dropped these bombs not be investigated as war criminals?
The answer is not a simple yes or no. It lies in a complex intersection of mounting evidence, legal thresholds, and the challenging path from documented atrocities to individual criminal accountability.
A. Overwhelming Evidence Points to Potential War Crimes
Multiple independent organizations have documented patterns of attacks that raise serious alarms under international law.
Attacks on Hospitals:
A report from the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights documented at least 136 strikes on at least 27 hospitals and other medical facilities in Gaza over a nine-month period. The UN stated these attacks “raise serious concerns about Israel’s compliance with international law” and placed patients, staff, and displaced families at grave risk.
Destruction of Schools:
A separate UN-mandated commission found that the destruction of over 90% of school and university buildings in Gaza “could be crimes against humanity,” potentially amounting to the crime of extermination due to the sheer scale.
Human Rights Watch Findings:
Human Rights Watch has documented incidents where Israeli forces engaged in “shooting and killing civilians, firing on healthcare workers” while in control of or attacking hospitals.
Systematic Destruction:
Organizations like Al-Haq describe the targeting of Gaza’s health sector as “systematic and institutionalised,” using stark terms like “genocide” to describe the campaign.
This is not a list of isolated incidents. It paints a picture of widespread attacks on civilian infrastructure—hospitals, schools, and shelters—that are protected under international humanitarian law.
Given that children make up a significant proportion of Gaza’s population and casualties, they are inevitably among the primary victims of this destruction.
The Legal Hurdle: From Patterns to Individual Guilt
While the patterns are damning, international criminal law requires meeting specific, high standards to charge an individual with a war crime. This is where the gap between moral outrage and legal proof emerges.
1. The Problem of Individual Attribution:
To prosecute a specific pilot, a prosecutor must do more than show that a bomb fell on a hospital. They must prove that the specific pilot knew the target was civilian, knowingly acted on an illegal order, or that the civilian harm was clearly excessive compared to the anticipated military advantage.
Patterns of attacks are crucial context—but they do not, by themselves, identify the criminal intent of each person in the cockpit.
2. The Claim of Military Necessity:
The Israeli government consistently justifies strikes on civilian infrastructure by claiming Hamas uses these sites for military purposes. While the UN has found many of these claims to be “insufficiently substantiated,” this argument creates a legal shield.
A prosecutor would have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that, for each specific strike, there was no legitimate military target or that the attack was disproportionate—and that the pilot knew or should have known this.
3. “Systematic” vs. “Isolated” Attacks:
For charges of crimes against humanity, it must be shown that the attacks were part of a widespread or systematic assault on the civilian population. While many reports assert this threshold has been met, formally establishing it requires proving a policy or plan at a high command level.
This moves the focus from the pilot executing orders to the commanders who designed the strategy.
4. Were Children Specifically Targeted?
The death of a child in an unlawful attack is a war crime. However, proving that children were deliberately and systematically targeted as children requires evidence of a specific intent to kill children because they are children.
The evidence more readily shows that children are being killed in massive numbers as part of a broader campaign against civilian infrastructure and life—which is itself a grave crime—but this legal nuance matters for specific charges.
What Would It Take to Prosecute a Pilot?
Under international law, a pilot could be prosecuted if it can be proven they:
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Intentionally attacked a civilian target, knowing it had no military function.
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Launched a disproportionate attack, where the expected civilian harm was clearly excessive compared to the concrete and direct military advantage.
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Followed a manifestly illegal order. Ignorance is not a defense if the order was clearly unlawful—such as “bomb that school full of children.”
Conclusion: A Case for Investigation, Not Blanket Condemnation
To conclude directly: there is more than enough evidence to justify formal, urgent investigations into war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza—investigations that must include examining the actions of pilots, commanders, and political leaders.
The evidence of unlawful attack patterns is substantial and credible. However, holding every IDF pilot criminally responsible is both legally and practically untenable.
International justice is built on the principle of individual—not collective—guilt. Some pilots may have carried out lawful strikes; others may have been complicit in clear war crimes. Blanket prosecutions without case-by-case evidence would violate the very principles of due process that international law is meant to uphold.
The real question is not “Why aren’t all pilots being charged?” but rather:
Why are international justice mechanisms—like the International Criminal Court—facing such political and practical obstacles in conducting these necessary investigations?
The mountain of evidence demands accountability. But that accountability must be precise, fair, and grounded in law, targeting those most responsible up the chain of command—from the cockpit to the command center—based on solid evidence of their individual guilt.
The world is watching to see whether international law is strong enough to meet this challenge
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