Israeli soldiers punished over anti-Palestinian t-shirts

An Israeli army platoon commander was sacked and two soldiers demoted from combat roles for arranging the printing of t-shirts emblazoned with the anti-Arab message “Nablus, we are coming!” accompanied by a picture of an armed, masked soldier.

The t-shirts, ordered for the graduation of a battalion patrol training course, displayed the phrase written in Hebrew and included a drawing of a armed Israeli soldier standing in front of homes in the West Bank, Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported on Sunday.

Col. Yehuda Fuchs, a brigade commander, said on Wednesday that those responsible for the t-shirts had committed a “moral failure.”

A number of soldiers in the battalion spoke out against the dismissals, saying that the shirts were merely meant as a joke and were commonplace in the Israeli Defense Forces.

In response to the incident, the IDF spokesperson’s office condemned the soldiers’ actions as a violation of the army’s values, stating, “For that reason, significant measures were taken against them, in accordance with the judgment of their commanders.”

The distribution of anti-Palestinian slogans and messages by members of Israel’s army is the latest in a phenomenon that Haaretz previously reported on in 2009.