Kafr Qasim at 70: The massacre Israel still hasn’t owned up to

Israel almost always promises to investigate allegations of misconduct by its military, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), which it often portrays as the most moral army in the world. Yet such investigations rarely lead to meaningful accountability, particularly in major cases involving the killing of civilians. They can drag on for months, sometimes years, and when conclusions are eventually announced; they tend to produce one of two outcomes: either no criminal wrongdoing is established, or responsibility is attributed to an individual soldier, usually a low-ranking one, while the commanders and the wider chain of command are spared. A minor disciplinary measure follows, and the case is effectively closed.

This pattern is not new. It is deeply rooted in the history of Israel’s establishment and how it conducts itself. More importantly, it helps reinforce an image Israel has carefully cultivated since its creation: that of a tiny but highly modern and democratic country, where the rule of law is supreme and justice is not merely a principle embedded in the state’s legal culture but a way of life, surrounded by a sea of “savages” determined to destroy it.

Last week marked 70 years since Israel committed one of its most notorious massacres of Palestinian citizens, in the small Palestinian village of Kafr Qasim, in central what is now Israel, east of Tel Aviv. Unlike hundreds of Palestinian villages depopulated and erased from the map following Israel’s establishment in 1948, Kafr Qasim survived and retains its name. It is now a Palestinian Arab town, with a memorial to the victims erected in 1976 and a museum preserving the memory of the massacre. On the evening of 29^th October 1956, as Israel launched its invasion of Egypt alongside Britain and France, Israeli Border Police officers stopped groups of Palestinian villagers returning home after a day’s work in the fields, quarries and elsewhere outside the village. They had committed no offence and had no knowledge of what was happening: they were unaware that the Israeli military had suddenly imposed a curfew. Earlier that afternoon, the normal curfew time of 10 pm had been brought forward to 5 pm, with the village’s local leadership receiving only half an hour’s notice. The returning workers were given no warning or opportunity to explain their ignorance. Instead, the Border Police opened fire on them at close range. Within an hour, 47 people had been killed in Kafr Qasim alone, including women and children. The massacre is commonly commemorated as the killing of 49 Palestinians, although a more comprehensive archival accounting by the Israeli research institute Akevot puts the total at 51 lives, including two people killed in neighbouring villages, an unborn child and an elderly man who died several hours after the shootings.

The massacre was not the result of a spontaneous confrontation but an intentional mass killing of innocent civilians.

The commanding officer, Colonel Issachar Shadmi, commander of the Israeli army’s 17^th Brigade, had ordered the curfew ordered the Border Police officers to enforce the curfew against anyone found outside after 5 pm. The instruction was followed to the letter, and the result was the mass murder of dozens of Palestinian civilians. In an attempt to contain the political damage and protect its image, Israel established a commission of inquiry, followed by the prosecution of 11 Border Police officers. Eight were convicted in October 1958, including battalion commander Major Shmuel Malinki and Lieutenant Gavriel Dahan, who were sentenced to 17 and 15 years respectively. Three others were acquitted. But the convictions did not translate into lasting punishment. Appeals, sentence reductions, presidential commutations and early releases progressively dismantled the original sentences. By March 1960, less than two years after convictions, all eight were free,

Shadmi himself was tried separately, acquitted of murder and convicted only of abuse of authority for imposing the curfew without authorisation. His punishment was among the most shameful in the history of justice: a reprimand and a fine of just ten Israeli prutot, equivalent at the time to approximately half a US cent!

The man at the top of the chain of command escaped a murder conviction, while those who carried out the killings served only a fraction of their original sentences. Ask Israel today about Kafr Qasim and the likely answer would be: of course it was a crime, and those responsible were punished under the law! In details it might add that: it investigated, prosecuted and convicted those responsible. But such an answer deliberately ignores what happened after the verdicts: practically the entire process and its outcome were a joke by any judicial standards.

The same pattern of shambolic accountability continues to this day. A BBC Verify investigation published on 15^th October 2026 provides compelling evidence of how little has changed over the last 70 years. The investigation examined more than 60,000 published reports and identified 300 separate incidents in which the Israeli military had said it was investigating allegations of killing or injuring people during Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza, the occupied West Bank, Lebanon and Israel since 7^th October 2023. Of these, the IDF announced the outcome of only 28 cases, while the status of another 18 remained unclear. The remaining 254 had no publicly available outcome. At least one person was reportedly killed in more than 200 of these incidents, and some investigations dated back to late 2023. As is usually the case, despite repeated requests, the IDF failed to provide transparent updates on the status of these investigations, either to the BBC or to anyone else. The idea is the same: say a great deal but reveal very little of substance, in order to continue controlling the damage and safeguarding the illusionary image of the “most moral army in the world”, while continuing to commit all kinds of crimes against largely innocent civilians, including more than 20,000 children, in the Gaza genocide alone.

And again, the Israeli criminal military maintained that it took allegations seriously. But this is precisely the problem: announcing an investigation is not the same as completing one, and completing one is not the same as holding those responsible accountable. The IDF’s strategy appears to be based on a simple calculation: announce an investigation, allow it to disappear into the bureaucratic maze, and wait for public attention to fade. As time passes, people either forget or become overwhelmed by the growing number of new crimes committed and new investigations announced. Since so little of substance ever emerges from Israeli investigations into alleged crimes by its forces, few people take these repeated promises of accountability by Israel’s deeply hypocritical judicial system seriously.

Seventy years after Kafr Qasim, the central question remains the same: how many investigations, inquiries and official promises of accountability must pass before those responsible for killing Palestinian civilians actually face justice?

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.