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Friday, July 31, 2026
IDF closes case into ruthless 2023 assault of Palestinians by settlers, soldiers without charges — report
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The IDF’s Military Advocate General’s office has closed a case into a ruthless assault on three Palestinians in the West Bank that took place shortly after Hamas’s October 7 onslaught, the Haaretz daily reveals.
The MAG failed to establish enough evidence tying specific settlers and soldiers to the incident, Haaretz says.
The Palestinian victims were abused for hours on October 12, 2023, when they were beaten, stripped to their underwear, bound and photographed.
Two of them were urinated on, one had cigarettes put out on his body and another was sexually assaulted by an assailant who tried to sodomize him, according to their testimony.
While attacks against Palestinians by settlers have become a near-daily phenomenon over the past several years, the October 2023 attack was seen as one of the most brutal ones, making international headlines.
But Israel has largely failed to crack down on such attacks, with arrests rare, indictments even rarer and convictions almost unheard of.
The current government has been accused of turning a blind eye to the phenomenon or even tacitly supporting it.
The former head of the police’s West Bank division is under investigation for refusing to prosecute cases of settler violence in order to curry favor with far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir.
The Times of Israel Community.