Report: Soldiers allege division commander recklessly endangered troops in Gaza

Soldiers who served in the war in the Gaza Strip have accused the commander of the military’s 252nd Division, Brig. Gen. Yehuda Vach, of endangering the lives of troops with an aggressive attitude to operations and sending forces into combat areas without adequate preparation, the Haaretz newspaper reported Tuesday.

Officers and soldiers also claimed Vach had a ruthless attitude toward Gazans, enabling his own brother to run a campaign of destruction that leveled dozens of buildings, and that he gave questionable access to Israeli civilians who were permitted to enter the Strip under his auspices.

The Israel Defense Forces rejected the claims, telling the newspaper that all of Vach’s decisions were professional and that his actions were carried out with the cooperation of the army’s command structure.

The Haaretz report (Hebrew) was the latest to feature claims by some of those who have served in Gaza that the moral and ethical values on which the IDF prides itself have eroded over nearly 15 months of war in the Palestinian enclave.

Vach’s division previously operated in the area of the so-called Netzarim Corridor, which bisects Gaza into northern and southern sections and is considered a key strategic route.

On August 17-28, the IDF launched an operation in Zeitoun, a southern neighborhood of Gaza City that lies near the corridor.

Various unnamed commanders told the paper that Vach kept pushing to reach further north, and ordered forces into areas without the necessary means or support from combat engineers and other backup forces that would ensure there were no roadside bombs booby-trapping the area.

A senior officer in the IDF’s Southern Command told Haaretz that at the end of the operation a probe was carried out into the relatively high death toll — eight fatalities, all of whom were from the Jerusalem Brigade under Vach’s division.

The 252nd Division was withdrawn from the Netzarim Corridor in November after a three-month stint in the territory, being replaced by the 99th Division. The divisions are set to rotate again in February.

Vach held a meeting with commanders at the beginning of December to review their deployment to the Netzarim Corridor. He reportedly repeated a comment he had made in the past, that only by losing territory will the Palestinians learn a lesson from the October 7, 2023, onslaught.

One commander recalled that at the meeting, Vach said that as far as he was concerned there should be no humanitarian aid trucks entering northern Gaza, where aid groups say there is a crisis due to a shortage of deliveries.

The commander also said that Vach’s attitude was that there are no innocents in Gaza and that “everyone is a terrorist.”

During the division’s stint in the Netzarim Corridor, Vach was said to stress the need for a victory image and, according to one soldier, mulled allowing Israeli civilian vehicles — driven by troops — to travel the corridor in a display for Hamas.

Most commanders balked at the idea of driving soldiers along the corridor in civilian vehicles, noting the danger of a Hamas attack or of accidentally being shot at by other IDF units, the report said.

Vach was also said to have set up a cross-Gaza run from the Israeli border to the sea as a sporting event, to be undertaken by soldiers who would not be wearing protective vests. According to the report, the chief of IDF Southern Command, Maj. Gen. Yaron Finkelman, stopped the planned event the night before it was supposed to happen, to Vach’s annoyance.

A source also told of another incident in which Finkelman held a classified meeting via video with senior commanders, including Vach. During the meeting, others participating noticed that behind Vach, who was in Gaza at the time, a kippa-wearing civilian could be seen studying maps of the Gaza Strip. When Vach realized what was happening, he quickly ordered the civilian to leave.

Vach hails from the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba and has 10 brothers, at least two of whom are officers in the IDF. One is Golan Vach, a colonel in the reserves.

According to sources who spoke to Haaretz, Yehuda Vach made it clear that his brothers who are officers should be given free rein in accessing and operating in Gaza.

Col. (res.) Golan Vach previously commanded the reservist National Search and Rescue Unit (until January 2024), but commanders in the 252nd Division told Haaretz that during the ongoing war, he headed a small dubious unit dedicated to destroying buildings in Gaza.

Commanders who spoke to Haaretz could not specify how many of the unit’s members were soldiers and how many were civilians. One commander described  the latter members as looking like “hilltop youth,” an expression for extremist West Bank settlers.

While the IDF engaged in an operation to clear buildings along the Netzarim Corridor for operational reasons, Golan Vach’s unit was apparently operating independently, the report said. Haaretz claimed no one in the division or Southern Command could say who was in the unit or what its mandate was.

One reservist who was assigned to provide security for the unit claimed the goal was to “flatten Gaza as much and as quickly as possible.”

The reservist said the unit’s members told their security detail that the goal was to destroy 60 buildings a day. In practice, they only managed to tear down about six buildings a day, he said.

The unit worked for about a month, the report said. Then on September 10,  soldiers found a shaft leading to a tunnel, among the hundreds of kilometers of tunnels that Hamas dug under Gaza. Golan Vach entered alone, without first going through the procedures of making sure there were no boobytraps or danger of the tunnel collapsing, sources said.

The tunnel indeed collapsed and it took two hours to dig him out, with moderate injuries.

A military investigation into the incident was written by Golan Vach himself, though Finkelman in his own remarks said that Vach had acted against orders by entering the tunnel and had caused an unnecessary diversion of other forces.

After the incident, the building destruction unit was disbanded, according to the report.

Other soldiers said a younger brother of Vach, not named in the report, would also enter Gaza without proper authorization, sometimes bringing civilians with him.

It was during the 252nd Division’s time in Gaza that troops allegedly smuggled settler leader Daniella Weiss into Gaza to survey settlement options. Weiss is leading efforts to resettle northern Gaza. The IDF has said it has investigated the claims extensively but has not yet found proof of her entry into the Strip.

The IDF said in response to the Haaretz report that the division worked to expand the security space for troops in the Netzarim Corridor and that “a series of operations was approved at all levels, in accordance with orders and combat procedures.”

Regarding Yehuda Vach, it said his decisions were “professional and practical, in full coordination with all commanders.”

“The claims regarding the unnecessary endangerment of the division’s fighters, the morality of the missions, or a lack of respect of casualties are incorrect,” it said.

The IDF also said the unit headed by Golan Vach was an authorized reservist unit that received appropriate training. Addressing Golan Vach’s tunnel collapse, the IDF said the incident was investigated by the Southern Command in a “thorough and professional manner, and the necessary lessons were drawn from it.”

As for the unauthorized entry of civilians into the Gaza Strip, the army said the allegations were “incorrect” and that Yehuda Vach did not make the remarks attributed to him about Gaza.

Earlier this month Haaretz published another report in which soldiers raised their concerns over Yehuda Vach and his open-fire orders in the Netzarim Corridor area, which they claimed were causing civilian deaths. In it, sources also accused Vach of calling in airstrikes by claiming they were necessary cover for troops under fire, as a way of getting around the red tape usually involved in such actions.

At the time the military said that “strikes are directed at military targets only, and before carrying out the attacks, many steps are taken to minimize harm to uninvolved people.” Events that raise concerns about deviations from IDF orders and proper conduct are investigated, it said.