Israeli leaders and pro-Zionist commentators have, over the years, carefully manufactured the myth that Israel has the "most moral army in the world". This has always been a lie. Recent revelations prove this in all too shocking detail.

The Guardian newspaper - in an indication of shifting world attitudes towards Israel - has spearheaded an investigation into Israel's war crimes in Gaza.

First, there was the instance of the Israel Defence Force (IDF) using human shields. The Guardian interviewed three brothers from the Gaza Strip, aged 14, 15 and 16. They recounted how they were forced to kneel in front of IDF tanks to prevent resistance fighters shooting at them.

Al'a al-Attar, the 14-year-old, described how "they would make us go first, so if any fighters shot at them the bullets would hit us, not them."

In another sickening incident, also uncovered by The Guardian, a whole Palestinian family was cut to pieces by an unpiloted drone while drinking tea in the courtyard of their home. One survivor, Mounir al-Jarah, described the scene he discovered:

"We found Mohammed lying there, cut in half. Ahmed was in three pieces; Wahid was totally burnt - his eyes were gone. Wahid's father was dead. Nour had been decapitated. We couldn't see her head anywhere."

In total, six members of the family died in the assault. Fatheya, aged 17, is one of the few family members to have survived. Utterly devastated and grief-stricken, she told a Guardian reporter that: "There were rocks and dust and fire... It's very difficult... I can't, no matter how I try to explain my situation to you, picking up the pieces of my dead family... I couldn't handle it, limbs and flesh all around me. What have we done to deserve this?"

The drone that caused the destruction is one of many used by the IDF. They are all the more terrifying for their lack of a pilot, and the ominous buzzing sound that warns of their approach.

The atrocities in Gaza cannot be put down only to computerised killing machines. Human killing machines were also used.

In an interview with the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, Aviv, a squad commander in the Givati brigade of the IDF, described a typical mission his squad was ordered to undertake. They were told to drive an armoured personnel carrier called an Achzarit (in Hebrew, literally, "cruel"), into an inhabited apartment building, and then move from floor to floor killing everyone inside.

Aviv questioned this order, and was told both by the soldiers he commanded and by his commanding officer that the inhabitants of the house had been given a warning to leave. Therefore, anyone remaining could be considered a terrorist, and not deserving of life.

In the same interview, another incident was described: acting upon direct orders, rooftop snipers shot and killed an unarmed elderly woman walking down a road. Explaining the logic that created this incident, Aviv said: "That's what is so nice about Gaza: you see a person on a road, walking along a path. He doesn't have to be with a weapon, you don't have to identify him with anything and you can just shoot him. With us it was an old woman, on whom I didn't see any weapon. The order was to take the person out, that woman, the moment you see her."

Other war crimes are too numerous to list. Since the assault, Ha'aretz has detailed how the IDF operated under orders to attack rescuers and prevent them from aiding the wounded in Gaza. Similarly, as in the Lebanon war of 2006, Red Cross ambulances were directly targeted and destroyed.

Better known is Israel's use of white phosphorous. The IDF's initial attempts to deny the use of this chemical weapon were utterly refuted by photographic evidence of white phosphorous attacks on the UN compound in Gaza. White phosphorous burns intensely upon contact with air, both producing noxious smoke and incinerating virtually anything it comes into contact with. If it strikes the human body, it can be expected to continue burning until it reaches bone.

The first defence of apologists for Israel, in light of these atrocities, is usually to deny institutional responsibility for them. That is to say, it is argued that they are the actions of certain soldiers or sub-sections of the IDF, but do not represent IDF policy.

Yet this is directly contradicted by the number of occasions in which atrocities were carried out directly on the orders of the chain of command. Similarly, the commanders of the IDF must bear responsibility for the consciously racist mentality within the IDF.

One custom, all the more shocking for its casualness, is that of IDF platoons or squads printing their own customised t-shirts. The most publicised of these features a picture of a pregnant Muslim woman targeted with a crosshairs. The caption reads "One shot, two kills." Another t-shirt pictures a dead Palestinian child, with the caption "Better use Durex" (a brand of condom). Another features a picture of an assaulted woman, with the caption "Bet you got raped". Others show destroyed mosques, or guns aimed at children. One of the most chilling depicts an angel of death, with guns hanging over an Arab village.

These t-shirts are vetted by the commanding officers of the platoons that produce them. Their widespread acceptance within the IDF is proof that a culture of genocide exists within it.

Much of the coverage of these more recent revelations has adopted a tone of surprise; commentators have argued that these are new developments. Liberal Zionists have decried Israel's loss of an "ethical compass".

This, however, is utter falsification of the historical record. Israel has conducted a consistent policy of ethnic cleansing towards the Palestinians since 1948. It was founded on massacres like the one at Deir Yassin, during which between 200 and 300 Palestinians were killed in cold blood by the Irgun, one of a number of terrorist militias.

Israel's political leaders have always been utterly racist, and have usually had blood on their hands. Menachem Begin, Prime Minister of Israel from 1977 to 1983, had been a leading member of the Irgun.

He and his Defence Minister Ariel Sharon presided over the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, and the massacres at the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps.

Today, leading Zionists continue this abhorrent tradition. In an interview with the Jerusalem Post in 2004, Arnon Soffer, head of the IDF's National Defence College, commented on the siege of Gaza, saying: "When 2.5 million people live in a closed-off Gaza, it's going to be a human catastrophe. Those people will become even bigger animals than they are today... It's going to be a terrible war. So if we want to remain alive, we will have to kill and kill and kill. All day, every day... If we don't kill, we will cease to exist."

What conclusions, then, can be drawn from this?

Firstly, Israel has never had and never will have any ethical foundation or conscience. The atrocities committed at the start of this year are not aberrations: they are fully congruous with Israel's repugnant history, and the actions and values of Israel's highest leaders.

The fact is Israel is structurally racist and genocidal.

This is why there will be no justice or peace until the racist state of Israel, and all that it stands for, is broken down, dismantled and cast into history.