Much has been made of the European and American citizens who have joined the ranks of the terrorist group, Islamic State, which is wreaking havoc in Iraq and Syria.

But what about the Europeans and Americans who have flocked to join another terrorist organisation that is engaged in wholesale war crimes, the Israeli Wehrmacht?

According to a British Channel 4 News report, there were about 100 British nationals serving with the Israeli Wehrmacht at the time of the report on 7 July. A CNN report on 24 July, citing a New York-based Israeli lobby group, estimated that there were around 750 US citizens serving in Israel’s Wehrmacht.

The Britons and the Americans, and many other foreign Jews, serve in the Israeli Wehrmacht under a programme called Mahal, which allows non-Israeli nationals of Jewish descent to join the ranks of the Wehrmacht for an 18-month tour of duty.

Up until now, these Jewish mercenaries have been either ignored or treated with kid gloves by Western politicians and media, while all attention has been on the Islamist cutthroats – as if the terror and crimes committed by the Israeli Wehrmacht was somewhat more acceptable than that of the Islamists, just because one was perpetrated with hi-tech weapons while the other was carried out with primitive tools.

As the writer Daniel Patrick Welch said in reference to an earlier phase of the mayhem in Iraq,

They behead – we do it with smart bombs. There is, of course, an ugly truth to this recently minted axiom: the horror of state terrorism is that the overwhelming machinery of death in the hands of all-powerful governments far outweighs individual atrocities by madmen, groupuscules and non-state entities. While the heathen thugs and killers may indeed be barbarians, such an axiom tacitly concedes, with their beheadings and murders of innocents, it is almost impossible to accomplish the slaughter of half a million children, as did the Anglo-American/UN sanctions in Iraq, with such amateur methods.

Things, however, may be about to change.

According to Britain’s Guardian newspaper, the Palestinian Authority has urged foreign states with citizens serving in the Israeli Wehrmacht to investigate them for possible war crimes committed during the aggression against the people of the Gaza Strip.

Thousands of soldiers with dual nationality are conscripted into the Israel Defence Forces, while non-Israelis also volunteer under the IDF’s Mahal programme… Malki’s letter, which was also sent to Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, sets out the requirements under international law for governments to investigate alleged violations over which they have jurisdiction, including the actions of their nationals. It demands that foreign states identify nationals serving in the IDF, notify them of alleged war crimes committed by Israel in Gaza, and investigate allegations that foreign nationals “were involved in the commission and/or the aiding and abetting of war crimes during the Israeli offensive on the Gaza Strip, and prosecuting these individuals where appropriate”. Malki’s letter says that Israeli forces have “committed war crimes during the repeated assaults on Gaza in the present, as in the past. They have engaged in indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks. Such actions have caused death and injury to thousands of Palestinian civilians, including children, and massive destruction to civilian properties, in grave breach of international humanitarian and human rights law.” The Israeli military has “deliberately targeted vital civilian infrastructure” and “carried out attacks against clearly marked facilities sheltering displaced civilians, including six [UN] schools”, the letter adds.

As the Guardian says, the absence of specific allegations against named individuals will limit the capacity of foreign governments to act – for now.

However, the fact that the subject of dual loyalty Jewish citizens of Britain, the US and other countries serving as mercenaries in the Israeli Wehrmacht is being mentioned in Western media is a big step forward, given the conspiracy of silence that has until now made this too much of a taboo subject to even utter.