Israeli Soldiers Allege Indiscriminate Killing in Gaza

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

Israeli Soldiers Allege Indiscriminate Killing in Gaza

By Tim McGirk / Jerusalem Friday, Mar. 20, 2009

Whenever concerns are expressed over civilian casualties inflicted in Israeli military operations, the country's generals and political leaders are quick to insist that theirs is the "world's most moral army." That claim was challenged by human rights observers over Israel's recent offensive in Gaza, although such criticism is reflexively dismissed by Israel as driven by pro-Palestinian bias. But when the allegations of abuses come from Israeli soldiers involved in the fighting, they can't be as easily dismissed.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak was forced to repeat the "world's most moral army" mantra on Thursday, this time to reassure his own countrymen shocked by allegations published in the Israeli media from six veterans of the Gaza operation. The six soldiers, whose identity is being kept confidential, made their claims in an address last month to cadets of the Yitzhak Rabin military academy, of which they are graduates. Among other claims, the soldiers alleged that an Israeli sniper had shot a woman and her two children who walked in the wrong direction after being ordered out of their home by Israeli troops. In a second incident, a sniper supposedly killed an unarmed elderly woman who posed no apparent threat to Israeli troops. And the soldiers ascribed these incidents to overly permissive rules of engagement. See pictures of Israel's Gaza offensive)

"I simply felt it was murder in cold blood, said the soldier who witnessed the scene, quoted in the daily Haaretz. He went on to explain sarcastically, "That's what is so nice, supposedly about Gaza. You see a person waking on a road... 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 that woman out, the moment you see her."

After the anonymous soldiers' testimony was splashed across the media in Israel and abroad, the military police on Thursday said it would investigate the alleged killings. Their allegations renewed an ongoing debate between Israelis who defend the Gaza assault and those who say it failed to accomplish its goal of crippling Hamas, but stained Israel's reputation. On Friday, an Israeli Defense Forces spokesman dismissed claims of the gunning down of the mother and her two children as "heresay", but said that the account of the elderly woman's death was still being probed. But those were just two of the incidents alleged by the six soldiers.

Human rights investigators suggest that what the soldiers' allegations and eyewitness accounts from Gaza residents suggest is that, in an effort to maximize the safety of their own soldiers entering Gaza, Israeli commanders may have let their ethical standards slide. Retired general and former security chief Ami Ayalon concurs. The Gaza operation, says Ayalon, "compromised the I.D.F.'s ethos, which was once built on ethics, sacrifice. And today, after the Gaza offensive, it is based on force alone."

A soldier identified as Aviv from the Givati Brigade, one of Israel's elite combat units, reportedly described to the military cadets his inner conflict over obeying orders to use indiscriminate firepower while clearing out an eight-story apartment building. "We were supposed to ... burst through the lower door, start shooting inside and then ... I call this murder... in effect, we were supposed to go up floor by floor, and any person we identified, we were supposed to shoot. I initially asked myself: Where is the logic in this?"

Aviv explained that his commanders had blurred the boundaries between combatants and civilians: "From [the officers] above, they said it was permissible, because anyone who remained ...inside Gaza City was, in effect, incriminated, a terrorist, because they hadn't fled," Aviv alleged. "On one hand, they really don't have anywhere to flee to, but on the other hand [the officers] are telling us they hadn't fled so it's their fault." Faced with having to slay the 40 families cowering in the building, he was able to persuade his superiors to let him warn the tenants, giving them five minutes to leave or "get killed."

In the Israeli military offensive, 1,434 Palestinians, including 960 civilians, were killed, according to the Palestinian Human Rights Center in Gaza. Three Israeli civilians were killed in the course of the same operation, and 10 soldiers, four of them by friendly fire. The lopsided death toll, and the fact that so many civilians were killed, has drawn fierce criticism of Israel's by human rights agencies in Israel and abroad. And the consequences could extend from the political to the legal realm.

U.N. human rights envoy Falk said that Israel's apparent failure to distinguish between military targets and civilians could "constitute a war crime of the greatest magnitude under international law." He also said that rocket fire by Palestinian militants that indiscriminately targeted Israeli towns could also constitute a war crime, and urged the establishment of an independent commission to investigate the actions of both sides during the recent conflict. With mounting pressure at home and abroad to account for the high Palestinian civilian death toll in Gaza, Israel's claim to have "the world's most moral army" is likely to be subjected to the test of evidence in the months ahead.

- With reporting by Aaron J. Klein/Tel Aviv

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8...fullworld-yahoo

Edited March 22, 2009 by wife_of_mahmoud

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

It is a shame that all the sons and daughters of Abraham can not find a way to live together.

http://www.ucgstp.org/lit/booklets/ME/sonsabraham.htm

Edited March 22, 2009 by Mister_Bill

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

It is a shame that all the sons and daughters of Abraham can not find a way to live together.

http://www.ucgstp.org/lit/booklets/ME/sonsabraham.htm

I'm ignoring your spam -- you've obviously completely missed the point.

Last update - 08:21 22/03/2009

IDF ceased long ago being 'most moral army in the world'

By Gideon Levy

What shock, what consternation. Haaretz revealed grave accounts by officers and soldiers describing the killing of innocent Palestinian civilians during the war in Gaza. The Israel Defense Forces Spokesman was quick to respond that the IDF had no prior or supporting information about the events in question, the defense minister was quick to respond that "the IDF is the most moral army in the world," and the military advocate general said the IDF would investigate.

All these propagandistic and ridiculous responses are meant not only to deceive the public, but also to offer shameless lies. The IDF knew very well what its soldiers did in Gaza. It has long ceased to be the most moral army in the world. Far from it - it will not seriously investigate anything.

The testimonies from the graduates of the Oranim pre-military course were a bolt from the blue - accounts of soldiers butchering a woman and two of her children, shooting and killing an elderly Palestinian woman, how they felt when they murdered in cold blood, how they destroyed property and how there was not even fighting in this war that was not a war.

But this is neither a bolt nor blue skies. Everything has long been known by those who wanted to know, those who, for example, read Amira Hass's dispatches from Gaza in this paper. Everything started long before the assault on Gaza.

The soldiers' transgressions are an inevitable result of the orders given during this brutal operation, and they are the natural continuation of the last nine years, when soldiers killed nearly 5,000 Palestinians, at least half of them innocent civilians, nearly 1,000 of them children and teenagers.

Everything the soldiers described from Gaza, everything, occurred during these blood-soaked years as if they were routine events. It was the context, not the principle, that was different. An army whose armored corps has yet to encounter an enemy tank and whose pilots have yet to face an enemy combat jet in 36 years has been trained to think that the only function of a tank is to crush civilian cars and that a pilot's job is to bomb residential neighborhoods.

To do this without any unnecessary moral qualms we have trained our soldiers to think that the lives and property of Palestinians have no value whatsoever. It is part of a process of dehumanization that has endured for dozens of years, the fruits of the occupation.

"That's what is so nice, as it were, about Gaza: You see a person on a road ... and you can just shoot him." This "nice" thing has been around for 40 years. Another soldier talked about a thirst for blood. This thirst has been with us for years. Ask the family of Yasser Tamaizi, a 35-year-old laborer from Idna who was killed by soldiers while bound, and Mahdi Abu Ayash, a 16-year-old boy from Beit Umar who was found in a vegetative state, another victim of recent days, far from the war in Gaza.

Most of the soldiers who took part in the assault on Gaza are youths with morals. Some of them will volunteer for any mission. They will escort an old woman across the street or rescue earthquake victims. But in Gaza, when faced with the inhuman Palestinians, the package will always be suspicious, the brainwashing will be stupefying and the core principles will change. That is the only way they can kill and engage in wanton destruction without deliberating or wrestling with their consciences, not even telling their friends or girlfriends what they did.

Regarding the statement of one soldier, who said "As much as we talk about the IDF being an army of values, let's just say this is not the situation on the ground, not on the battalion level," the IDF has long ceased to be an army of "values," not on the ground, not in the battalion, not in the senior command. When an army does not investigate thousands of cases of killing over many years, the message to the soldiers is clear, and it comes from the top.

Our Teflon chief of staff, Gabi Ashkenazi, cannot wash his hands of this affair. They are bloody. What the soldiers of the preparatory academy described were war crimes, for which they should be tried. This will not happen, save for the grotesque spectacle of "principled probes" in an army that killed 1,300 people in 25 days and left 100,000 homeless. Military police investigations will not lead to anything.

The IDF is incapable of investigating the crimes of its soldiers and commanders, and it is ridiculous to expect it to do so. These are not instances of "errant fire," but of deliberate fire resulting from an order. These are not "a few bad apples," but rather the spirit of the commander, and this spirit has been bad and corrupt for quite some time.

Change will not come without a major change in mindset. Until we recognize the Palestinians as human beings, just as we are, nothing will change. But then, the occupation would collapse, God forbid. In the meantime, prepare for the next war and the horrific testimonies about the most moral army in the world.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1072821.html

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

I am trying to lend a sympathetic ear, and you cut if off.

[ready4ONE 5,400]

Just because crappy rockets with little or no guidance systems and low yields were what had been fired for a very long time into Israel, indiscriminately I might add, because they were launched at civilians or their general direction, does not give me cause to be too sympathetic regarding some of the alleged excesses of Israeli soldiers sent to stop the rocket fire... Hamas/Palistinians firing rockets at non-military targets first could perhaps beget a bit of over enthusiasm on the part of the Israeli army.

I am thinking NOT FIRING ROCKETS INDISCRIMINATELY into Israel could have avoided the whole thing... But that is just me I suppose, being logical where no logic apparently can exist.

[doodlebugg 10]

Just because crappy rockets with little or no guidance systems and low yields were what had been fired for a very long time into Israel, indiscriminately I might add, because they were launched at civilians or their general direction, does not give me cause to be too sympathetic regarding some of the alleged excesses of Israeli soldiers sent to stop the rocket fire... Hamas/Palistinians firing rockets at non-military targets first could perhaps beget a bit of over enthusiasm on the part of the Israeli army.

I am thinking NOT FIRING ROCKETS INDISCRIMINATELY into Israel could have avoided the whole thing... But that is just me I suppose, being logical where no logic apparently can exist.

So logically if an entire country were to blame for the death of your wife because they wouldn't let her cross the border to get medical help and bulldozed your house on your way back from that border because they can.....you'd just turn the other cheek.

[ready4ONE 5,400]

Just because crappy rockets with little or no guidance systems and low yields were what had been fired for a very long time into Israel, indiscriminately I might add, because they were launched at civilians or their general direction, does not give me cause to be too sympathetic regarding some of the alleged excesses of Israeli soldiers sent to stop the rocket fire... Hamas/Palistinians firing rockets at non-military targets first could perhaps beget a bit of over enthusiasm on the part of the Israeli army.

I am thinking NOT FIRING ROCKETS INDISCRIMINATELY into Israel could have avoided the whole thing... But that is just me I suppose, being logical where no logic apparently can exist.

So logically if an entire country were to blame for the death of your wife because they wouldn't let her cross the border to get medical help and bulldozed your house on your way back from that border because they can.....you'd just turn the other cheek.

If I used the medicine bottle which once held the medicine which was supposed to save her, then yep, I might be somewhat responsible for the scenario you describe above. The rocket fire could have stopped long before the Israeli's invaded. Thus while the incidents described by the soldier are terrible, war is terrible, and bringing it upon yourself is worse.

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

Yes, yes. It's all the Palestinians' fault, and it all started with the Qassam rockets, which occurred in a vacuum and have absolutely no relation or context to the progression of the conflict.

Just keep ignoring the facts:

#1 - Israel illegally occupied Palestinian land in Gaza and in the West Bank by military force, in order to transfer its own population into those areas and claim the territory for its state. (This began in 1947, more than 50 years before the first Qassam rocket was even invented.)

#2 - Israel continues to illegally occupy these lands (in blatant and repeated violation of dozens of U.N. mandates, the Geneva Convention and international law) through its ongoing appropriation of Palestinian territory and transfer of its own citizens into illegal "settlements" on this land, and through its continued and complete military control of Palestinian borders, sea coast, airspace, economy, entry and exit of human beings, products for market, food and medicine (in fact, Israel even dictates "who" may be considered a Palestinian or not, through its control of the Palestinian population registry.)

#3 - The Geneva Convention guarantees an occupied people the legal right to resist illegal occupation *by any means at their disposal*

Keep ignoring what Israel has done, and continues to do, to drive the Palestinian people out of their own land -- the land that Israel covets.

And now we can return to the actual topic, which is whether or not the Israeli army committed war crimes in Gaza.

[ready4ONE 5,400]

Yes, yes. It's all the Palestinians' fault, and it all started with the Qassam rockets, which occurred in a vacuum and have absolutely no relation or context to the progression of the conflict.

And now we can return to the actual topic, which is whether or not the Israeli army committed war crimes in Gaza.

True, your first point. The rocket fire did not exist in a vacuum. And if we go back to the beginning, we should both understand both sides have done serious wrong. But please be realistic about the reality that Israel exists, will continue to exist, and the Palestinians and their leaders, as well as their Arab brothers have done virtually nothing to help create a peace since 1947.

Since the soldier is essentially anonymous it is difficult to speak to his allegations as 'confirmation' of Israeli war crimes. In war such things tend to be committed by both sides. Getting your butt kicked after repeated warning to cease the random rocket fire does not lend instant credibility to crying 'Poor me those horrible Israeli's did us wrong.'

Get angry with who you should be angry with, Hamas/Palestinian leadership or lack there of.

[ready4ONE 5,400]

Hamas Atrocities

January 19, 2009

One of the most underreported stories involving the Gaza war has been what Hamas has done to members of their rival Palestinian faction, Fatah, within the Gaza Strip.

Reports from The Jerusalem Post and Arab newspapers are some of the few sources reporting on Hamas atrocities.

Here's a report from the Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), which monitors the Palestinian media.

PMW published an excerpt from a Palestinian daily paper al-Hayat al-Jadida, and this video clip from the official Palestinian Authority TV.

The paper accuses Hamas of atrocities, including shooting Fatah members in the legs and murdering Fatah members for violating their house arrest.

Headline: "Reports of persecutions and liquidation of Fatah members by Hamas members evoke anxiety and condemnation in the West Bank."

Reports mentioning liquidations of Fatah members in the Gaza Strip by members of Hamas evoked popular condemnation which was added yesterday to the erupting anger, which influenced the level of popular activities carried out in solidarity with the Gaza residents in the towns Ramallah and El-Bira.

The reports from Gaza pointed out the death of dozens of Fatah members caused by Hamas members. A prominent leader stated that isolated random incidents of murder have occurred, but ruled out that this is a case of organized persecution.

Wafa A-Najar, Gaza resident who lives in the town El-Bira, said that her father was killed the day before yesterday and nine of her family members were injured by shooting by Hamas, among them were three small children and two young people in critical condition.

According to the family's story, a squad belonging to Hamas came to her family's house in Sheikh Radwan [neighborhood] in Gaza and shot at the legs of young Badran A-Najar, claiming that he was violating the house arrest which was imposed on him, at the time when he was sitting with his cousins in front of the house.

A prominent leader in the Fatah movement in the Gaza Strip, Ibrahim Abu A-Naja, ruled out that this is a case of persecution by some organization, which aims at Fatah, however he pointed out that "a number of isolated incidents " had occurred, as has been reported by the Israeli media.

Abu A-Naja called for Hamas to halt any step which provides Israel the opportunity to attack us.

Groups within the Fatah movement in the West Bank estimated that more than a hundred of its people in the Gaza Strip had been exposed to persecution, shooting, and liquidation."

(al-Hayat al-Jadida [Fatah]. January 9, 2009)

Jamal Najar, popular Palestinian singer:

"I express my condolences to my cousins, some of them were killed yesterday by the gangs of the anarchic HAMAS security forces in the Gaza Strip. The father was killed right in front of his children, because he didn't stay at home, after they placed him under house arrest, he and everyone who belongs to Fatah." (PA [FATAH] January 6, 2009

Click here to see the video.

http://www.cbn.com/CBNnews/523478.aspx

[ready4ONE 5,400]

Don't take my word for it, I wasn't there, how about his?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roC2dHJiVyo

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

Yes, yes. It's all the Palestinians' fault, and it all started with the Qassam rockets, which occurred in a vacuum and have absolutely no relation or context to the progression of the conflict.

And now we can return to the actual topic, which is whether or not the Israeli army committed war crimes in Gaza.

True, your first point. The rocket fire did not exist in a vacuum. And if we go back to the beginning, we should both understand both sides have done serious wrong. But please be realistic about the reality that Israel exists, will continue to exist, and the Palestinians and their leaders, as well as their Arab brothers have done virtually nothing to help create a peace since 1947.

Since the soldier is essentially anonymous it is difficult to speak to his allegations as 'confirmation' of Israeli war crimes. In war such things tend to be committed by both sides. Getting your butt kicked after repeated warning to cease the random rocket fire does not lend instant credibility to crying 'Poor me those horrible Israeli's did us wrong.'

Get angry with who you should be angry with, Hamas/Palestinian leadership or lack there of.

Of course Israel exists - no rational person denies that. In fact, the Yasser Arafat (the same one that you love to demonize) actually signed the agreement in which the Palestinian Authority officially recognized Israel's existence, within the internationally-sanctioned 1967 borders.

(Now, please tell me which Israeli leader has officially recognized that Palestine exists.)

The problem is: Israel wants to exist on Palestinian land. Go back and read #1, #2, and #3 again. There is no escaping it: International law gives Palestinians the right to resist their occupiers.

As for the soldiers' accounts (which is the topic of this thread) - of course you think they must be lying. Anything that insinuates that perhaps the IDF are not the mostest mostest perfect-est army ever must be a lie, in your opinion.

But we can all rest assured that the IDF will conduct a thorough and unbiased investigation. No need for the U.N. or any impartial observer to look into it. Much better to have the accused investigate itself. "Nothing to see folks, move along...."

[merijan 0]

Just because crappy rockets with little or no guidance systems and low yields were what had been fired for a very long time into Israel, indiscriminately I might add, because they were launched at civilians or their general direction, does not give me cause to be too sympathetic regarding some of the alleged excesses of Israeli soldiers sent to stop the rocket fire... Hamas/Palistinians firing rockets at non-military targets first could perhaps beget a bit of over enthusiasm on the part of the Israeli army.

I am thinking NOT FIRING ROCKETS INDISCRIMINATELY into Israel could have avoided the whole thing... But that is just me I suppose, being logical where no logic apparently can exist.

Im thinking that you are thinking its so black and white.. Think again....or just try to learn the truth .... or perhaps its hard to think.

[ready4ONE 5,400]

Yes, yes. It's all the Palestinians' fault, and it all started with the Qassam rockets, which occurred in a vacuum and have absolutely no relation or context to the progression of the conflict.

And now we can return to the actual topic, which is whether or not the Israeli army committed war crimes in Gaza.

True, your first point. The rocket fire did not exist in a vacuum. And if we go back to the beginning, we should both understand both sides have done serious wrong. But please be realistic about the reality that Israel exists, will continue to exist, and the Palestinians and their leaders, as well as their Arab brothers have done virtually nothing to help create a peace since 1947.

Since the soldier is essentially anonymous it is difficult to speak to his allegations as 'confirmation' of Israeli war crimes. In war such things tend to be committed by both sides. Getting your butt kicked after repeated warning to cease the random rocket fire does not lend instant credibility to crying 'Poor me those horrible Israeli's did us wrong.'

Get angry with who you should be angry with, Hamas/Palestinian leadership or lack there of.

Of course Israel exists - no rational person denies that. In fact, the Yasser Arafat (the same one that you love to demonize) actually signed the agreement in which the Palestinian Authority officially recognized Israel's existence, within the internationally-sanctioned 1967 borders.

(Now, please tell me which Israeli leader has officially recognized that Palestine exists.)

The problem is: Israel wants to exist on Palestinian land. Go back and read #1, #2, and #3 again. There is no escaping it: International law gives Palestinians the right to resist their occupiers.

As for the soldiers' accounts (which is the topic of this thread) - of course you think they must be lying. Anything that insinuates that perhaps the IDF are not the mostest mostest perfect-est army ever must be a lie, in your opinion.

But we can all rest assured that the IDF will conduct a thorough and unbiased investigation. No need for the U.N. or any impartial observer to look into it. Much better to have the accused investigate itself. "Nothing to see folks, move along...."

Read what I wrote more carefully please. :-) Things such as this alleged 'Israeli soldier' claim happened can, and do, happen in war. I only doubted the stories as proof positive of war crimes, and simply said as coming from a questionable source, they may or may not be true.

I don't think I have ever demonized Arafat. At times in his career he was probably a bit of demon. Call a spade a spade. But the fact remains, destroying Israel, and getting a lot of Palestinians killed doing it, NOT creating an independent state of Palestine has sadly been the focus of Palestinian and Arab leaders and self destructive. They are not working at creating a true peaceful coexistence. Given as you so often state, this goes back to 1947, there has been a lot of wrong done on both sides.

You completely fail to recognize the Arab role in the suffering of Palestinian's.

Just because crappy rockets with little or no guidance systems and low yields were what had been fired for a very long time into Israel, indiscriminately I might add, because they were launched at civilians or their general direction, does not give me cause to be too sympathetic regarding some of the alleged excesses of Israeli soldiers sent to stop the rocket fire... Hamas/Palistinians firing rockets at non-military targets first could perhaps beget a bit of over enthusiasm on the part of the Israeli army.

I am thinking NOT FIRING ROCKETS INDISCRIMINATELY into Israel could have avoided the whole thing... But that is just me I suppose, being logical where no logic apparently can exist.

Im thinking that you are thinking its so black and white.. Think again....or just try to learn the truth .... or perhaps its hard to think.

I recognize the situation as quite grey.

Edited March 23, 2009 by ready4ONE

[Heracles 417]

Wife of Habbibi

What is your goal? What would you like to achieve in that region? Or is it the age old have Israel leave/ destroyed. If you or your people have 1/10th of a brain you would work with Israel and move ahead. Possibly turning the region into a Dubai equivalent. Instead your focus is on destroying them, which in return has left your people dirt poor. Actually the poorest in the Middle East.

Common sense has to kick in sometime. Or are you guys that blinded that you cannot even see how sad yet laughable the situation.