IDF in Gaza: Killing civilians, vandalism, and lax rules of engagement

[ProgressiveMuslim]

By Amos Harel, Haaretz Correspondent

Tags: Israel News, IDF, Hamas, Gaza

During Operation Cast Lead, Israeli forces killed Palestinian civilians under permissive rules of engagement and intentionally destroyed their property, say soldiers who fought in the offensive.

The soldiers are graduates of the Yitzhak Rabin pre-military preparatory course at Oranim Academic College in Tivon. Some of their statements made on Feb. 13 will appear Thursday and Friday in Haaretz. Dozens of graduates of the course who took part in the discussion fought in the Gaza operation.

The speakers included combat pilots and infantry soldiers. Their testimony runs counter to the Israel Defense Forces' claims that Israeli troops observed a high level of moral behavior during the operation. The session's transcript was published this week in the newsletter for the course's graduates.
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The testimonies include a description by an infantry squad leader of an incident where an IDF sharpshooter mistakenly shot a Palestinian mother and her two children. "There was a house with a family inside .... We put them in a room. Later we left the house and another platoon entered it, and a few days after that there was an order to release the family. They had set up positions upstairs. There was a sniper position on the roof," the soldier said.

"The platoon commander let the family go and told them to go to the right. One mother and her two children didn't understand and went to the left, but they forgot to tell the sharpshooter on the roof they had let them go and it was okay, and he should hold his fire and he ... he did what he was supposed to, like he was following his orders."

According to the squad leader: "The sharpshooter saw a woman and children approaching him, closer than the lines he was told no one should pass. He shot them straight away. In any case, what happened is that in the end he killed them.

"I don't think he felt too bad about it, because after all, as far as he was concerned, he did his job according to the orders he was given. And the atmosphere in general, from what I understood from most of my men who I talked to ... I don't know how to describe it .... The lives of Palestinians, let's say, is something very, very less important than the lives of our soldiers. So as far as they are concerned they can justify it that way," he said.

more...

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1072040.html

[ProgressiveMuslim]

1. Silverstein translates what was published only in Hebrew:

Mar 18th, 2009 by Richard Silverstein

(snip)


Here is the portion of the Hebrew story that is untranslated (I’ve omitted several passages I thought were peripheral):

The sniper sees a woman and children approaching him across the tracks over which they told him no one was allowed to approach. He shot straight at them. At any rate, what happened finally–he killed them. They advanced and suddenly he saw them, people moving in an area in which it was prohibited to move. I don’t think he felt particularly bad about this, because from his point of view he did his job according to the orders given to him. The atmosphere in a general sense among my people was to go out and speak with them …I don’t know how to define it. Lives of Palestinians, let’s say, are something far, far less important than the lives of our boys. That’s how they, from their perspective justified this.

Another commander from the same company told about an incident in which an officer shot and killed an adult Palestinian woman who walked along the road at a distance of 100 meters from a house the platoon captured. He said he was forced to argue with his superior officer about the permissive terms for opening fire which made possible the “‘cleansing’ of the homes with rifle fire, without prior warning to the residents. After the orders were changed, the soldiers under this officer complained about it, reasoning “you had to kill every human being found there. Anyone found there was a terrorist.”

According to him, “you don’t sense from the captains that there’s any logic to this , but they didn’t say anything. To write sentences on the wall: “Death to Arabs,” to take family snapshots and spit on them, to burn everything belonging to the family, just because you could. I think that this was the most central thing: to understand how much the IDF had fallen concerning its ethics. No matter how much we say that the IDF is a an ethical army, let’s just say it didn’t work that way in the field, not at the regimental level. That’s the thing I will most remember.

The head of the preparatory program, Danny Zamir, said he didn’t know beforehand what the soldiers would say at the conference and that the content “struck them dumb.” He approached the chief of staff and warned him of his fear of a severe degradation of ethics in the IDF…Zamir got the impression that the IDF intended to deal with the issue seriously: “They don’t intend to cover it up,” he said.

An IDF spokesperson provided a response: in light of Danny Zamir’s approach to the chief of staff, a meeting was set up between the former and the chief educational officer, who informed him of the activities that happened before, during and after the operation intended to impress upon the troops and their officers the ethical considerations involved in battle.

The chief education officer added that the IDF was preparing profound and fundamental investigations and that officers were encouraged to have discussions about these subjects. The IDF had no knowledge that confirmed these events. It will investigate their truth as needed.

The human rights group, Yesh Din, called tonight for the chief military prosecutor and the government’s legal advisor to announce the formation of an external body to investigate these incidents. The group declared further that it was necessary to give this body the necessary tools to bring criminal charges, whose clear purpose would be to establish blame and responsibility.

“Up till now, one and a half months after the Operation, not a single criminal investigation has been opened despite there being hundreds of testimonies which raise a clear suspicion that there were violations of the laws of war and war crimes. These published testimonies cast a dark shadow not only on the soldiers who participated in the operation, but the senior echelons who created the rules of engagement for opening fire. As has become clear recently , in the event that the State of Israel fails to investigate its own abuses other nations will .

One thing that strikes me here is the almost nostalgic yearning among the troops and Zamir for a truly ethical IDF, harkening back to an earlier era when such things were taken much more seriously (supposedly). Both Zamir and the IDF education officer speak with the gravest seriousness about the subject when it should be clear to them, as it is to most of the rest of the world, that ethics are a lost cause as far as the army is concerned. There is lip service paid. Words are uttered. Intentions are confirmed. But as anyone who is a serious observer of the IDF knows, words are cheap. Deeds are the currency of the realm. And the IDF’s deeds in Gaza and its refusal to investigate them tell you how much value the army really places on ethics.

read on..

http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2009/03/18/idf-soldiers-admit-shoot-to-kill-orders-against-gaza-civilians/

[azurnoir]

6. It would seem that there were plans to cover for this all along

The guiding principle of Israel's ground invasion is to move in with full force and try to minimize Israeli casualties, Israeli military correspondent Alex Fishman wrote in the daily Yediot Ahronoth. "We'll pay the international price later for the collateral damage and the anticipated civilian casualties," Fishman said."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=124&topic_id=237283&mesg_id=237283

the date of the article is January 4 but now we are supposed to shocked that these things happened and take any investigation seriously?

[leftchick]

2. so in other words

they are trained to be racists with no conscience about killing Arabs. Sounds familiar.

[Tripmann]

3. Just trying to work out...

...what writing 'death to arabs' and spitting on family photos has to do with stopping hamas firing rockets into israel.

Nothing. It's about hatred.

Disgusting

[bemildred]

4. Israeli troops shot 'unarmed Palestinian civilians under orders' during Gaza war

Striking testimony has emerged from Israeli soldiers involved in the Gaza war in which they describe shooting unarmed civilians, sometimes under orders from their officers.

One soldier described how an Israeli sniper shot dead a Palestinian mother and her two children, adding that fellow troops believed the lives of Palestinians were "very, very less important than the lives of our soldiers".

The testimony, published in the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz today, gives a rare insight into how Israeli soldiers fought the war on the ground; reinforces Palestinian accounts of disproportionate Israeli force; and sharply contradicts the Israeli military's official version of events.

The accounts come from unnamed soldiers who were graduates of a pre-military course at Oranim Academic College in Tivon and who spoke in a session in mid-February. The transcript of the session was published this week and obtained by Ha'aretz.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/19/israeli-troops-gaza-shootings-civilians

[Purveyor]

5. Thank you for posting... KICK eom