By William Booth, Washington Post, May 4, 2015
TEL AVIV–The war last summer between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip left more than 2,100 Palestinians dead and vast areas reduced to rubble. On Monday a group of Israeli veterans released sobering testimony from fellow soldiers that suggests permissive rules of engagement coupled with indiscriminate artillery fire contributed to the mass destruction and high numbers of civilian casualties in the coastal enclave.
The organization of active and reserve duty soldiers, called Breaking the Silence, gathered testimonies from more than 60 enlisted men and officers who served in Gaza during Operation Protective Edge.
The soldiers describe reducing Gaza neighborhoods to sand, firing artillery at random houses to avenge fallen comrades, shooting at innocent civilians because they were bored and watching armed drones attack a pair of women talking on cellular phones because they were assumed to be Hamas scouts.
The director of the group, Yuli Novak, called the rules of engagement in Operation Protective Edge “the most permissive” they have seen and amounted to an “ethical failure … from the top of the chain of command.” Novak called for an independent investigation.
The 240-page report “This is How We Fought in Gaza 2014” was released Monday and accompanied by videotaped testimony that aired on Israeli news programs.
The soldiers describe how they were told by commanders to view all Palestinian in the combat zones as a potential threat, whether they brandished weapons or not. Individuals spotted in windows and rooftops–especially if they were speaking on a cellular telephone–were often considered scouts and could be shot.
A first sergeant serving in the Mechanized Infantry in Deir al-Balah in Gaza told the group, “If we don’t see someone waving a white flag, screaming, ‘I give up’ or something–then he’s a threat and there’s authorization to open fire.”
The leaders of the Breaking the Silence group also charged that Israeli Defense Forces reduced whole neighborhoods of Gaza to ruins without any clear operational justification but instead to “demonstrate presence in the area.” Gaza is some of the most densely populated real estate on Earth with 1.8 million people.
A first sergeant in an infantry unit in northern Gaza Strip recalled that armored combat bulldozers, known as D9s, “didn’t rest for a second. Nonstop, as if they were playing in a sandbox. Driving back and forth, back and forth, razing another house, another street. And at some point there was no trace left of that street. It was hard to imagine there even used to be a street there at all.”
The soldiers also testified that their commanders wanted them to level buildings near the Gaza border or on hilltops that could be used by Hamas in future conflicts. More than 18,000 homes were severely damaged or destroyed in the conflict and civilian infrastructure was frequently targeted, including power stations and factories.
The Israelis charge that Palestinian militants brought most of this on themselves and their people by firing thousands of unguided rockets at Israeli cities, employing human shields and caching weapons in schools, hospitals, mosques and other public buildings.
Members of Breaking the Silence are viewed by many Israelis as “anti-military.” The group says its mission is to tell the Israeli public what the IDF spokesmen hide, what serving in the occupied West Bank and in wars in Gaza and Lebanon are really like. Immediately after graduating from high school, all Israeli men and women–except those who get deferments because of religious study or for medical reasons–must serve in the military, and so time in the armed services is a shared experience for most citizens.
The Israeli Defense Forces declined to address details in the group’s report and complained that Breaking the Silence “does not provide IDF with any proof of their claims.”
Breaking the Silence provided reporters with a March 23 letter they sent to chief of the general staff of the IDF requesting an urgent meeting to discuss the report.
The testimonies are spoken in the voices of soldiers–filled with military jargon and occasional expletives–about how they did their jobs, what they saw, sometimes what they felt.
The Israeli combatants reveal acts of both kindness and savagery–how they sheltered a family from harm and how they appear to have executed a wounded Palestinian.
In an interview with the Washington Post, a young tank gunner whose testimony is included in the report, described how he and others fired cannon and machine gun bursts at random travelers on a main north-south highway in the Gaza Strip simply because they were bored and wanted to prove how good their aim was.
“I am ashamed of this,” said the 21-year-old tank gunner who served in the central Gaza in a Hamas hotspot near the town of Al Bureij.
The gunner said he fired his Browning machine gun at a man pedaling a bicycle, but missed because of the distance and his ultimate unwillingness to adjust his fire.
“War crime is a big word,” he said in an interview in a Tel Aviv apartment on Sunday. “I did not rape and kill anybody, but yeah, I shot at random civilian targets sometimes, just for fun, so yeah.”
The same soldier described how a friend in his unit was killed by shrapnel to the neck from a Palestinian mortar round; how rocket-propelled grenades whizzed by his tank and how one time a burst of small-arms fire breezed by his own head.
In other testimonies, soldiers recall that doors and houses and even sheep were booby-trapped with explosives and that once an old man was sent toward the troops as a suicide bomber.
Yehuda Shaul, a leader of the Breaking the Silence, conceded that Gaza was a dangerous, chaotic landscape for Israeli troops. But he said that IDF had contributed to needless death and destruction with “a guiding military principle of minimum risk to our forces, even at the cost of harming innocent civilians.”
According to United Nations and Palestinian human rights organizations, almost 70 percent of the more than 2,100 Palestinian deaths were civilian, including more than 500 children.
When the ground offensive began and Israeli armored battalions entered the Gaza Strip, the IDF would first drop leaflets warning civilians to flee the area; then they would launch artillery and aerial strikes to destroy buildings that intelligence suggested could harbor militants and weapons, and “soften targets” to deter Hamas from counter-attack.
Those who remained in the area could find themselves in the crosshairs. “While official military orders allow for fire only after identifying a weapon, intent, and the enemy’s realistic capability, many soldiers testified that they were told to shoot at any threat, imminent or suspected,” the report concluded.
A first sergeant in the Infantry in the Northern Gaza Strip testified, “They told us: ‘There aren’t supposed to be any civilians there. If you spot someone, shoot. Whether it posed a threat or not was not a question, and that makes sense to me. If you shoot someone in Gaza, it’s cool, no big deal.”
TEL AVIV–The war last summer between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip left more than 2,100 Palestinians dead and vast areas reduced to rubble. On Monday a group of Israeli veterans released sobering testimony from fellow soldiers that suggests permissive rules of engagement coupled with indiscriminate artillery fire contributed to the mass destruction and high numbers of civilian casualties in the coastal enclave.
The organization of active and reserve duty soldiers, called Breaking the Silence, gathered testimonies from more than 60 enlisted men and officers who served in Gaza during Operation Protective Edge.
The soldiers describe reducing Gaza neighborhoods to sand, firing artillery at random houses to avenge fallen comrades, shooting at innocent civilians because they were bored and watching armed drones attack a pair of women talking on cellular phones because they were assumed to be Hamas scouts.
The director of the group, Yuli Novak, called the rules of engagement in Operation Protective Edge “the most permissive” they have seen and amounted to an “ethical failure … from the top of the chain of command.” Novak called for an independent investigation.
The 240-page report “This is How We Fought in Gaza 2014” was released Monday and accompanied by videotaped testimony that aired on Israeli news programs.
The soldiers describe how they were told by commanders to view all Palestinian in the combat zones as a potential threat, whether they brandished weapons or not. Individuals spotted in windows and rooftops–especially if they were speaking on a cellular telephone–were often considered scouts and could be shot.
A first sergeant serving in the Mechanized Infantry in Deir al-Balah in Gaza told the group, “If we don’t see someone waving a white flag, screaming, ‘I give up’ or something–then he’s a threat and there’s authorization to open fire.”
The leaders of the Breaking the Silence group also charged that Israeli Defense Forces reduced whole neighborhoods of Gaza to ruins without any clear operational justification but instead to “demonstrate presence in the area.” Gaza is some of the most densely populated real estate on Earth with 1.8 million people.
A first sergeant in an infantry unit in northern Gaza Strip recalled that armored combat bulldozers, known as D9s, “didn’t rest for a second. Nonstop, as if they were playing in a sandbox. Driving back and forth, back and forth, razing another house, another street. And at some point there was no trace left of that street. It was hard to imagine there even used to be a street there at all.”
The soldiers also testified that their commanders wanted them to level buildings near the Gaza border or on hilltops that could be used by Hamas in future conflicts. More than 18,000 homes were severely damaged or destroyed in the conflict and civilian infrastructure was frequently targeted, including power stations and factories.
The Israelis charge that Palestinian militants brought most of this on themselves and their people by firing thousands of unguided rockets at Israeli cities, employing human shields and caching weapons in schools, hospitals, mosques and other public buildings.
Members of Breaking the Silence are viewed by many Israelis as “anti-military.” The group says its mission is to tell the Israeli public what the IDF spokesmen hide, what serving in the occupied West Bank and in wars in Gaza and Lebanon are really like. Immediately after graduating from high school, all Israeli men and women–except those who get deferments because of religious study or for medical reasons–must serve in the military, and so time in the armed services is a shared experience for most citizens.
The Israeli Defense Forces declined to address details in the group’s report and complained that Breaking the Silence “does not provide IDF with any proof of their claims.”
Breaking the Silence provided reporters with a March 23 letter they sent to chief of the general staff of the IDF requesting an urgent meeting to discuss the report.
The testimonies are spoken in the voices of soldiers–filled with military jargon and occasional expletives–about how they did their jobs, what they saw, sometimes what they felt.
The Israeli combatants reveal acts of both kindness and savagery–how they sheltered a family from harm and how they appear to have executed a wounded Palestinian.
In an interview with the Washington Post, a young tank gunner whose testimony is included in the report, described how he and others fired cannon and machine gun bursts at random travelers on a main north-south highway in the Gaza Strip simply because they were bored and wanted to prove how good their aim was.
“I am ashamed of this,” said the 21-year-old tank gunner who served in the central Gaza in a Hamas hotspot near the town of Al Bureij.
The gunner said he fired his Browning machine gun at a man pedaling a bicycle, but missed because of the distance and his ultimate unwillingness to adjust his fire.
“War crime is a big word,” he said in an interview in a Tel Aviv apartment on Sunday. “I did not rape and kill anybody, but yeah, I shot at random civilian targets sometimes, just for fun, so yeah.”
The same soldier described how a friend in his unit was killed by shrapnel to the neck from a Palestinian mortar round; how rocket-propelled grenades whizzed by his tank and how one time a burst of small-arms fire breezed by his own head.
In other testimonies, soldiers recall that doors and houses and even sheep were booby-trapped with explosives and that once an old man was sent toward the troops as a suicide bomber.
Yehuda Shaul, a leader of the Breaking the Silence, conceded that Gaza was a dangerous, chaotic landscape for Israeli troops. But he said that IDF had contributed to needless death and destruction with “a guiding military principle of minimum risk to our forces, even at the cost of harming innocent civilians.”
According to United Nations and Palestinian human rights organizations, almost 70 percent of the more than 2,100 Palestinian deaths were civilian, including more than 500 children.
When the ground offensive began and Israeli armored battalions entered the Gaza Strip, the IDF would first drop leaflets warning civilians to flee the area; then they would launch artillery and aerial strikes to destroy buildings that intelligence suggested could harbor militants and weapons, and “soften targets” to deter Hamas from counter-attack.
Those who remained in the area could find themselves in the crosshairs. “While official military orders allow for fire only after identifying a weapon, intent, and the enemy’s realistic capability, many soldiers testified that they were told to shoot at any threat, imminent or suspected,” the report concluded.
A first sergeant in the Infantry in the Northern Gaza Strip testified, “They told us: ‘There aren’t supposed to be any civilians there. If you spot someone, shoot. Whether it posed a threat or not was not a question, and that makes sense to me. If you shoot someone in Gaza, it’s cool, no big deal.”
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