“Fire at Every Person You See”–an order to Israeli soldiers in Gaza last summer

[Ken Burch]

“Fire at every person you see” : Israeli soldiers reveal they were ordered to shoot to kill in Gaza – even if the targets may have been civilians

The Israeli military deliberately pounded civilian areas in the Gaza Strip with incessant fire of inaccurate ordinance during last year’s war against Hamas and was at best indifferent about casualties among the Palestinian population.

Those are the conclusions of a report complied by Breaking the Silence, an Israeli group that has spent the eight months since the end of the war, known as Operation Protective Edge,interviewing more than 60 members of the Israeli army, air force and navy, including soldiers and officers up to the rank of major.

The service personnel paint a picture that runs counter to official Israeli military claims that the surgical operation – which became a full-blown conflict after three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped and murdered in the occupied West Bank – took great care to avoid civilian casualties and that Gaza’s already fragile infrastructure was not unnecessarily targetted.

International critics of Israeli tactics during the seven-week conflict have argued that the army, the IDF, and the country’s other forces, responded disproportionately to rocket attacks from groups such as Hamas. This, they say, led to 2,220 Palestinians being killed, according to UN figures, the vast majority of them civilians.

http://www.tikkun.org/nextgen/fire-at-every-person-you-see-an-order-to-israeli-soldiers-in-gaza-last-summer

[Ken Burch]

1. More:

There were seven civilian deaths on the Israeli side of the border as a result of rockets fired from inside the Gaza Strip by militant groups. A total of 66 Israeli military personnel were killed. Those Palestinian militants firing rockets across the border could not possibly have known where they were going to land.

This latest report by Breaking the Silence comes not only from within Israel itself, but includes more than 100 testimonies from soldiers who took part in the campaign.

The testimonies include examples of the acts of individual soldiers, including the shooting dead of civilians where those providing evidence say a more measured approach could have been taken. Others talk of incidents where confusion in the midst of a military campaign led to lethal decisions being made when there were other courses of action. A large number of soldiers maintain that the way in which the war was conducted was reasonable, but have decided to speak out against particular decisions or practices.

More worryingly, the report which runs to 240 pages, also details policies and norms – some of which came directly from IDF high command, which Breaking the Silence claims are systematic and led explicitly to greater loss of life and more damage.

http://www.tikkun.org/nextgen/fire-at-every-person-you-see-an-order-to-israeli-soldiers-in-gaza-last-summer

[Ken Burch]

2. More:

“While the testimonies include pointed descriptions of inappropriate behavior by soldiers in the field, the more disturbing picture that arises from these testimonies reflects systematic policies that were dictated to IDF forces of all ranks and in all zones,” the report says.

“The guiding military principle of ‘minimum risk to our forces, even at the cost of harming innocent civilians,’ alongside efforts to deter and intimidate the Palestinians, led to massive and unprecedented harm to the population and the civilian infrastructure in the Gaza Strip. Policymakers could have predicted these results prior to the operation and were surely aware of them throughout.”

Chief among Breaking the Silence’s findings is that the IDF watered down the rules of engagement such that any person in a combat zone was considered an enemy threat.

“Many of the soldiers testified that the rules of engagement they were provided with before the ground incursion into Gaza were unclear and lenient. The soldiers were briefed by their commanders to fire at every person they identified in a combat zone, since the working assumption was that every person in the field was an enemy,” Breaking the Silence claims.

http://www.tikkun.org/nextgen/fire-at-every-person-you-see-an-order-to-israeli-soldiers-in-gaza-last-summer