FOR THE FIRST time in its history, the Israeli Military College has published very damaging statements and accounts by its own soldiers, describing their killing of innocent and mostly unarmed civilians and their wanton vandalism during Israel’s 22-day assault on the Gaza Strip. Israel launched its attack two days after Christmas and ended it two days before the inauguration of President Barack Obama. By the time it declared a unilateral cease-fire, more than 1,400 Palestinians were dead, including more than 440 children, 110 women, and 123 elderly and sick people, according to medical sources in Gaza. By comparison, 10 Israeli soldiers and three Israeli civilians died, four of the soldiers as a result of friendly fire. The Israeli soldiers’ personal statements and eyewitness accounts confirmed similar findings by human rights groups who interviewed civilians and eyewitnesses throughout Gaza. Many of those interviewed lost family, friends and neighbors, as well as farm animals, saw their homes, possessions and property reduced to rubble, and witnessed many war crimes committed during "Operation Cast Lead."..
[54614] |
Uruknet on Alexa
:: Segnala Uruknet agli amici. Clicka qui.
:: Invite your friends to Uruknet. Click here.
:: Segnalaci un articolo
:: Tell us of an article
:: If you find this site informative, please donate -
every donation helps us keep up with costs. Thanks.
:: If you find this site informative, please donate -
every donation helps us keep up with costs. Thanks.
|
|
Israel Rejects Own Soldiers’ Accounts of Gaza Atrocities
By Mohammed Omer
 |
A photograph in the March 20, 2009 edition of Haaretz shows a T-shirt printed at the request of an IDF soldier in the sniper unit reading, "1 shot 2 kills" (Haaretz.com).
May 27, 2009
FOR THE FIRST time in its history, the Israeli Military College has published very damaging statements and accounts by its own soldiers, describing their killing of innocent and mostly unarmed civilians and their wanton vandalism during Israel’s 22-day assault on the Gaza Strip. Israel launched its attack two days after Christmas and ended it two days before the inauguration of President Barack Obama.
By the time it declared a unilateral cease-fire, more than 1,400 Palestinians were dead, including more than 440 children, 110 women, and 123 elderly and sick people, according to medical sources in Gaza.
By comparison, 10 Israeli soldiers and three Israeli civilians died, four of the soldiers as a result of friendly fire.
The Israeli soldiers’ personal statements and eyewitness accounts confirmed similar findings by human rights groups who interviewed civilians and eyewitnesses throughout Gaza.
Many of those interviewed lost family, friends and neighbors, as well as farm animals, saw their homes, possessions and property reduced to rubble, and witnessed many war crimes committed during "Operation Cast Lead."
Among the accounts by graduates of the Yitzhak Rabin Pre-military Academy at Oranim Academic College and published in the academy’s newsletter, one that is particularly horrifying describes an IDF sniper killing a mother and her small children at close range after Israeli soldiers had suddenly ordered them to leave their home and run to safety.
The woman and two of her children—unarmed, frightened and nervous—allegedly were shot because they misunderstood the soldiers’ instructions about which side of the street to walk down.
In other words, they were shot for going left instead of right.
Another graduate described what he considered the "cold-blooded murder" of a Palestinian woman.
"The testimonies conveyed an atmosphere in which one feels entitled to use unrestricted force against Palestinians," academy director Dany Zamir told Israel public radio.
"The climate in general...I don’t know how to describe it.... the lives of Palestinians, let’s say, are much, much less important than the lives of our soldiers," an infantry squad leader is quoted as saying in the testimonies.
In another cited case, a commander ordered his troops to kill an elderly female civilian walking on a road, even though she was easily identifiable and clearly posed no immediate threat to the soldiers.
The testimonies, by combat pilots and infantry soldiers, also included allegations of the unnecessary destruction of Palestinian property and the ransacking and bulldozing of homes.
"We would throw everything out of the windows...refrigerators, plates, furniture. The order was to throw all of the house’s contents outside," a soldier said.
Investigation Closed
The Israeli military, however, quickly closed the investigation into the soldiers’ testimonies, calling the accounts inaccurate and stating: "The military police investigation found that the crucial components of their descriptions were based on hearsay and not supported by specific personal knowledge."
In a telephone interview, Michael Sfard, legal counselor for the Israeli human rights group Yesh Din, said, "Such a decision by the military court is one more crack that makes our moral structure more shaky and less solid—the more we have such cracks, the less we will be able to stand up for our values."
Meanwhile, the United Nations announced that South African Judge Richard Goldstone will head an international fact-finding mission into allegations of war crimes by Israeli forces and Palestinian militants in Gaza. The former war crimes prosecutor will head a four-member team whose mandate stems from a resolution adopted by the United Nations Human Rights Council.
Moshe Hanegbi, legal commentator for Israel public radio, argued that the investigation should not be conducted by the military, "as it would not be credible at a time when Israel is accused of war crimes, and officers could be tried abroad."
Describing such military inquiries as "white-washed investigations," Yesh Din’s Sfard said: "There is a need to create an independent and external investigation, with a professional body that has no links to the army."
A Yesh Din statement elaborated: "If these orders were given as described in the testimonies, then both the issuing of the orders and their implementation are criminal offenses. If Israel does not investigate its own offenses, other countries will have to."
Israeli as well as international human rights groups have criticized the military for failing to properly investigate violations of international laws of war, including the Geneva Conventions, in its assault on Gaza, despite compelling evidence of possible war crimes. This is nothing new, however.
"More than 90 percent of the complaints filed by Palestinian or Israeli human right organizations in the West Bank in regard to the conduct of Israeli soldiers in the West Bank against Palestinians end up with nothing," noted Sfard.
"The number of complaints is considerably lower than the number of events in which Palestinians are victims of the IDF’s brutality," he added. "Many Palestinians don’t believe in the system, so they don’t bother to complain."
Meanwhile, Amnesty International, USA has revealed that the U.S. delivered hundreds of tons of unspecified weapons to Israel on March 22—mere weeks after Israel had killed hundreds of civilians in Gaza. The new weapons shipment raises the question of whether President Obama would act to prevent further Israeli attacks "that may amount to war crimes."
This shipment may also be in violaton of regulations governing the sale of U.S. weapons to foreign nations, which are required to use them for defensive purposes only.
Amnesty International’s London-based International Secretariat has called on all governments to immediately suspend all arms shipments to Israel and Palestine in order to end the violence for which civilians have been bearing the brunt of the suffering for more than a century.
One Shot, Two Kills
The Israeli daily Haaretz disclosed that many Israeli soldiers wear T-shirts emblazoned with various images of "dead [Palestinian] babies, mothers weeping on their children’s graves, a gun aimed at a child and bombed-out mosques." Photographs of these T-shirts were widely posted on the Internet, creating much outrage and negative public comment. One sharpshooter’s T-shirt showed a very disturbing image of the crosshairs of a sniper rifle lens focused on a pregnant Arab woman’s stomach. The accompanying caption read, "1 shot, 2 kills."
Another shirt worn by infantry snipers featured the caption "Better use Durex" next to a picture of a dead Palestinian baby with his weeping mother beside him.
The Haaretz report quotes one Israeli soldier as explaining: "These are shirts for around the house, for jogging, in the army. Not for going out."
According to Sfard, however, it’s not important where the soldiers wear such T-shirts: "This is a keyhole to the mentality of how the soldiers are trained to think."
And act?
Award-winning journalist Mohammed Omer reports from the Gaza Strip, where he maintains the Web site <www.rafahtoday.org>. He can be reached at .
|
|
:: Article nr. 54614 sent on 28-may-2009 02:17 ECT
www.uruknet.info?p=54614
Link: www.wrmea.com/archives/May-June_2009/0905016.html
:: The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this website.
|
COMMENTS BY READERS OF URUKNET
The COMMENTs of our readers are the sole responsability of their authors, and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of URUKNET. If you believe that any COMMENT contains pornographic, racist or otherwise objectionable or offensive content, or if the COMMENT is contrary to law in any way, please let us know. Our legal representatives will review any and all complaints and, if any complaint is deemed to be accurate, the COMMENT will removed at once.
Comments must be pertinent to the article and must not exceed 5000 characters.
To publish long comments, send it to the our Editor, it can become an article.
Do not complain to the Editor if you do not agree with an article or with a comment: simply reply here below.
You can get the password to become a REGISTERED USER and POST YOUR COMMENTS by clicking HERE (needed only once forever).
Click HERE to post your own comment. Now, also users not registered can post their comments.
| Comment by jaques - 29 May 2009 - 09:57 [USER NOT REGISTERED] | We who try to maintain compassion and sensitiity in the face of relentless besti ality by our own politicians...you know, the ones who criticise everyone else wh o is not sucking away on the USA and giving it the big Monika sionist suck off a re appalled by Israel and its sycophants, like god's right hand man Washington's sionist "texan" utterly corrupt and irredeemable,Bush, France's lusting napoleon complex sionist avaricious sionist macho wimp narcissist Sarkozy, paranoic pushover sionist Merkel,so easily corrupted sionist Blair and the fawning "christian" pervert lying corrupt narcissistic sionist "man of dung" Howard ...all of whom are traitors to the decency of each of those countries we despise these people but are under ultimate control of supine military and bully boy "security services". Free countries are under the control Hitler had but today it is more "essential". The greatest fraud of all time, Israel, lives off the flesh and agony of the Jewish portion of the pogroms during WW11...a number which doesn't rate against others, merely adds to them, a number who were betrayed so often into Nazi hands by zionists in Palestine, Europe USA and Britain.
Israel is like a filth laden cockroach feedng on the maggot byproducts the Israe li zionist blowflies have blown into the Old Order Jewish carcases...feasting on them for money and power. Israel proves daily what a disgusting piece of sick d epraved mendacious and bestial government it is, living on stolen land, murderin g and torturing men women and children around the world but particularly in Palestine and turning any thing decent it touches to excrement. Established by the banking criminal de Rothschild, the Banker who by then owned through corrupt practice every major reserve bank and creates war for profit, and supported blantantly by the foul "murder inc" sionist criminal beast of America's deep underworld,Mayer Lansky, Israel was supported by the British Government it collaborated against with the Nazis to defeat for the Nazis. How much moire rotten can you get?..on both sides. It is just another establishing fact that shows all our governments are under zionist control...so you, all of you, are under sionist control.
Looking at that do you really think Israel's perverted Knesset...among them thos e who hate Palestinians but use them as prostitutes...others who assassinate dis senters..gives a toss about truth and decency? These are the "Buffaloe Bill's" o f Hannibal's dark world.
Israel is in denial not through fear but simply because from every fibre of its being it is a lie...from the creating of these opportunistic supposedly "Jewish" politicans in 740 AD through to this second it lives on lies, loves lies, spews out lies. Do you think perverts such as Netenyahu, Lieberman and the long list of sionist con men and women give a damn about justice and reality?...their reality lives in labrynthic sewer of sionist styxian lies.
Every government who goes along with them is equally corrupt,equally guilty of m urder and worse. Each is a part of the master plan, such as the governments of Britain, Spain, Australia, Washington,Europe. No wonder "Jesus wept" knowing tha t for decent people such a hell on earth would prevail and worse, implemented no t only by people claiming to "follow" him yet are the second worst kind of sionist,christian sionists, the worst being the filth that murdered the Czars and 60 million non jews in the time sionist de Rothschild ran Russia after his depraved beasts ,sionists such as Lenin Trotsky Stalin, to name some of the least perverted. Either wake up to the fact the whole world is under thrreat by the publishers of pieces of paper with ink and masonic symbols upon them or go and get some education, please and then react. |
|
[ Printable version
] | [ Send it to a friend ]
[ Contatto/Contact ] | [ Home Page ] | [Tutte le notizie/All news ]
|
|
Uruknet on Twitter
::
RSS updated to 2.0
:: English
:: Italiano
::
Uruknet for your mobile phone:
www.uruknet.mobi
The newsletter archive
|
:: If you find this site informative, please donate -
every donation helps us keep up with costs. Thanks.
|
:: All events
|
