November 11, 2010

GAZA CITY (Ma'an) -- Israeli soldiers appear on camera cheering on the destruction of Palestinian houses in Gaza in a video that surfaced Thursday.

The video, shot with a mobile phone during Israel's winter attack on Gaza, shows soldiers laughing and exclaiming as they witness a series of explosions destroying three Palestinian houses. Sporadic gunfire is heard in the background.

After the first two houses are destroyed, one soldier is heard remarking, according to the English subtitles, "It's all documented. It's all on camera. What about the third house? Give me the third house please [laughs]."

Later, after the third explosion, the same soldier is heard saying, "There’s nothing like this [laughs.] Bye, Gaza, bye. Wow, dude, what a thing!"

"How small are we. We're so small compared to this," he says, as the camera pans around to show the soldiers lying on the ground as they witness this destruction.



The video was posted on Youtube by Israeli activist Assaf Kintzer, who obtained it from a soldier who was deployed in Gaza during the three-week attack on Gaza. The clip began to circulate on Israeli blogs on Thursday afternoon.

Some 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis died in the offensive in December 2008 and January 2009. A UN fact finding mission accused Israel in 2009 of committing war crimes during the invasion.

The soldiers in the clip are reported to be members of the Israeli army's Golani Brigade.

The emergence of the video follows a series of incidents in which materials posted on social networking websites revealed embarrassing behavior by Israeli soldiers. In August a scandal erupted after a soldier posted on Facebook photos of herself posing next to bound, blindfolded Palestinian detainees.