Gaza rules: Kill 2 Palestinian women on cellphones in an orchard so Israeli soldiers face zero risk
Philip Weiss on May 4, 2015
General and former intelligence chief Amos Yadlin
The anonymous soldier testimonies from the 2014 Gaza onslaught released today by the Israeli veterans group Breaking the Silence (and reported in the Washington Post, the Independent, and Guardian)
suggest more madness than method in Israel’s overwhelming and
indiscriminate attacks in Gaza. “Fire at every person you see,” is the
Independent’s headline.
Underlying
the testimonies, though, are two new doctrines of war that the Israeli
military has adopted at the highest level in order to combat violent
Palestinian resistance: 1, zero risk to Israeli troops, 2, destruction
of entire neighborhoods as a form of deterrence and collective
punishment.
1.
The first rule of engagement is, When an Israeli soldier is in doubt
about any activity on the other side, pull the trigger; Israeli soldiers
want the risk to be on the Palestinians. This rule upends a principle
stated by Israeli authorities years ago (notably the philosopher Moshe Halbertal),
of ostensibly doing everything possible to avoid harm to civilians in
line with international law. Rather, it reflects thinking formulated by
philosopher Asa Kasher and former general and intelligence chief Amos Yadlin back in 2003,
arguing that because Israeli soldiers are also citizens of the state of
Israel, when Israel sends them into battle, the Israeli army owes them
protection more than it owes civilians of the enemy.
In these testimonies, Palestinian civilians aren’t really even civilians. As a lieutenant said:
There is this rigid dichotomy. There are those involved [Palestinians involved in the fighting] and those uninvolved, and that’s it. But the very fact that they’re described as ‘uninvolved’, rather than as civilians, and the desensitization to the surging number of dead on the Palestinian side – and it doesn’t matter whether they’re involved or not – the unfathomable number of dead on one of the sides, the unimaginable level of destruction, the way militant cells and people were regarded as targets and not as living beings – that’s something that troubles me. The discourse is racist
So
Israeli soldiers become civilians in terms of the protection afforded
them by the army. Israeli civilians are the top priority, then comes an
Israeli soldier, then after him comes a Palestinian civilian, and at the
bottom is the Palestinian militant. This goes against international
law.
2.
The second doctrine is the Dahiya doctrine, developed during the second
Lebanon war in the Beirut neighborhood of Dahiya, of bombing portions
of the enemy’s cities to ashes. This idea reflects an understanding of
asymmetrical war: We can’t really ever win the war, we can’t wipe out
the militants, but we can buy time between rounds of conflict by making
so much damage that it will cause them to think 20,000 times before they
pick a fight. So responding proportionately is a strategic error, we
have to bomb them so much as to create deterrence.
These
two doctrines together explain the Gaza operation. And they are rules
that by definition will kill a great number of civilians. Though Yehuda
Shaul of Breaking the Silence says that the civilian deaths were not
intentional, as such.
“We’re not talking about a situation where generals in command centers are plotting as the civilian death numbers are rising, but sadly we’re very far away from the official line where they say we did everything to reduce civilian casualties. Because anyone who gives these orders and anyone who sets these regulations cannot say that anymore, it’s just a blunt lie.”
Consider
the leaflets that the soldiers dropped on neighborhoods, and that the
Israeli military has said constituted sufficient warning to residents.
The leaflets gave a deadline for residents to leave, and had a map
showing where they could go. For instance, residents of Beit Lahiya in
northern Gaza were told to go to Jabaliya refugee camp.
After
that, the entire neighborhood of Beit Lahiya became an old-school
battlefield ala the second world war, where anything goes.
Innocent
people don’t exist. The area has to be “sterilized,” according to one
testimony. “There’s no such thing there as a person who is uninvolved.”
Another: “No one should be there at all. If there is [any Palestinian] there – they shouldn’t be.”
“After
the leaflets, Beit Lahiya is not a neighborhood any more,” says Yehuda
Shaul of Breaking the Silence. “We’re at war… Drop the leaflet, anyone
who is there is not ‘not involved,’ you shoot.
In
one of the most horrifying cases in the testimonies, Israeli soldiers
saw two women walking in an orchard in southern Gaza, 800 meters away
from troops. An officer decided they were scouts for militants.
The lookouts couldn’t see well so the commander sent a drone up to look from above, and the drone implicated them. It saw them with phones, talking, walking. They directed fire there, on those girls, and they were killed. After they were implicated, I had a feeling it was bullshit.
On what was the incrimination based? Breaking the Silence asked.
Scouts. “The [Palestinian girls] can surely see the tanks, and they can surely see the smoke rising from all the engineering work.” After that the commander told the tank commander to go scan that place, and three tanks went to check [the bodies]. They check the bodies, and it was two women, over age 30. The bodies of two women, and they were unarmed. He came back and we moved on, and they were listed as terrorists.
The
testimonies describe a pattern in which commanders authorized a large
radius of “collateral damage” when a target was fired on. As the
definition of what constituted an approved perimeter for a missile
strike was relaxed, artillery officers were able to adjust their targets
in such a manner that they could end up firing shells very close to
schools
An Air Force veteran described the loosening of restrictions:
[A]fter the APC in Shuja’iyya, (an incident in which seven IDF soldiers were killed when a rocket hit their armored personnel carrier) and when the brigade commander was killed… things weren’t done the same as they were before…There were many, many targets that [weren’t attacked] because they didn’t qualify under the firing policy, and then after Shujai’yya for example, suddenly some of those targets did get approved. The sort of problematic targets that were at a certain distance from some school – suddenly stuff like that did get approved
Shaul
says that Israel crossed lines it had not crossed before: “In 2002 in
Gaza during the second intifada, in order to fire one shell, a colonel
needed to approve it. In Operation Protective Edge [the 2014 operation]
you could have a 19-and-a-half-year-old sergeant who commands a tank firing dozens of shells a day and no one asks a question. It’s war.”
He
goes on, “What we understand is that the IDF has changed its way of
fighting, basically abandoned the ethical code without having any
conversation, without having any discussion. It’s a mad doctrine, and
the IDF didn’t adopt it formally. Even some people in the general staff
think it’s mad, but this is the way we fight.”
Today the IDF released a statement saying
that Breaking the Silence was irresponsible because it did not attempt
to discuss its findings with army command. Breaking the Silence then
released a letter from late March to the IDF in which it sought to share
the testimonies and get a response.
“What I’m describing, I know it sounds mad,” Shaul says. “And it is mad, and that’s why we’re so mad.”
About Philip Weiss
Philip Weiss is Founder and Co-Editor of Mondoweiss.net.
Other posts by Philip
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