[News] Israeli Soldier Leaks Accounts of Revenge Attacks Against Civilians by Troops in Gaza

[Anti-Imperialist News]

  Israeli Soldier Leaks Accounts of Revenge Attacks Against Civilians by
  Troops in Gaza

author Tuesday July 29, 2014 12:49author by Celine Hagbard - 
http://www.imemc.org/article/68658<http://www.imemc.org/report_posts?subject=Report%20post:%20Story%2068658%20with%20title:%20Israeli%20Soldier%20Leaks%20Accounts%20of%20Revenge%20Attacks%20Against%20Civilians%20by%20Troops%20in%20Gaza&message=Report%20post:%20Story%2068658%20with%20title:%20Israeli%20Soldier%20Leaks%20Accounts%20of%20Revenge%20Attacks%20Against%20Civilians%20by%20Troops%20in%20Gaza%0Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.imemc.org%2Findex.php%3Fobj_id%3D53%26story_id%3D68658%26%0A%0AEnter+your+reason+here+-+please+do+not+remove+the+above+link+as+it+will+allow+an+editor+to+easily+remove+the+offending+content>

    A member of the Israeli group 'Breaking the Silence' has published
    accounts of Israeli soldiers being authorized by their commanders to
    carry out revenge attacks against civilians in the Gaza Strip "to
    enable the soldiers to take out their frustrations and pain at
    losing their fellow soldiers".

Eran Efrati reports, "Soldiers in two different units inside Gaza leaked 
information about the murdering of Palestinians by sniper fire in 
Shuja'eyya neighborhood as punishment for the death of soldiers in their 
units. After the shooting on the Israeli armored personnel carriers, 
which killed seven soldiers of the Golani Brigade, the Israeli army 
carried out a massacre in Shuja'eyya neighborhood.

"A day after the massacre, many Palestinians came to search for their 
relatives and their families in the rubble. In one of the videos 
uploaded to YouTube, a young Palestinian man Salem Shammaly calls the 
names of his family and looking for them between the ruins when he is 
suddenly shot at in his chest and falls down. A few seconds after that, 
there are two additional shots from snipers into his body, killing him 
instantly.

"Since the video was released, there was no official response from the 
IDF spokesperson. Today I can report that the official command that was 
handed down to the soldiers in Shuja'eyya was to capture Palestinian 
homes as outposts. From these posts, the soldiers drew an imaginary red 
line, and amongst themselves decided to shoot to death anyone who 
crosses it. Anyone crossing the line was defined as a threat to their 
outposts, and was thus deemed a legitimate target. This was the official 
reasoning inside the units.

"I was told that the unofficial reason was to enable the soldiers to 
take out their frustrations and pain at losing their fellow soldiers 
(something that for years the IDF has not faced during its operations in 
Gaza and the West Bank), out on the Palestinian refugees in the 
neighborhood. Under the pretext of the so-called "security threat" 
soldiers were directed to carry out a pre-planned attack of revenge on 
Palestinian civilians."

Richard Silverstein, who works with the publication Tikkun Olam, wrote 
in response to Efrati's account, "What Efrati is revealing is an 
semi-officially sanctioned My Lai-type massacre. The man in green 
murdered in cold blood in the YouTube video wasn't killed by a lone 
gunman operating on his own. His murder was approved as an act of 
vengeance on all of Gaza. Let's remember that 120 Palestinians died that 
night in Shejaia. This was no accident. They weren't collateral damage. 
They were the targets."

The reports of authorized revenge attacks come in the midst of a massive 
bombing attack by the Israeli airforce Tuesday morning, an admission by 
the Israeli military that their missile hit a UN school 
<http://imemc.org/article/68646> in Beit Hanoun, and another school was 
hit by an Israeli strike on Monday.

In an article in the Israeli paper Yedioth Ahronoth on July 18th, as the 
ground invasion began, the paper reported, "The tanks, which serve as 
the heart of the assault force, received an order to open fire at 
anything that moved. The area and the targets are due to be seized by 
the morning hours. From here on, [the army] will start to clear the 
ground, in what could last for several days, depending on political 
developments."


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Related Link(s): https://www.facebook.com/eran.efrati.9?fref=nf
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