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<h1><font size=4><b>Israeli army completes internal probe; declares ‘no
misconduct in
Gaza’</b></font></h1>
<img src="http://www.imemc.org/graphics/date.gif" width=12 height=10 alt="author">
</b></h1><font size=3> Monday March 30, 2009
22:53<img src="http://www.imemc.org/graphics/person.gif" width=14 height=12 alt="author">
by Saed Bannoura - IMEMC News
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<a href="http://www.imemc.org/article/59683" eudora="autourl">
http://www.imemc.org/article/59683<br><br>
</a></font>The Israeli military on Monday concluded their internal
investigation of alleged misconduct by soldiers in their invasion of the
Gaza Strip in January, finding that there was no misconduct by
soldiers. This report comes despite thousands of eyewitness
testimonies attesting to the misconduct, and video and photographic
evidence documenting the crimes.<br><br>
According to Military Advocate General Brigadier General Avichai
Mendelblit, the first-hand accounts published in Israeli papers recently
of Israeli soldiers describing conduct they had witnessed and
participated in were in fact “just rumors” – despite the fact that the
accounts came from the soldiers themselves.<br><br>
The army’s conclusion was that the testimonies "were based on
hearsay and not first-hand experience."<br><br>
The army has not investigated video-documented claims by the United
Nations, the International Committee of the Red Cross and Human Rights
Watch that Israeli soldiers used banned weapons on civilian populations
in Gaza, and has no plan to investigate these claims.<br><br>
A number of Israeli human rights groups, including B'Tselem, Yesh Din,
and Physicians for Human Rights, responded to the army’s conclusion with
a statement calling for an outside investigation.<br><br>
They stated that "the speedy closing of the investigation
immediately raises suspicions that [it] was merely the army's attempt to
wipe its hands of all blame for illegal activity." <br><br>
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