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<h1 class="article-title">Israeli Soldier Leaks Accounts of
Revenge Attacks Against Civilians by Troops in Gaza</h1>
<div class="article-subtitledetails">
<span class="article-details">
<span class="article-detail"><img class="icon"
src="cid:part1.04080107.02040606@freedomarchives.org"
alt="author"> Tuesday July 29, 2014 12:49</span><span
class="article-detail"><img class="icon"
src="cid:part2.00070802.04050207@freedomarchives.org"
alt="author"> by Celine Hagbard -
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.imemc.org/article/68658">http://www.imemc.org/article/68658</a></span></span><a
href="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></div>
<blockquote class="article-intro">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”.</blockquote>
<p class="article">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.<br>
<br>
“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.<br>
<br>
“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. <br>
<br>
“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.”<br>
<br>
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.”<br>
<br>
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 <a
href="http://imemc.org/article/68646" target="_blank">UN
school</a> in Beit Hanoun, and another school was hit by an
Israeli strike on Monday.<br>
<br>
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."<br>
</p>
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<div class="article-related-link-relatedlink">Related Link(s): <a
href="https://www.facebook.com/eran.efrati.9?fref=nf"
title="https://www.facebook.com/eran.efrati.9?fref=nf">https://www.facebook.com/eran.efrati.9?fref=nf</a></div>
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