Senior officers punished over Gaza op

[[R_H]]

After the Gaza war soldiers testified that they had slaughtered civillians and that they had used Palestinians as human shields.

Link to those testimonies please?

Then there was that family who was killed by that sniper. All of those qualify as cold blooded murders

The sniper killing I'm aware of is the following. (pg.181, Paragraph 805, Goldstone Report)

A family is ordered to leave
their house. For reasons that remain unclear, probably a misunderstanding, the mother and two
children turn left instead of right after having walked between 100 and 200 metres from their
house. They thereby cross a “red line” established by the Israeli unit (of whose existence the
mother and children could have no knowledge). An Israeli marksman on the roof of the house
they had just left opens fire on the woman and her two children, killing them.

I'm not defending Hamas. It's just the people like R_H ignore every single action that the IDF does by saying "Well Hamas does it as well."

Where did I defend what the IDF did by arguing Hamas did the same thing? I haven't ignored the IDF's actions. After having read the article in the thread that bobalot linked to, I'm also of the opinion that there is a problem in the IDF when it comes to investigating their own.

Doesn't change the fact that the overwhelming majority of all the palestinians who died were non combatants or civillians, nor does it change the fact that soldiers who technically commited murder were let off the hook. When soldiers testified that they had killed people needlessly, improperly used white phosphorus, and used human shields, Israel dismissed it.

Please provide sources to casualty figures, please provide sources to Israeli use of human shields.

According to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, 1417 Palestinians died, 236 combatants, 255 police officers, 926 civilians (including 313 children and 116 women). According to the IDF, 1'166 Palestinians died, 709 of which were identified as Hamas operatives, 162 men of unknown affiliation and 295 non-combatants of which 89 were under the age of 16, and 49 of them women.

So, PCHR: 65.35% of dead are civilian, meanwhile, IDF: 25.30% of the dead are civilian (39.19% of dead are civilian if the 162 men are included as civilians). Quite a discrepancy between the two figures, isn't there?

You talk about the "poor pals" attitude? what of the "ohh those poor israelis" attitude. That's what R-H is demonstrating, and I find it irritating in the extreme. That's why I side with the Palestinians. The attitude that R-H displays makes me instinctively opposed to Israel.

If I'm demonstrating the "poor Israel" attitude, colour me surprised. I find the relentless criticism of Israel's actions in armed conflict (disproportionate response for example), while downplaying or even ignoring what Hamas is doing irritating.

Please, the conduct of Hamas has nothing to do with the debate. Please just answer the numerous cases where Israeli soldiers have commited crimes and not been punished?

The conduct of Hamas has everything to do with Operation Cast Lead, seeing how they were among the opponents of the IDF.

I'm interested to see what Hamas' and the IDF's respective responses to the Goldstone Report will entail.

[[R_H]]

in hindsight i did over generalize israel, but I still feel that they need to do a better job policing their soldiers.

The Mission found in the above incidents that the Israeli armed forces repeatedly opened
fire on civilians who were not taking part in the hostilities and who posed no threat to them.
These incidents indicate that the instructions given to the Israeli armed forces moving into Gaza
provided for a low threshold for the use of lethal fire against the civilian population. The Mission
found strong corroboration of this trend emerging from its fact-finding in the testimonies of
Israeli soldiers collected by the Israeli NGO Breaking the Silence and in the Protocol of the
Rabin Academy’s “Fighters’ Talk”. These testimonies suggest in particular that the instructions
given to the soldiers conveyed two “policies”. Both are an expression of the aim to eliminate as
far as possible any risk to the lives of the Israeli soldiers.
803. The first policy could be summarized, in the words of one of the soldiers: “if we see
something suspect and shoot, better hit an innocent than hesitate to target an enemy.” Another
soldier attributed the following instructions to his battalion commander: “If you are not sure –
shoot. If there is doubt then there is no doubt.” The first soldier summarized the briefing from the
battalion commander as follows “the enemy was hiding behind civilian population. […] if we
suspect someone, we should not give him the benefit of the doubt. Eventually, this could be an
enemy, even if it’s some old woman approaching the house. It could be an old woman carrying
an explosive charge.” A third soldier explained “you don’t only shoot when threatened. The
assumption is that you constantly feel threatened, so anything there threatens you, and you shoot.
No one actually said ‘shoot regardless’ or ‘shoot anything that moves.’ But we were not ordered
to open fire only if there was a real threat.”
444

804. The Mission notes that some soldiers stated that they agreed with the instructions to
“shoot in case of doubt.” One of them explained “this is the difference between urban warfare
and a limited confrontation. In urban warfare, anyone is your enemy. No innocents.”

Another
told of his profound discomfort with the policy and of how he and his comrades had attempted to
question their commander about it after a clearly harmless man was shot.
445
While they disagreed
about the legitimacy and morality of the policy, they had little doubt about the terms of the
instructions: each soldier and commander on the ground had to exercise judgement,
446
but the
policy was to shoot in case of doubt.

805. The second policy clearly emerging from the soldiers’ testimonies is explained by one of
the soldiers as follows: “One of the things in this procedure [the outpost procedure, which is
being applied in areas held by the Israeli armed forces after the Gaza ground invasion] is setting
red lines. It means that whoever crosses this limit is shot, no questions asked. […] Shoot to
kill.”
447
In one incident highly relevant to the cases investigated by the Mission because of
factual similarities, a soldier recounted an event he witnessed.
448
A family is ordered to leave
their house. For reasons that remain unclear, probably a misunderstanding, the mother and two
children turn left instead of right after having walked between 100 and 200 metres from their
house. They thereby cross a “red line” established by the Israeli unit (of whose existence the
mother and children could have no knowledge). An Israeli marksman on the roof of the house
they had just left opens fire on the woman and her two children, killing them. As the soldier
speaking at the Rabin Academy’s “Fighters’ Talk” a month later observes, “from our
perspective, he [the marksman] did his job according to the orders he was given”.


806. “Incessant” alerts about suicide bombers
449
meant that even civilians clearly identified by
the soldiers as carrying no arms were perceived as a threat as soon as they came within a certain
distance from the soldiers – a threat to be eliminated, also without warning fire, as a second
might be enough for the “suicide bomber” to get close enough to harm the soldiers.
807. The Mission notes that many of the persons interviewed in Gaza described incidents in
which they were, individually, as part of a group or in a vehicle, exposed to intense gunfire
from Israeli soldiers – but without being hit or injured. This was the case, for instance, of an
ambulance drivers attempting to drive into an area which the Israeli armed forces had decided he
should not enter.
450
In the Khuza’a case, after the lethal shooting of Rouhiyah al-Najjar and
wounding of Yasmine al-Najjar, the other women and children were exposed to fire from the
Israeli soldiers, which forced them to retreat to the houses they had been trying to leave.
451
These
incidents suggest that the Israeli armed forces made ample use of gunfire to “communicate” with
the civilian population, to issue injunctions to civilians not to walk or not to drive any further in a
certain direction or to immediately retreat to a building they were about to leave. The terrifying
effect this sort of non-verbal communication had on those at the receiving end is evident, as is
the likelihood of lethal consequences.
808. The Mission also read testimony from soldiers who recounted cases in which, although a
civilian had come within a distance from them which would have required opening fire under the
rules imparted to them, they decided not to shoot because they did not consider the civilian a
threat to them.

(pg.180-181 Goldstone Report)