Perhaps the most damning words though come from the testimonies of Israeli soldiers involved in Operation Cast Lead who describe instances of what they themselves call “cold blooded murder.” Israeli snipers are said to have shot a woman and her children who were just crossing the street, bulldozed a house with civilians inside and bombed a residential building after ordering Palestinian civilians to take refuge there. This morning the United Nations announced they had verified a story of Israeli soldiers using an unarmed Palestinian boy as a “human shield” to enter buildings where Hamas fighters were thought to be hiding.
One infantry squad leader, in a testimony published by the military academy of Israel’s Oranim College, summed up the military’s attitude this way: “the lives of Palestinians, let's say, are much, much less important than the lives of our soldiers.” Of course, under international law, occupying armies are required to do everything possible to limit civilian casualties, doing anything else can be considered a war crime in itself.
What’s perhaps even more disturbing than these reports though is that many Israeli soldiers seem to be proud of these atrocities. A popular item among IDF units are T-shirts that basically celebrate war crimes, like the one pictured – a drawing of an obviously pregnant Palestinian woman, a sniper’s bull’s eye over her belly with the slogan: “one shot, two kills.”The Israeli military, not surprisingly, was quick to condemn the stories. “I can say that the IDF is the most moral army in the world,” said Israel Defense Forces Chief Gabi Ashkenazi. He went on to say that any incidents like the ones described were “isolated.”
Not so, says United Nations special envoy Radhika Coomaraswamy, who visited Gaza as part of a UN investigation. She claims to have “hundreds” of verified accounts of Israeli atrocities.
In his statement the IDF’s Ashkenazi fell back to the excuse that Israel was fighting a terrorist organization (Hamas) that has no regard for the well-being of civilians – as if this justifies the IDF’s own disregard for civilians as well. Israeli troops who have spoken out say that they were told anyone left in Gaza City was a terrorist, since the IDF told all the civilians to flee, meaning anyone they saw was a fair target to be killed. Of course where the civilians in Gaza City were suppose to go given that Israel had sealed the Gaza’s borders and military actions were already underway throughout the entire Gaza Strip is a question that Israeli officials have never answered.
The large numbers of civilian casualties and widespread destruction in Gaza caused by Operation Cast Lead is an indication of one thing – the corrosive effects the 40+ years of occupation of the Palestinian Territories has had on Israeli society. One soldier, Amir Marmor, a 33-year-old military reservist, talked about the changes he had seen in his 12 years of service in the reserves. “This is very, very different from my usual experience,” Marmor said, “it was always an issue how to avoid causing civilian injuries,” adding that this time his commander told his squad to “shoot and don't worry about the consequences.”
Invariably when one people subjugate another, whether it’s under the banner of military occupation, colonialism, or any other title, the experience of oppressing the weak erodes the character and values of the occupier, H. G. Wells and George Orwell wrote last century about the effects of Empire on the British psyche. It’s a lesson the Israelis seem not to have learned.
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