The world saw for itself how — for 22 days — the densely populated Gaza ghetto was bombarded by Israeli forces killing 1,400 Palestinians and injuring thousands more. But the Israelis have always claimed that the stark images flashed around the world were Palestinian propaganda and did not represent what was really happening. On Wednesday, however, came a report drawing on testimony from some of the soldiers who took part in the Gaza operation — and it proves that the Israeli government statements are lies.
Israel has always said that the onslaught by missiles, artillery, tanks and heavily armed troops was carefully targeted at “militants” and that every effort was made to minimize civilian casualties. The only time that ordinary Palestinians were caught up in the firing was when Palestinian fighters used their homes — or the UN facilities to which many civilians had fled for shelter — as positions from which to launch attacks on the military or indeed to launch additional rockets into Israel.
Now an Israeli human rights group, Breaking The Silence (BTS), has gathered eyewitness evidence from troops who were part of the Gaza incursion and this evidence shows that Tel Aviv's claims are fabrications. Some 22 soldiers who gave statements to BTS revealed that before the operation, they were briefed by their officers that their own safety came first. If there was ever any doubt about a Palestinian in their way, they were to fire and not worry about the consequences. Soldiers were led to believe that anyone in their sights was most likely a “militant.” This was reinforced by the tactic of dropping leaflets before an attack, warning civilians to get out of the targeted area. For ordinary Israeli soldiers attacking that part of Gaza, the logical conclusion was that there would be very few civilians in front of them.
This, however, ignored the terrible truth that Gaza is one of the most densely populated places on earth. Where did the Israeli authorities expect civilians to go? Where could they flee to? Hemmed in by barbed wire and Israeli patrols, there simply was nowhere for most civilians to find a safe refuge.
Therefore, even if there were any truth to Israeli claims that Israeli soldiers went out of their way to avoid killing innocent people, the stark reality is that you cannot shell, strafe and mortar a packed conurbation in which hundreds of thousands of people are trapped without killing hundreds of them — which is precisely what happened.
However, now we know that Israeli protests of carefully calculated proportional force were complete fabrications. This was a dying Likud government which sought, in its last days, to win re-election by seeking revenge on every single Gaza inhabitant for the evil of rocket attacks into Israel organized by a relatively small number of militants.
Israel has refused to cooperate with the UN Gaza inquiry which last week completed public hearings locally. Chief investigator Richard Goldstone should now seek to interview the 22 Israeli soldiers, not just about their orders but also about the use of civilians as human shields, before he requests formal responses to written questions he is sending to both Israel and Hamas.
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