Burying Gaza: How Israel's Military Put Away the Oranim Revelations

Related Post: The Israeli Military and Gaza’s Civilians - Returning to The Oranim Transcripts

I was working yesternoon afternoon when the news came through, via the Jerusalem Post, that the Israeli military had categorically dismissed accounts --- all but two from the graduates of military course at Oranim College ---of the abuse and killing of civilians in the Gaza War.

I was struck by how quickly the Israel Defense Forces threw out the claims, noted by nine Israeli human rights groups: ""The speedy closing of the investigation immediately raises suspicions that the very opening of this investigation was merely the army's attempt to wipe its hands of all blame for illegal activity during Operation Cast Lead."

Even more blatant, however, was the disconnect between the military's "findings" and the actual statements of the Oranim soldiers.

For example, the Post noted the IDF's conclusion report on "Aviv", who "claimed to have known of a soldier who had been given orders to fire at an elderly Palestinian woman. During his interrogation, Aviv admitted he had never witnessed such an incident and that he'd based his statement on a rumor he had heard."

In fact, it is unclear from the original testimony "Aviv" never claimed in his testimony, reprinted in the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz and on this website, whether he witnessed the order by a company commander to a sniper squad to kill the woman, who was walking in a prohibited area. It is clear, however, that he was under orders to use deadly force to ensure "that we wouldn’t get hurt and they wouldn’t fire on us":

[We were] to go into a house. We were supposed to go in with an armored personnel carrier..., to burst through the lower door, to start shooting inside....From above they said it was permissible, because anyone who remained in the sector and inside Gaza City was in effect condemned, a terrorist, because they hadn’t fled.

Significantly (and unnoted in the Post article, "Zvi" follows the testimony of "Aviv" with the clarification that this was "force protection" and not the deliberate murder of civilians:

Aviv’s descriptions are accurate, but it’s possible to understand where this is coming from. And that woman, you don’t know whether she’s … She wasn’t supposed to be there, because there were announcements and there were bombings. Logic says she shouldn’t be there. The way you describe it, as murder in cold blood, that isn’t right.

Put bluntly, the Israeli military invaded one of the most densely-populated areas in the world and marked off parts of it as "prohibited", with shoot-to-kill orders against anyone who trespassed. The Israeli military could have stated this: inevitably civilians were going to die in a war.

Even this, however, could not be admitted. Instead, the Oranim testimony had to be discredited: "A claim made by a different soldier, Ram, who had supposedly been ordered to open fire at a woman and two children, was also found by the probe to be false."

This was a blatant distortion of the testimony of "Ram", who made clear that it was not he but a sharpshooter who killed the woman and children after a breakdown in communication:

There was a house with a family inside. Entry was relatively calm. We didn’t open fire, we just yelled at everyone to come down. We put them in a room and then left the house and entered it from a different lot. A few days after we went in, there was an order to release the family. They had set up positions upstairs. There was a sharpshooters’ position on the roof. The platoon commander let the family go and told them to go to the right. One mother and her two children didn’t understand and went to the left, but they forgot to tell the sharpshooter on the roof they had let them go, and it was was okay and he should hold his fire and he … he did what he was supposed to, like he was following his orders.

In the Gaza War of public opinion, Israel's effort was to ensure that it always held the higher moral ground. That, however, is difficult when Israel and not Hamas had overwhelming force, and that force --- inevitably --- was being used against civilians. In recent weeks, reports by bodies such as the United Nations and Human Rights Watch had detailed the humanitarian costs, but the Oranim revelations were even more damaging. They came from within Israeli ranks.

So Tel Aviv had to step up its "information" campaign. Reporters were summoned to a briefing by an armoured unit commander, Colonel Roi Elkabets, to give "examples of what he said were the dilemmas they faced". Ethan Bronner of The New York Times wrote accordingly, "Officers are stepping forward, some at the urging of the top command, others on their own, offering numerous accounts of having held their fire out of concern for civilians, helping Palestinians in need and punishing improper soldier behavior".

And the campaign, far more effectively than the military invasion of Gaza, worked. Today's British and American media faithfully cite the IDF's findings on Oranim, "The Israeli military on Monday rejected allegations that its soldiers committed atrocities against Palestinians in Gaza" (CNN); "Brig. Gen. Avichai Mendelblit, the IDF's advocate general, found no evidence to support the most serious accusations, including alleged instances in which civilians were shot without cause" (Washington Post); "The military police found that the crucial components of their descriptions were based on hearsay and not supported by specific personal knowledge" (New York Times).

None of those reporters referred to the original Oranim transcripts.

War is about winning, not about the truth. So one can set aside last week's commentary by Larry Derfner, ironically in the same Jerusalem Post that moved quickly to put the military's "findings2:

We can refuse to think about this, we can tell ourselves that Oranim is a hotbed of left-wingers, we can bury this so the anti-Semites and The Hague don't use it against us. Or we can admit the truth and decide that we have to change.

We can be loyal to Israel's image. Or we can be loyal to our sons.

The Israeli Military and Gaza's Civilians: Returning to The Oranim Transcripts

Related Post: Burying Gaza - How Israel’s Military Put Away the Oranim Revelations

"In effect, we were supposed to go up floor by floor, and any person we identified - we were supposed to shoot."

The Israeli military has now completed its investigation of the claims made by graduates of the Yitzhak Rabin pre-military preparatory program, held at Oranim Academic College, of abuses by the Israeli Defense Forces during Operation Cast Lead in Gaza. According to the Jerusalem Post:

The Military Police completed its official investigation into the accounts on Monday and concluded that they were categorically false and based on rumors....The probe also concluded that the stories of the soldiers who participated in the conference were purposely exaggerated and made extreme, in order to make a point to the participants at the conference. The IDF Advocate-General Brig.-Gen. Avihai Mandelblit decided to close the case in the wake of the findings.

We will comment on the "investigation" in a separate blog. For the moment, here are the extracts from the soldiers' accounts, as they appeared in the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz:

Danny Zamir: "I don't intend for us to evaluate the achievements and the diplomatic-political significance of Operation Cast Lead this evening, nor need we deal with the systemic military aspect [of it]. However, discussion is necessary because this was, all told, an exceptional war action in terms of the history of the IDF, which has set new limits for the army's ethical code and that of the State of Israel as a whole.

"This is an action that sowed massive destruction among civilians. It is not certain that it was possible do have done it differently, but ultimately we have emerged from this operation and are not facing real paralysis from the Qassams. It is very possible that we will repeat such an operation on a larger scale in the years to come, because the problem in the Gaza Strip is not simple and it is not at all certain that it has been solved. What we want this evening is to hear from the fighters."

Aviv: "I am squad commander of a company that is still in training, from the Givati Brigade. We went into a neighborhood in the southern part of Gaza City. Altogether, this is a special experience. In the course of the training, you wait for the day you will go into Gaza, and in the end it isn't really like they say it is. It's more like, you come, you take over a house, you kick the tenants out and you move in. We stayed in a house for something like a week.

"Toward the end of the operation there was a plan to go into a very densely populated area inside Gaza City itself. In the briefings they started to talk to us about orders for opening fire inside the city, because as you know they used a huge amount of firepower and killed a huge number of people along the way, so that we wouldn't get hurt and they wouldn't fire on us.

"At first the specified action was to go into a house. We were supposed to go in with an armored personnel carrier called an Achzarit [literally, Cruel] to burst through the lower door, to start shooting inside and then ... I call this murder ... in effect, we were supposed to go up floor by floor, and any person we identified - we were supposed to shoot. I initially asked myself: Where is the logic in this?

"From above they said it was permissible, because anyone who remained in the sector and inside Gaza City was in effect condemned, a terrorist, because they hadn't fled. I didn't really understand: On the one hand they don't really have anywhere to flee to, but on the other hand they're telling us they hadn't fled so it's their fault ... This also scared me a bit. I tried to exert some influence, insofar as is possible from within my subordinate position, to change this. In the end the specification involved going into a house, operating megaphones and telling [the tenants]: 'Come on, everyone get out, you have five minutes, leave the house, anyone who doesn't get out gets killed.'

"I went to our soldiers and said, 'The order has changed. We go into the house, they have five minutes to escape, we check each person who goes out individually to see that he has no weapons, and then we start going into the house floor by floor to clean it out ... This means going into the house, opening fire at everything that moves , throwing a grenade, all those things. And then there was a very annoying moment. One of my soldiers came to me and asked, 'Why?' I said, 'What isn't clear? We don't want to kill innocent civilians.' He goes, 'Yeah? Anyone who's in there is a terrorist, that's a known fact.' I said, 'Do you think the people there will really run away? No one will run away.' He says, 'That's clear,' and then his buddies join in: 'We need to murder any person who's in there. Yeah, any person who's in Gaza is a terrorist,' and all the other things that they stuff our heads with, in the media.

"And then I try to explain to the guy that not everyone who is in there is a terrorist, and that after he kills, say, three children and four mothers, we'll go upstairs and kill another 20 or so people. And in the end it turns out that [there are] eight floors times five apartments on a floor - something like a minimum of 40 or 50 families that you murder. I tried to explain why we had to let them leave, and only then go into the houses. It didn't really help. This is really frustrating, to see that they understand that inside Gaza you are allowed to do anything you want, to break down doors of houses for no reason other than it's cool.

"You do not get the impression from the officers that there is any logic to it, but they won't say anything. To write 'death to the Arabs' on the walls, to take family pictures and spit on them, just because you can. I think this is the main thing in understanding how much the IDF has fallen in the realm of ethics, really. It's what I'll remember the most."

"One of our officers, a company commander, saw someone coming on some road, a woman, an old woman. She was walking along pretty far away, but close enough so you could take out someone you saw there. If she were suspicious, not suspicious - I don't know. In the end, he sent people up to the roof, to take her out with their weapons. From the description of this story, I simply felt it was murder in cold blood."

Zamir: "I don't understand. Why did he shoot her?"

Aviv: "That's what is so nice, supposedly, about Gaza: You see a person on a road, walking along a path. He doesn't have to be with a weapon, you don't have to identify him with anything and you can just shoot him. With us it was an old woman, on whom I didn't see any weapon. The order was to take the person out, that woman, the moment you see her."

Zvi: "Aviv's descriptions are accurate, but it's possible to understand where this is coming from. And that woman, you don't know whether she's ... She wasn't supposed to be there, because there were announcements and there were bombings. Logic says she shouldn't be there. The way you describe it, as murder in cold blood, that isn't right. It's known that they have lookouts and that sort of thing."

Gilad: "Even before we went in, the battalion commander made it clear to everyone that a very important lesson from the Second Lebanon War was the way the IDF goes in - with a lot of fire. The intention was to protect soldiers' lives by means of firepower. In the operation the IDF's losses really were light and the price was that a lot of Palestinians got killed."

Ram: "I serve in an operations company in the Givati Brigade. After we'd gone into the first houses, there was a house with a family inside. Entry was relatively calm. We didn't open fire, we just yelled at everyone to come down. We put them in a room and then left the house and entered it from a different lot. A few days after we went in, there was an order to release the family. They had set up positions upstairs. There was a sharpshooters' position on the roof. The platoon commander let the family go and told them to go to the right. One mother and her two children didn't understand and went to the left, but they forgot to tell the sharpshooter on the roof they had let them go, and it was was okay and he should hold his fire and he ... he did what he was supposed to, like he was following his orders."

Question from the audience: "At what range was this?"

Ram: "Between 100 and 200 meters, something like that. They had also came out of the house that he was on the roof of, they had advanced a bit and suddenly he saw then, people moving around in an area where they were forbidden to move around. I don't think he felt too bad about it, because after all, as far as he was concerned, he did his job according to the orders he was given. And the atmosphere in general, from what I understood from most of my men who I talked to ... I don't know how to describe it .... The lives of Palestinians, let's say, is something very, very less important than the lives of our soldiers. So as far as they are concerned they can justify it that way."

Yuval Friedman (chief instructor at the Rabin program): "Wasn't there a standing order to request permission to open fire?"

Ram: "No. It exists, beyond a certain line. The idea is that you are afraid that they are going to escape from you. If a terrorist is approaching and he is too close, he could blow up the house or something like that."

Zamir: "After a killing like that, by mistake, do they do some sort of investigation in the IDF? Do they look into how they could have corrected it?"

Ram: "They haven't come from the Military Police's investigative unit yet. There hasn't been any ... For all incidents, there are individual investigations and general examinations, of all of the conduct of the war. But they haven't focused on this specifically."

Moshe: "The attitude is very simple: It isn't pleasant to say so, but no one cares at all. We aren't investigating this. This is what happens during fighting and this is what happens during routine security."

Ram: "What I do remember in particular at the beginning is the feeling of almost a religious mission. My sergeant is a student at a hesder yeshiva [a program that combines religious study and military service]. Before we went in, he assembled the whole platoon and led the prayer for those going into battle. A brigade rabbi was there, who afterward came into Gaza and went around patting us on the shoulder and encouraging us, and praying with people. And also when we were inside they sent in those booklets, full of Psalms, a ton of Psalms. I think that at least in the house I was in for a week, we could have filled a room with the Psalms they sent us, and other booklets like that.

"There was a huge gap between what the Education Corps sent out and what the IDF rabbinate sent out. The Education Corps published a pamphlet for commanders - something about the history of Israel's fighting in Gaza from 1948 to the present. The rabbinate brought in a lot of booklets and articles, and ... their message was very clear: We are the Jewish people, we came to this land by a miracle, God brought us back to this land and now we need to fight to expel the gentiles who are interfering with our conquest of this holy land. This was the main message, and the whole sense many soldiers had in this operation was of a religious war. From my position as a commander and 'explainer,' I attempted to talk about the politics - the streams in Palestinian society, about how not everyone who is in Gaza is Hamas, and not every inhabitant wants to vanquish us. I wanted to explain to the soldiers that this war is not a war for the sanctification of the holy name, but rather one to stop the Qassams."

Zamir: "I would like to ask the pilots who are here, Gideon and Yonatan, to tell us a little about their perspective. As an infantryman, this has always interested me. How does it feel when you bomb a city like that?"

Gideon: "First of all, about what you have said concerning the crazy amounts of firepower: Right in the first foray in the fighting, the quantities were very impressive, very large, and this is mainly what sent all the Hamasniks into hiding in the deepest shelters and kept them from showing their faces until some two weeks after the fighting.

"In general the way that it works for us, just so you will understand the differences a bit, is that at night I would come to the squadron, do one foray in Gaza and go home to sleep. I go home to sleep in Tel Aviv, in my warm bed. I'm not stuck in a bed in the home of a Palestinian family, so life is a little better.

"When I'm with the squadron, I don't see a terrorist who is launching a Qassam and then decide to fly out to get him. There is a whole system that supports us, that serves as eyes, ears and intelligence for every plane that takes off, and creates more and more targets in real-time, of one level of legitimacy or another. In any case, I try to believe that these are targets [determined according to] the highest possible level of legitimacy.

"They dropped leaflets over Gaza and would sometimes fire a missile from a helicopter into the corner of some house, just to shake up the house a bit so everyone inside would flee. These things worked. The families came out, and really people [i.e., soldiers] did enter houses that were pretty empty, at least of innocent civilians. From this perspective it works.

"In any case, I arrive at the squadron, I get a target with a description and coordinates, and basically just make sure it isn't within the line of our forces. I look at the picture of the house I am suppose to attack, I see that it matches reality, I take off, I push the button and the bomb takes itself exactly to within one meter of the target itself."

Zamir: "Among the pilots, is there also talk or thoughts of remorse? For example, I was terribly surprised by the enthusiasm surrounding the killing of the Gaza traffic police on the first day of the operation: They took out 180 traffic cops. As a pilot, I would have questioned that."

Gideon: "There are two parts to this. Tactically speaking, you call them 'police.' In any case, they are armed and belong to Hamas ... During better times, they take Fatah people and throw them off the roofs and see what happens.

"With regard to the thoughts, you sit with the squadron and there are lots of discussions about the value-related significance of the fighting, about what we are doing; there is a lot to talk about. From the moment you start the plane's engine until the moment you turn it off, all of your thoughts, all of your concentration and all of your attention are on the mission you have to carry out. If you have an unjustified doubt, you're liable to cause a far greater screw-up and knock down a school with 40 children. If the building I hit isn't the one I am supposed to hit, but rather a house with our guys inside - the price of the mistake is very, very high."

Question from the audience: "Was there anyone in the squadron who didn't push the button, who thought twice?"

Gideon: "That question should be addressed to those involved in the helicopter operation, or to the guys who see what they do. With the weapons I used, my ability to make a decision that contradicts what they told me up to that point is zero. I dispatch the bomb from a range within which I can see the entire Gaza Strip. I also see Haifa, I also see Sinai, but it's more or less the same. It's from really far away."

Yossi: "I am a platoon sergeant in an operations company of the Paratroops Brigade. We were in a house and discovered a family inside that wasn't supposed to be there. We assembled them all in the basement, posted two guards at all times and made sure they didn't make any trouble. Gradually, the emotional distance between us broke down - we had cigarettes with them, we drank coffee with them, we talked about the meaning of life and the fighting in Gaza. After very many conversations the owner of the house, a man of 70-plus, was saying it's good we are in Gaza and it's good that the IDF is doing what it is doing.

"The next day we sent the owner of the house and his son, a man of 40 or 50, for questioning. The day after that, we received an answer: We found out that both are political activists in Hamas. That was a little annoying - that they tell you how fine it is that you're here and good for you and blah-blah-blah, and then you find out that they were lying to your face the whole time.

"What annoyed me was that in the end, after we understood that the members of this family weren't exactly our good friends and they pretty much deserved to be forcibly ejected from there, my platoon commander suggested that when we left the house, we should clean up all the stuff, pick up and collect all the garbage in bags, sweep and wash the floor, fold up the blankets we used, make a pile of the mattresses and put them back on the beds."

Zamir: "What do you mean? Didn't every IDF unit that left a house do that?"

Yossi: "No. Not at all. On the contrary: In most of the houses graffiti was left behind and things like that."

Zamir: "That's simply behaving like animals."

Yossi: "You aren't supposed to be concentrating on folding blankets when you're being shot at."

Zamir: "I haven't heard all that much about you being shot at. It's not that I'm complaining, but if you've spent a week in a home, clean up your filth."

Aviv: "We got an order one day: All of the equipment, all of the furniture - just clean out the whole house. We threw everything, everything, out of the windows to make room. The entire contents of the house went flying out the windows."

Yossi: "There was one day when a Katyusha, a Grad, landed in Be'er Sheva and a mother and her baby were moderately to seriously injured. They were neighbors of one of my soldiers. We heard the whole story on the radio, and he didn't take it lightly - that his neighbors were seriously hurt. So the guy was a bit antsy, and you can understand him. To tell a person like that, 'Come on, let's wash the floor of the house of a political activist in Hamas, who has just fired a Katyusha at your neighbors that has amputated one of their legs' - this isn't easy to do, especially if you don't agree with it at all. When my platoon commander said, 'Okay, tell everyone to fold up blankets and pile up mattresses,' it wasn't easy for me to take. There was lot of shouting. In the end I was convinced and realized it really was the right thing to do. Today I appreciate and even admire him, the platoon commander, for what happened there. In the end I don't think that any army, the Syrian army, the Afghani army, would wash the floor of its enemy's houses, and it certainly wouldn't fold blankets and put them back in the closets."

Zamir: "I think it would be important for parents to sit here and hear this discussion. I think it would be an instructive discussion, and also very dismaying and depressing. You are describing an army with very low value norms, that's the truth ... I am not judging you and I am not complaining about you. I'm just reflecting what I'm feeling after hearing your stories. I wasn't in Gaza, and I assume that among reserve soldiers the level of restraint and control is higher, but I think that all in all, you are reflecting and describing the kind of situation we were in.

"After the Six-Day War, when people came back from the fighting, they sat in circles and described what they had been through. For many years the people who did this were said to be 'shooting and crying.' In 1983, when we came back from the Lebanon War, the same things were said about us. We need to think about the events we have been through. We need to grapple with them also, in terms of establishing a standard or different norms.

"It is quite possible that Hamas and the Syrian army would behave differently from me. The point is that we aren't Hamas and we aren't the Syrian army or the Egyptian army, and if clerics are anointing us with oil and sticking holy books in our hands, and if the soldiers in these units aren't representative of the whole spectrum in the Jewish people, but rather of certain segments of the population - what are we expecting? To whom are we complaining?

"As reservists we don't take relate seriously to the orders of the regional brigades. We let the old people go through and we let families go through. Why kill people when it's clear to you that they are civilians? Which aspect of Israel's security will be harmed, who will be harmed? Exercise judgment, be human."

A Modest Proposal: Why Hamas May Move Towards a Settlement with Israel

More than two months after the unilateral ceasefires in the Gaza War, there has been little progress in discussions on Israel and Palestine. Not only have unity talks between Fatah and Hamas failed to reach a conclusion, but the Israeli-Hamas talks on a prisoner exchange have also been fruitless.

So what's the hold-up? Self-confidence. Hamas self-confidence.

According to all measurements, Hamas's popularity has been increasing, even in the West Bank, since the end of the war. Surviving the border blockade of Gaza and the heavy bombardments of Operation Cast Lead Hamas has strengthened its position in Gaza, as it has put out a constant anti-Fatah rhetoric.

In the unity talks to establish the pre-conditions for an election to form a unity government, the Palestinian Authority (dominated by Fatah) has been insisting on the principles of the Quartet of the US/UN/EU/Russia. These call for Hamas to renounce terrorism, recognise Israel, and abide by the 2005 agreement between Tel Aviv and the PA. Hamas does not and cannot accept this for the time being.

Despite its stronger position, Hamas is walking on a thin and fragile tightrope: it must either accept the Quartet's conditions and work in partnership with Fatah, or it will be excluded from the political arena and be increasingly marginalised. If the Obama Administration's regional policies move the new Israeli Government, because of deepening economic crisis or a resurgence in perception of Israeli "security" in US domestic politics, Hamas can lose everything it has now.

Hamas is putting its bargaining power on the line. It may get more concessions from Israel at the behest of the US over the course of time. However, even this will never allow Hamas to sustain its uncompromising stance against recognition of Israel and acceptance of the 2005 agreements.

What does this mean? Hamas officials, who are aware of this dilemma, will not insist on political principles that can never be fulfilled. As they gain more of a role in a Palestinian Government, encouraged by their showing in the next elections, they are going to recognize Israel.

This will probably take years. At first, a long-term truce (hudna) based on pre-1967 borders and some economic, political, environmental, and security cooperation will be established. That in turn may establish the platform for a long-standing peace agreement in the following years.

Those who are sceptical should look back to early 2006, just before Hamas's triumph in the Gaza elections. On 4 March, Hamas leader Moussa Abu Marzouk stated that recognition of Israel would be a rejection of the rights of Palestinians, and other officials claimed during the election campaign that Fatah's 16 years of peace talks with Israel were a waste of time. However, another top official, Mahmoud al-Zahar told CNN in January that a long-term truce was possible if Israel withdrew to pre-1967 borders and released Palestinian prisoners. T

Three years later, Hamas spokesman Ayman Taha has said that the organization is unwilling to recognize Israel and to accept the agreements signed by the PA. Yet, as it manoeuvres in negotiations in Cairo and with Tel Aviv, Hamas has to consider if that position will jeopardise its political future.

In 2006, the US would not recognise Hamas' victory in Gazan elections because it believed that the organisation would be reinforced in its refusal to accept any relationship with Israel. Three years later, Hamas can defy this prediction:  establishing and consolidating its gains in a Palestinian Parliament and possibly a Presidency, the Gazan leadership could decide to come in from the political cold. The process would take time and careful language, but acceptance of the Quartet's conditions and a unity government in Palestine are possible. And so, eventually, is a regional peace based on pre-1967 borders with Israel.

Flashback: How Israel Denied Civilian Casualties in Gaza

Related Post: UN Report - Israel Violations of Gazan Human Rights “Too Numerous to Count”

As yet more reports, this time from Israeli soldiers and from the United Nations Human Rights Council, document the extent of Israeli abuses and killing of Gazan civilians, Enduring America takes a look back at the Israeli explanations --- and denials --- during the war:

On 27 December, Israel began bombing the 360 square kilometres of Gaza, in which 1.4 million Palestinians live. A day later, On 28 December, 2008, Tim Marshall of Sky News interviewed Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpUslPq_GGc[/youtube]

Tim Marshall: “What concern the outside world it seems most of all is the civilian deaths. Now the death toll is approaching 300. Approximately a third to be civilians.”

Livni: “Not civilians!”

Tim Marshall: “Hamas is saying maybe 180 of its men of being killed. That leaves about a third of civilians. You do not accept of these figures?”

Livni: “We do not accept these figures and this is not only the values of the international community. These are our values as well. We are targeting Hamas, we are trying to avoid any kind of civilian casualties. Before the operation we called all the population which lives nearby Hamas headquarters to leave. We are doing everything in order to avoid or minimize civil casualties but a war is a war and these things can happen, this is not our intention but we can not avoid completely any kind of civilian casualties. But the possibility for this, lies on the Hamas shoulders.”

Almost a month later, Yigal Palmor, the Israeli Foreign Ministry Spokesman, claimed there was no evidence to support claims that white phosphorus bomb shells were illegally fired near civilians.

Subsequent reports by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and foreign journalists have documented evidence of the use of white phosphorous in crowded residential areas. The United Nations said that its headquarters were hit by three white phosphorus shells during the Israeli operation.

Israeli officials have fallen back on the claim of a "legal" use of white phosphorous on the battlefield. In 2005 spokesman Peter Kraiser told the BBC:

It's not forbidden by the CWC [Chemical Weapons Convention] if it is used within the context of a military application which does not require or does not intend to use the toxic properties of white phosphorus. White phosphorus is normally used to produce smoke, to camouflage movement. If that is the purpose for which the white phosphorus is used, then that is considered under the Convention legitimate use.

There's another part of Kraiser's explanation, however, which does not sit easily with the Israeli invasion of Gaza more than three years later:

If on the other hand the toxic properties of white phosphorus, the caustic properties, are specifically intended to be used as a weapon, that of course is prohibited, because the way the Convention is structured or the way it is in fact applied, any chemicals used against humans or animals that cause harm or death through the toxic properties of the chemical are considered chemical weapons.

In Gaza, where approximately 4000 people are jammed into each square kilmetre, no one can talk about “minimizing civilian casualties". The worst thing in this case is that, given the geographical and demographical data, even a 5 year-old child can tell you that phosphorus bombs will not only kill combatants/terrorists but also will take lives of dozens of women, children, and elderly people in the midst of crowded buildings located on narrow streets.

There is no 'but" after the revelation of innocents lives taken by disproportionate and illegal military operations. There is no escape with the hard-nosed declaration “war is war".

The Oranim Revelations: The Israeli Military's Killing of Civilians in Gaza

This week, the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz featured the testimony of Israeli soldiers detailing the killing of civilians and the destruction of their property during the Gaza War. The soldiers, graduates of the Yitzhak Rabin pre-military preparatory course at Oranim Academic College,  made their statements on 13 February, and they were published in the newsletter for the course's graduates.

On Thursday Israel's military advocate general ordered the Israel Defense Forces to launch two official inquiries into the soldiers' testimonies.

Minister of Defense Ehud Barak commented, ""We have the most moral army in the world."

Israeli Defence Forces in Gaza: Killing civilians, vandalism, and lax rules of engagement
Amos Harel
18 March 2009

During Operation Cast Lead, Israeli forces killed Palestinian civilians under permissive rules of engagement and intentionally destroyed their property, say soldiers who fought in the offensive.

The soldiers are graduates of the Yitzhak Rabin pre-military preparatory course at Oranim Academic College in Tivon. Some of their statements made on Feb. 13 will appear Thursday and Friday in Haaretz. Dozens of graduates of the course who took part in the discussion fought in the Gaza operation.

The speakers included combat pilots and infantry soldiers. Their testimony runs counter to the Israel Defense Forces' claims that Israeli troops observed a high level of moral behavior during the operation. The session's transcript was published this week in the newsletter for the course's graduates.

The testimonies include a description by an infantry squad leader of an incident where an IDF sharpshooter mistakenly shot a Palestinian mother and her two children. "There was a house with a family inside .... We put them in a room. Later we left the house and another platoon entered it, and a few days after that there was an order to release the family. They had set up positions upstairs. There was a sniper position on the roof," the soldier said.

"The platoon commander let the family go and told them to go to the right. One mother and her two children didn't understand and went to the left, but they forgot to tell the sharpshooter on the roof they had let them go and it was okay, and he should hold his fire and he ... he did what he was supposed to, like he was following his orders."

According to the squad leader: "The sharpshooter saw a woman and children approaching him, closer than the lines he was told no one should pass. He shot them straight away. In any case, what happened is that in the end he killed them.

"I don't think he felt too bad about it, because after all, as far as he was concerned, he did his job according to the orders he was given. And the atmosphere in general, from what I understood from most of my men who I talked to ... I don't know how to describe it .... The lives of Palestinians, let's say, is something very, very less important than the lives of our soldiers. So as far as they are concerned they can justify it that way," he said.

Another squad leader from the same brigade told of an incident where the company commander ordered that an elderly Palestinian woman be shot and killed; she was walking on a road about 100 meters from a house the company had commandeered.

The squad leader said he argued with his commander over the permissive rules of engagement that allowed the clearing out of houses by shooting without warning the residents beforehand. After the orders were changed, the squad leader's soldiers complained that "we should kill everyone there [in the center of Gaza]. Everyone there is a terrorist."

The squad leader said: "You do not get the impression from the officers that there is any logic to it, but they won't say anything. To write 'death to the Arabs' on the walls, to take family pictures and spit on them, just because you can. I think this is the main thing: To understand how much the IDF has fallen in the realm of ethics, really. It's what I'll remember the most."