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Israeli Commander: 'We Rewrote the Rules of War for Gaza'
Civilians 'put at greater risk to save military lives' in winter attack - revelations that will pile pressure on Netanyahu to set up full inquiry
A high-ranking officer has acknowledged for the first time that the Israeli army went beyond its previous rules of engagement on the protection of civilian lives in order to minimise military casualties during last year's Gaza war, The Independent can reveal.
An Israeli soldier directs a tank outside the Gaza Strip in December 2008. (REUTERS) The
officer, who served as a commander during Operation Cast Lead, made it
clear that he did not regard the longstanding principle of military
conduct known as "means and intentions" - whereby a targeted suspect
must have a weapon and show signs of intending to use it before being
fired upon - as being applicable before calling in fire from drones and
helicopters in Gaza last winter. A more junior officer who served at a
brigade headquarters during the operation described the new policy -
devised in part to avoid the heavy military casualties of the 2006
Lebanon war - as one of "literally zero risk to the soldiers".
The officers' revelations will pile more pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to set up an independent inquiry into the war, as demanded in the UN-commissioned Goldstone Report, which harshly criticised the conduct of both Israel and Hamas. One of Israel's most prominent human rights lawyers, Michael Sfard, said last night that the senior commander's acknowledgement - if accurate - was "a smoking gun".
Until now, the testimony has been kept out of the public domain. The senior commander told a journalist compiling a lengthy report for Yedhiot Ahronot, Israel's biggest daily newspaper, about the rules of engagement in the three-week military offensive in Gaza. But although the article was completed and ready for publication five months ago, it has still not appeared. The senior commander told Yedhiot: "Means and intentions is a definition that suits an arrest operation in the Judaea and Samaria [West Bank] area... We need to be very careful because the IDF [Israel Defence Forces] was already burnt in the second Lebanon war from the wrong terminology. The concept of means and intentions is taken from different circumstances. Here [in Cast Lead] we were not talking about another regular counter-terrorist operation. There is a clear difference."
His remarks reinforce testimonies from soldiers who served in the Gaza operation, made to the veterans' group Breaking the Silence and reported exclusively by this newspaper last July. They also appear to cut across the military doctrine - enunciated most recently in public by one of the authors of the IDF's own code of ethics - that it is the duty of soldiers to run risks to themselves in order to preserve civilian lives.
Explaining what he saw as the dilemma for forces operating in areas that were supposedly cleared of civilians, the senior commander said: "Whoever is left in the neighbourhood and wants to action an IED [improvised explosive device] against the soldiers doesn't have to walk with a Kalashnikov or a weapon. A person like that can walk around like any other civilian; he sees the IDF forces, calls someone who would operate the terrible death explosive and five of our soldiers explode in the air. We could not wait until this IED is activated against us."
Another soldier who worked in one of the brigade's war-room headquarters told The Independent that conduct in Gaza - particularly by aerial forces and in areas where civilians had been urged to leave by leaflets - had "taken the targeted killing idea and turned it on its head". Instead of using intelligence to identify a terrorist, he said, "here you do the opposite: first you take him down, then you look into it."
The Yedhiot newspaper also spoke to a series of soldiers who had served in Operation Cast Lead in sensitive positions. While the soldiers rejected the main finding of the Goldstone Report - that the Israeli military had deliberately "targeted" the civilian population - most asserted that the rules were flexible enough to allow a policy under which, in the words of one soldier "any movement must entail gunfire. No one's supposed to be there." He added that at a meeting with his brigade commander and others it was made clear that "if you see any signs of movement at all you shoot. This is essentially the rules of engagement."
The other soldier in the war-room explained: "This doesn't mean that you need to disrespect the lives of Palestinians but our first priority is the lives of our soldiers. That's not something you're going to compromise on. In all my years in the military, I never heard that."
He added that the majority of casualties were caused in his brigade area by aerial firing, including from unmanned drones. "Most of the guys taken down were taken down by order of headquarters. The number of enemy killed by HQ-operated remote ... compared to enemy killed by soldiers on the ground had absolutely inverted," he said.
Rules of engagement issued to soldiers serving in the West Bank as recently as July 2006 make it clear that shooting towards even an armed person will take place only if there is intelligence that he intends to act against Israeli forces or if he poses an immediate threat to soldiers or others.
In a recent article in New Republic, Moshe Halbertal, a philosophy professor at Hebrew and New York Universities, who was involved in drawing up the IDF's ethical code in 2000 and who is critical of the Goldstone Report, said that efforts to spare civilian life "must include the expectation that soldiers assume some risk to their own lives in order to avoid causing the deaths of civilians". While the choices for commanders were often extremely difficult and while he did not think the expectation was demanded by international law, "it is demanded in Israel's military code and this has always been its tradition".
The Israeli military declined to comment on the latest revelations, and directed all enquiries to already-published material, including a July 2009 foreign ministry document The Operation in Gaza: Factual and Legal Aspects.
That document, which repeats that Israel acted in conformity with international law despite the "acute dilemmas" posed by Hamas's operations within civilian areas, sets out the principles of Operation Cast Lead as follows: "Only military targets shall be attacked; Any attack against civilian objectives shall be prohibited. A 'civilian objective' is any objective which is not a military target." It adds: "In case of doubt, the forces are obliged to regard an object as civilian."
Yedhiot has not commented on why its article has not been published.
Israel in Gaza: The soldier's tale
This experienced soldier, who cannot be named, served in the war room of a brigade during Operation Cast Lead. Here, he recalls an incident he witnessed during last winter's three-week offensive:
"Two [Palestinian] guys are walking down the street. They pass a mosque and you see a gathering of women and children.
"You saw them exiting the house and [they] are not walking together but one behind the other. So you begin to fantasise they are actually ducking close to the wall.
"One [man] began to run at some point, must have heard the chopper. The GSS [secret service] argued that the mere fact that he heard it implicated him, because a normal civilian would not have realised that he was now being hunted.
"Finally he was shot. He was not shot next to the mosque. It's obvious that shots are not taken at a gathering."
- Posted in
61 Comments so far
Show AllThis is the kind of "freedom" that they hate....
Funny how the IDF can send out leaflets to the Palestinians ordering them to remove themselves from the area that will be attacked and that justifies their actions if innocent civilians get killed. The thing is that there is no where to go. Gaza is a virtual open air prison so where can the Palestinians go? This is absolutely ridiculous. Shooting fish in a barrel is what this is. They can try and justify it but anyone with an ounce of intelligence can see that their excuses don't make sense.
These are the actions of a state that has completely lost its moral compass.
And the Israel-can-do-no-wrongers wonder why anti-semitism has grown?
I don't see evidence of that yet (here in the USA). What I have seen is racist prejudices violence and stereotypes against anyone who looks "middle eastern" (meaning darker-skinned folks) be they Sikhs, Hindus, Muslims or Christian
There have been thousands of posts at the Guardian CIF, Haaretz and many other Talkback sites bemoaning the rise of anti-semitism and "the New Anti-Semitism", i.e., any criticism of Israel's actions and policies.
yes of course. Criticism of Israel automatically gets the label of anti-semite/self-hating jew
I criticize and condemn Israel's policies, because they're doing just as much harm to themselves as the are to the Palestinians. However, anti-semitism has always existed, and it'll be with us forever, which is why the State of Israel must survive and exist. It's agreed that only by making peace will Israel's survival be guaranteed.
why do you think anti-semitism exists? And aren't those Arabs also semites? Don't you think the word antisemite is being misused by the non-semites (khazars) in Israel? And don't you think anti-semitism is being practiced by the Israleis themselves?
Putting civilian lives at greater risk in order to reduce the risk to Israeli soldiers is immoral. It sets a terrible precedent for the rest of the world. Gaza will join the ranks of Guernica and the fire bombing of Dresden as beyond the pale.
It is immoral. Not to defend the fact that Israel does it, but, since the United States has done that plenty of times, is it surprising that other countries, especially those under our umbrella, follow suit?
So instead of taking the high road, we follow the lowest denominator?
No, Horrified. WE, the United States, have consistently taken the lead in "being the lowest common denominator".
Agreed, but my question was about the supposed most moral army in the world....
Rules of war.
Is that like military intelligence?
For some reason, "Rules of War" reminded me of a scene in the movie "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid." Butch and Sundance get back from town and one of the gang says he's decided he should be leader and pulls his knife. Butch takes out his knife and faces him, then says, "Wait a minute, we have to establish the rules."
"What do you mean?" the challenger asks, "There ain't no rules in a knife fight!"
"OK, no rules," Butch replies and kicks him in the balls. End of fight.
As to the IDF's rules, I remember such things as tee-shirts extolling shooting a pregnant woman as a "twofer" Two Palestinians with one shot.
The Israelis seem to follow their old god of war and tempest, who exhorted them to kill virtually everything that did not share their faith, down to the last man, woman, child, animal, and even to sow the ground with salt and pull down all the walls.
If there is, indeed, a God, I think He, She, or It has probably evolved, but I don't think the Israelis have.
-For some reason, "Rules of War" reminded me of a scene in the movie "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid."
For anyone who lived through the wars that led to the geneva conventions being established, or who read about the horrors, the need for the rules of war, and the need for their enforcement, is quite obvious.
I've written and sent Obama four certified letters, return receipt requested. Got back three receipts and a form card. His e-mail access is limited to 500 characters and apparently spaces count as characters, so one can hardly put across a coherent thought. I have also sent a number of open letters, which have been published on other sites.
The last letter I sent him included copies of:
The Nuremberg Principles
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
The United States Constitution including the Bill of Rights
No answer. I've also written my alleged representatives Both Senators and my "Democratic" Fascist representative Rick Larsen. Either no answer, or form letters back. The last time I ran into Larsen, when he realized who I was, he turned his back on me and walked off. I felt complimented.
That reminds me, how is Obama's "peace process" coming along?
Last I heard, we were moving more assets off the coast of Iran and Congress has increased the sanctions against Iran - this time gasoline, I think. I wonder how we would react if someone could embargo our gasoline supplies. War is peace.
Oh, and Daniel Pipes thinks attacking Iran would work as well for Obama as Iraq did for GWB, to distract us from what awful presidents they are. He thinks we'll be gung-ho once the Shock and Awe starts.
Yes, it really looks like we are backing Iran into a corner with these sanctions, which are as you imply, acts of war. When Iran is forced to respond somehow, the US govt. and sycophantic media will frame it as an unprovoked act of aggression. Thus, once again we will manufacture a phony excuse to bomb the hell out of another country.
It might even artificially boost GDP numbers and they can say the war helped us out of the depression/recession or some such nonsense.
Yeah, Obama gave the OK to further Israeli ethnic cleansing and expansion of white Jewish supremacist colonies on Palestinian land. The siege, bulldozing, and war crimes continue every day, funded by the US taxpayer.
Ethnic Cleansing? Na, this is fun! Israel, Apartheid. Yes-In-Dee-Dee.
I don't think the IDF "rewrote" the rules of war; it simply plagiarized Kurtz' scrawled phrase from Conrad's "Heart of Darkness": "exterminate the brutes".
· Yr Obd't Servant
Maybe they're just moving closer to the ways of the Old Ones:
"When Joshua and the men of Israel had finished slaying them with a very great slaughter, until they were wiped out ..."
The Israelis have been "rewriting" the rules of war for decades. They adopt an illegal innovation, such as extrajudicial assassination, which means killing anyone they want to target without bothering with holding a trial and letting the suspect defend himself, and then their Uncle Sam adopts the practice, too. The Israelis have been deliberately leading the move away from the principles established at Nuremberg, and the U.S. has been happy to follow their lead.
Israel's slow-motion holocaust and genocide against the Palestinians continues, not slowed for an instant by the condemnation of most of the world's people. While we debate about Israel's crimes against humanity, the carnage continues, more Palestinian land is stolen for Israeli "settlements," and hatred of the U.S., Israel's sponsor in this genocide, grows.
"I spoke with the head military lawyer of the IDF [Israeli Defense Force], Joel Zinger, and I said 'You know, I'm two weeks here, and it's clear you people are inflicting Nuremberg crimes on the Palestinians, exactly what the Nazis did to the Jews. What's your explanation?' He said 'Military necessity'. Notice, he didn't disagree with me. I said 'That argument was rejected at Nuremberg when the lawyers for the Nazis made it.' So then he said, "Well, we have public relations people in the United States, and they handle these matters for us.' " -Francis Boyle, Professor of International Law, University of Illinois
That is exactly where we are and it will only get worse.
It has become just like the tough kid in the play ground. "Who is gon’a stop me? You and who's army?
And this is the attitude of Israel AND AMERICA, in their criminal wars.
Comparing America and Israel to the Nazis in the mid 30's is perfectly reasonable, because the world is only starting to suffer. The real killing is yet to come. What makes anyone believe that those running this madness would stop now?
Another poorly written article that treats Israel's war crimes and ethnic cleansing actions as isolated events. These articles need to be written in context.
Israel attacked UN facilities in Gaza. It also attacked the UN in Lebanon despite the peacekeepers despite the UN telling Israel of its position.
Israel regularly shoots and often kills Gazan farmers and fishermen who are doing no wrong. To talk about the Gazan "war" (so one-sided, it can hardly be called a war) as the only time Israel committed war crimes in Gaza is incomplete report.
Why poorly written? If you read The Independent daily (as I do) you would know that its coverage of the Middle East - particularly in the reports of Donald Macintyre and Robert Fisk - is thorough and of high quality (which is why Common Dreams frequently links to it). This article is out of context only by being posted on CD; it is up to us as readers to seek out that context. That is very often how the web works.
Fair enough. I (mis) treated it as a US MSM article.
Wrong, you meathead. You did not rewrite anything. You violated existing rules for which you ought to be arrested and given a one-way ticket to the Dutch suburb of The Hague named Scheveningen.
Yeah, I hear that some of the cells at the prison in Scheveningen have views onto the beach and North Sea. Sounds like luxury digs, too good for them, too bad they can't go to a CCA prison or Angola Prison in Louisiana.
Gaza And The Warsaw Ghetto
same place
different time
while the world stood by
genocide
live
Exactly! It was a massacre, euphemistically called a 'war'
From this valuable article: "The Israeli military . . . directed . . . inquiries to . . . a 2009 foreign ministry document . . . . which repeats that Israel acted in conformity with international law . . . . " --Zionism is to Human Rights Under Law as pederasty is to child care. Our tax dollars at work . . . .
Peace to Israel is to eliminate all Arabs and gather up all their land,---- and peace to the leaders and big business of the US, is to control all the oil under the land, and dictate over the world.
petrkrop, thanks for the quote from Francis Boyle. I often wondered how they can justify their horrible treatment of the people of Gaza and still remind us of the horrible treatment of Jews during the holocaust. Double standards are the norm.
When Iraq was enduring the agony of post, first gulf war, economic sanctions, someone commented that although we have rules of war there are no rules for economic sanctions. Leaders don't suffer from sanctions . Civilians are the target and the main victims. Although most of us consider sanctions a war legally the rules of war do not apply to sanctions. However the U.N., under the control of the U.S., goes along with the economic sanctions regardless of how many U.N. Declarations of Human Rights they violate. If they do not respect their U.N. Declarations then why would they follow the rules of war? Leaders do not seem to have a reason to be afraid of being held accountable for their illegal actions. We know that many of the actions against Iraq and Gaza were, are illegal and no leader has yet to be held accountable. I wonder how many countries are using drones to assassinate suspected enemies. Surely drones should be banned.I'm told that drones are all about protecting the troops. Who can believe that leaders who use drones and post war economic sanctions, care about collateral damage of innocent civilians, or rules of war?
petrkrop, thanks for the quote from Francis Boyle. I often wondered how they can justify their horrible treatment of the people of Gaza and still remind us of the horrible treatment of Jews during the holocaust. Double standards are the norm.
When Iraq was enduring the agony of post, first gulf war, economic sanctions, someone commented that although we have rules of war there are no rules for economic sanctions. Leaders don't suffer from sanctions . Civilians are the target and the main victims. Although most of us consider sanctions a war legally the rules of war do not apply to sanctions. However the U.N., under the control of the U.S., goes along with the economic sanctions regardless of how many U.N. Declarations of Human Rights they violate. If they do not respect their U.N. Declarations then why would they follow the rules of war? Leaders do not seem to have a reason to be afraid of being held accountable for their illegal actions. We know that many of the actions against Iraq and Gaza were, are illegal and no leader has yet to be held accountable. I wonder how many countries are using drones to assassinate suspected enemies. Surely drones should be banned.I'm told that drones are all about protecting the troops. Who can believe that leaders who use drones and post war economic sanctions, care about collateral damage of innocent civilians, or rules of war?
The Israelis are the biggest anti-semites because, as much as they would like to eliminate and annihilate the Arab population, Arabs are semites. Israel is a country that never should have been recognized by the UN--it was built on the blood and stolen homes and villages of Arabs. Israelis should never have one day of peaceful sleep until they ATONE for their genocidal nation!
Zionists and their army are fascists, pure and simple. They have no regard for fairness or justice or anything else but their own greed. They justify this by citing what the German fascists did to the Jews. If I were a holocaust survivor, I would condemn them with every fiber of my being, and not allow them to use my pain and suffering as excuse for their own totalitarian behavior. Believe me, eventually this will backfire, and the Zionists will bring out the inherent anti-Jewishness that still lays dormant in Christians. The Zionists are everything that Anti-Semites claim all Jews are.
They are just re-living their Biblical Hate Manual.
I disagree with the notion that Israel shouldn't have been recognized as a sovereign nation-state. Look at the United States and all of the Americas from Canada and the United States all the way down through what're now known as the Latin American countries. The Americas were all founded on land originally inhabited by Native Americans (Indians), and were also buit on the backs and blood of American Indians and African slaves. Still, despite that sordid history, these countries, including the United States, are all recognized as legitimate sovereign nation-states. So is Israel, whether people like it or not. Imho, it's one thing to condemn Israel's policies in West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem and take them to task for it, but it's a whole other thing to say that Israel has no right to exist. That is something that I don't agree with.
Bring America Back !!!!
****Yep, the Zionists re-wrote the rules of war at Gaza, just as they did when earning their title 'The Butchers of Beirut' !
****Little sister USA just keeps tagging along with the
coattails of Israel. The UN is constantly outdone by the Veto powers of US and Zion !
**Guess they'll just keep rewriting until someone rewrites
them ! Meantime it is pretty clear that Iran is their next rewrite.
Eli Eli, Sabacthani ?????
*puts on his Johnny Carson 'Carnak the Magnificent' hat*
The US, the UK, and Israel.
Who are the shmo's, the pro's, and the ho's who will never have a War Crimes trial for their leaders?
From wikipedia:
The name "Balfour Declaration is applied to two key British government policy statements associated with Conservative statesman and former Prime Minister Arthur Balfour.
"* The first is the Balfour Declaration of 1917: An official letter from the British Foreign Office headed by Lord Arthur Balfour, the UK's Foreign Secretary (from December 1916 to October 1919), to Baron Rothschild, who was seen as a representative of the Jewish people. The letter stated that the British government "view[ed] with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.
"* The second is the Balfour Declaration of 1926, recognizing the self-governing Dominions of the British Empire as fully autonomous states."
Just a reminder of why Tony Blair is special UN envoy to the Conflict.
Historically, the United States is Europe's proxy for its gift of Semite back to Semite. Tony Blair has now survived three American Presidencies. And he is proud of the invasion of Iraq. Did anyone ask him about the Brits in Afghanistan?
The issue of the Inevitability of History vs the Free Will of Great Men seems unresolved...or not. (To paraphrase: "While you guys are busy studying history we're changing it.") (How did THEY study history? Cheney would not have been there had he not studied history. "I had other priorities." "Deficits don't matter." )
When will Palestine be granted Nationhood, as Corporations are now granted First Amendment Personhood? Is there a pattern here, or a fractile?!
Oh hell, let's just blow ourselves up and be done with it!
Secular vs Religious states? Versus "non-state Terrorism"? Plastic water bottles delivered to Haiti? Bodies in mass graves, loved ones. Memory. Altzheimer's. Never forget!
Where is the "national home" for the Palestinians still living in camps in Jordan and Syria after half a century, and why is Lebanon---the grapevine of The Levant (my term)--- still angry?
What would happen to the globe if anyone actually RESOLVED the issue of the existence of Israel?
The Abrahamic religions are unresolved. Iran is among us.
Who is "she" and who is "he" and why does it matter?
Power. Death.
-30-
Baron Rothschild bought and paid for the neverending turmoil in the Middle East.
Dubya on Saddam, and world history:
"He tried to kill my Daddy."
Hang 'em high.
-30-
The public needs to know that the existence of the Zionist entity (not its people) together with our country's warring against Afhanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and Yemen are what stokes the hatred that underlies the violent messianic movements in the Mideast and elsewhere. Which means that what'll undo the violence and stop the bloodshed is justice for Palestine and troops out now from the above-mentioned nations. Except our government cringes at the prospect of no more bloodshed because without bloodshed what'll keep the public scared to death at the possibility of a terrorist attack? And without that fear will the public go for these out of control military budgets plus hundreds of foreign bases, such that, there's nothing left in the national piggy-bank to pay for, among other things, universal health care, not to mention what's needed to improve public education, and rebuilding the infrastructure? Most likely not, which is why all these perpetual wars.
What goes around comes around...just not quickly enough for Israel.
t_g
This Jew hangs her head in shame when thinking of today's Israel and it's actions. I live in the diaspora (Australia), but I do have relatives in Israel and do visit fairly regularly.
I have always lived in the diaspora, never aspired to aliyah. Mainly because I'm not religious, but truly, because I never felt that I "don't belong" in the country I lived in.
I am however apprehensive to cast a stone at the Jewish state, living in a country settled in quite a barbaric way, where the Aborigines are still treated like second class and frankly, don't have the same start to life and opportunities as any other citizen.
Yes, the Israelis treat the Palestinians in a very ordinary manner, but since Israel IS a Jewish state, they are just defending their homogenous identity in any way they can.
I am not playing devil's advocate here, but I do understand the way an Israeli citizen thinks. Don't condone it, but understand...
I think, as long as the powerful USA stands behind Israel and it's actions, that'll stay the status quo and when (if??) the Palestinians ever get a powerful friend, then the Israelis will be on the run...
There never was an "Israel" to be proud of it was always mean, genocidal, exclusionary, racist and never democratic. You probably even believe the zionazi scum only attack others for defensive reasons.
The diaspora is complete nonsense, no such thing ever occurred, if it had the Romans would have written about it. Here read up on it, get the book The Invention of the Jewish People by Israeli historian Shlomo Sand an Israeli historian. He calls the Roman Diaspora of the Jewish people a myth that has been misused to justify the current displacement of Palestinians by European Jews, whom Sand argues have no geneological connection to the Holy Land.
I repeat the only groups who believe "Jews" constitute a people were the NAZI of Germany and the ZIONIST of the same era. They worked very closely with each other.
toad here is a link to give you some real history of Jews and zionazis
http://www.marxists.de/middleast/brenner/index.htm
A Jewish state? Just a bunch of fascist racists, with way to much money.
Sophie Scholl-The Final Days