Terrorist manifesto still inspires: ‘there is no need to distinguish between guilty and innocent’

For the Israeli Army in Gaza there  were no ‘innocent’ Palestinians – there never have been
by Mick Napier 15 July 2009

The statements by reservists, conscripts, soldiers and officers, which are consistent with and reinforce each other, substantiate for the first time the suspicion that the Israeli military in many cases ignored one of the basic tenets of the international laws of war: the distinction between combatants and innocent bystanders…

Below are excerpts from today’s Der Spiegel’s report on the testimonies from scores of of Israeli soldiers of what their units did during the Gaza massacres.  The Spiegel title is Israeli soldiers provide shocking testimony by Christoph Schult in Jerusalem but the sad truth is that the reports, although shocking, are hardly surprising to anyone remotely familiar with Israeli military history.  The reports emerging today merely confirm that the tradition of the pre-state Zionist militias and their successor modern Israeli Army is intact.  There has always been a practice in the Israeli Army, long predating the Gaza massacres, to make no ‘distinction between combatants and innocent bystanders’.  ‘Cut off their testicles,’* demanded Ariel Sharon for West Bank demonstrators. He ordered Israeli soldiers to beat up Palestinian schoolchildren, saying that ‘The only good Arab is a dead Arab.’**

Before reading the Spiegel and other reports, consider the words of Israel’s greatest hero, the founder of the State and an unrepentant terrorist (if the word is to have any meaning).

“What is necessary is cruel and strong reactions. We need precision in time, place, and casualties. If we know the family, we must strike mercilessly, women and children included. Otherwise, the reaction is inefficient. At the place of action, there is no need to distinguish between guilty and innocent.” (Diary, 1 January 1948)

Here are some excerpts from the latest testimonies of Israeli soldiers, reporting a catalogue of crimes: deliberate killings of civilians, devastation of whole areas, the use of civilians as human shields, and more.

• …according to statements from Israeli soldiers there were malicious acts of destruction, white phosphorus was used and civilians were deliberately targeted…
• According to the report, the commanders hammered it into their soldiers that they were not to show any consideration for the Palestinian civilian population…
• The statements by reservists, conscripts, soldiers and officers, which are consistent with and reinforce each other, substantiate for the first time the suspicion that the Israeli military in many cases ignored one of the basic tenets of the international laws of war: the distinction between combatants and innocent bystanders…
• Many of the wounded and dead are clearly the result of a lesson Israel learned in the Lebanon war of 2006: no hesitation, no scruples.
• …those who were unable to flee, because they were too sick or too old, were left in mortal danger. “If beyond this line any people are detected — they are not supposed to be there,” recalls one soldier. “If we detect anything that should not be there — we shoot. No special mention was made of innocents.”
• “…anyone is your enemy. No innocents.”
• …Some veterans also confirm that the army sent local residents into houses where Hamas fighters were holed up, as a kind of vanguard. This method [is] known as the “neighbor procedure”… According to one soldier, his unit placed a gun barrel on the shoulder of a Palestinian and forced him to walk ahead of them into a suspicious building…
• … the driver of a D-9, a powerful, armored bulldozer as tall as a two-story building. “We demolished a lot. If I remember correctly, from the battalion commander’s talk at the end, we demolished 900 houses.'”
• … As early as February, Amos Harel, the military expert with the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz, disclosed similar reports by Gaza veterans. This prompted the military prosecutor to launch a criminal investigation, but it was discontinued a few days later

This report lifts a corner of the rug and reveals just a little of the genocidal proclivities of the Israeli Army.