Why some Israeli soldiers are disillusioned by Gaza tactics

"How do you know these people are soldiers? I don't know who they are," she told reporters. "This is not credible and this is not reliable. And this puts under considerable doubt the intention of the organization."

Prominent Israeli human rights lawyer Michael Sfard, who authored an opinion piece to coincide with the report, says that it is an offense under military regulations to be interviewed without the approval of the IDF spokesperson and notes that soldiers have been put on trial for leaks to the press. In addition, the soldiers' testimonies could incriminate them or their friends.

In a conference call with reporters Tuesday night, Major Leibovitch insisted that the army has already conducted an investigation into various claims of misconduct and found that, with few exceptions, Israeli soldiers conducted themselves in keeping with international rules of warfare and with the army's code of warfare. Another 10 or so soldiers are under investigation for war-related charges.

Shortly after the war, other testimonials about misconduct in Gaza came to light when the principal of a military prep school submitted a series of soldiers' anecdotes to the army for investigation. Though the army opened an inquiry, it was swiftly closed on the grounds that none of the charges was based on first-person knowledge of the incidents described.

"The goal [of Breaking the Silence] is part of the overall aim of anti-Israel propaganda," says Gerald Steinberg, who runs NGO Watch, which monitors political activities of Israeli nonprofits. "It's to delegitimize Israel's defense against terror, and to exaggerate in an extreme way the few incidents and soldiers that might violate basic norms."

Clear victory needed after 2006 Hezbollah defeat

What emerges from the testimony is the dissonance between soldiers' fear of and expectations for a tough house-to-house fighting against a determined foe akin to Hezbollah, and the reality of meeting relatively little resistance.

Breaking the Silence testimonials alleged open-fire guidelines didn't take into account civilians, a noticeable switch from the army's stricter rules of engagement in the West Bank. Instead, the soldiers said, any civilian who remained behind in the battlefield was considered a de facto combatant.

Yehuda Shaul, a combat veteran and a founder of Breaking the Silence, said the army needed a victory against Hamas to offset the perception that it lost a month-long battle with Hezbollah 2-1/2 years earlier. Minimizing Israeli casualties was seen as a way to give the army enough time to create an air of victory.

"The story of [Operation] Cast Lead [as the Gaza offensive was called] is the Israeli army's adoption of a different concept. It's the story of: 'In order to get a victory we need minimum casualties, and to do that we won't put our soldiers in danger. We prefer the mistakes to be on their body count and not ours," said Mr. Shaul at the media briefing. "In a way the IDF replaced the meaning of being a civilian with being a soldiers."

Mr. Sfard, the human rights lawyer, wrote that the testimony suggested the army was guilty of failing to distinguish between combatants and civilians.

"The No. 1 principle in international laws of war is the principle of distinction," he wrote. "Parties to the conflict shall at all times distinguish between the civilian population and combatants."

Previous

1 | 2