Röster inifrån ockupationen

Haaretz har en rad intressanta dock otäcka artiklar om Gaza-kriget och den israeliska arméns gärningar under det 22 dagar långa kriget.

När jag läser soldaternas skildring av deras uppdrag och ockupationens syn på palestinierna så inser jag att det utan tvekan handlar om mord - mord på civila. Det är handlingar som måste bestraffas och fördömas. Israel måste betala skadestånd och dess regering och militära befälhavare ställas inför rätta.

Jag klipper in rakat av. Allt annat vore fel.

"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.

Läs hela här!

Läs också
IDF killed civilians in Gaza under loose rules of engagement
IDF orders probe into allegations over Gaza war
Can Israel dismiss its own troops' stories from Gaza?

Imorgon uppmärksammas sex års dagen av USA:s invasion av Irak. Jag kommer själv att delta i en manifestation i Göteborg. Brunnsparken, kl 14. Kom dit om du är i närheten!

Andra demonstrationen och manifestationer hittar du här.

Andra som bloggat: Hans Linde, Ali Esbati
I medierna: Aftonbladet, SvD, SVT,