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Israeli Soldiers Protest 'Shoot-to-Kill' Policy
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Soldiers
said they were ordered to shoot at anyone who appeared on the
street at a designated time.
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CAIRO,
September 6, 2005 (IsamOnline.net) – Breaking a deafening silence,
Israeli soldiers are speaking out against illegal shoot-to-kill orders
against Palestinian civilians, a leading British news paper reported
Tuesday, September 6.
"The
reason why I am telling you this is that I want the army to think
about what they are asking us to do, shooting unarmed people. I don't
think it's legal," Assaf, a discharged Israeli soldier, told the Guardian.
He
said that in the summer of 2002 his armored unit had been ordered to
enter the Gaza town of Dir Al-Balah following the firing of mortars
into nearby Jewish settlements.
Assaf
said the orders were clear and simple.
"'Every
person you see on the street, kill him'. And we would just do
it."
Recalling
one of many incidents, Assaf said he saw through his machine gun a
Palestinian man was aged between 20 and 30, unarmed and trying to get
away from an Israeli tank. This, he admitted, did not matter.
With
an order to "fire at anything that moved," the soldier
pressed the trigger, firing scores of bullets as the unarmed
Palestinian fell to the ground.
"He
ran and I started shooting for a few seconds. He fell. I was a
machine. I fire. I leave and that's that. We never spoke about it
afterwards."
Palestinian
and international human rights groups have repeatedly accused Israel
of killing Palestinians in cold blood.
They
slammed Israel for targeting Palestinian children and women, and using
them as shields.
Testimonies
Other
Israeli soldiers told the British daily they were ordered to shoot
anyone who appeared on a roof or a balcony, anyone who appeared to be
kneeling to the ground or anyone who appeared on the street at a
designated time.
They
were also ordered to open fire in some parts of the occupied
Palestinian territories on people regardless of whether they were
armed or not, or posed any physical threat.
Among
those killed by soldiers acting on the orders were children.
Soldiers
said that many of the shootings occurred in periods of calm when there
was no immediate risk to the soldiers involved.
Dozens
of testimonies were collected by Breaking the Silence, a pressure
group of former Israeli soldiers committed to exposing human rights
abuses by the Israeli army against the Palestinians.
The
testimonies shed light on how around 1,700 Palestinian civilians have
been killed during the second Intifada, which erupted in September
2000 after the provocative visit by then Likud leader Ariel Sharon to
Al-Aqsa mosque, Islam's third holiest shrine, the paper said.
Leaders
Blamed
Yehuda
Shaul, the co-founder of Breaking the Silence, said their campaign is
aimed to show that individual soldiers were not to blame for killings
of innocent Palestinians.
"It
is the situation which is to blame and that is created by military and
political leaders, not the soldiers on the ground," he said.
Israeli
military prosecutors have opened 17 separate criminal investigations
into the soldiers’ testimonies, according to the British daily.
The
probes cover a range of accusations, including misuse of weapons and
other misuses of power.
Erlik
Alhanan, 27, an Israeli soldier, has told IslamOnline.net in an
interview that at
least 80 percent of reservists
have lost confidence in the declared moral principles of the Israeli
army due to the inhumane practices in the occupied territories.
"It
runs counter to the code of ethics of the Israeli Defense Army and
what we have learnt inside the military institution. They do not
practice what they preach," Alhanan said.
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