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Over
the last year ‘Breaking the Silence’ has collected testimonies given
by hundreds of IOF (Israeli Defense Forces) soldiers who served in
the territories during the last conflict. These testimonies reveal
the impossible reality those soldiers have to face, and the terrible
moral price this reality demands. Selected collections from those
testimonies have been published in testimonial collections produced
by ‘Breaking the Silence’.
The
present collection is not just one more testimonial-collection,
revealing the brutal routine of the territories’ reality, or the
constant moral degradation and erosion of soldiers’ values. The
collection focuses on IOF orders, rules of engagement and
operational procedures. It presents a grave picture of evidently
illegal orders given frequently, and in different times and places:
firing at civilians who pose no risk, revenge operations,
intentionally shooting at rescue-forces, and more. This collection
reveals the depth of the military administration’s moral corruption,
and the dimness of moral sense, which has spread to the highest
ranks. The testimonies in this collection concerns various units
that were operative in the territories in different times and at
different places, and is thus an evidence for the magnitude of the
moral decay, and for the depths to which flawed norms have diffused.
It
is also apparent that the IOF’s self-inspection system has failed to
fulfill its duty. This also applies to the civilian and
parliamentary inspection mechanisms, which, during the last
confrontations, have consistently refrained from criticizing the
army’s mode of conduct in general, and its rules of engagement in
particular. This brings out sharply an urgent need to create a
platform on which the information we have gathered here can be
presented, in order to examine what this information teaches, as
well as the IOF’s mode of conduct during the last confrontations. A
civilized and decent society cannot survive without a continuous
inspection and criticism of the most powerful organization operating
within it. ‘Breaking the Silence’ is therefore calling for the
establishment of an independent public inspection committee, which
will enable a responsible disclosure and examination of the facts.
Listening and taking responsibility is the very least that is
required of society and its representatives in a civilized and
decent society founded on basic moral values.
Price for Shooting a Boy
Witness: Staff
sergeant, Paratroops
Place:
Beit-Furik
Date: end of
2003
Description:
Can any fighter shoot?
Yes.
From one’s personal weapon. If the commander in the patrol is a vise
company commander, he can authorize such a thing. And if I
accidentally hit someone in the back, or kill him – and things like
that have happened to us… It happened two or three times only in our
last deployment.
Kids were killed?
Kids
were killed accidentally. One aims at the legs – shoot them in the
back and kill them.
How do you find out later whether they were killed?
[We
get] reports, later on, from the coordination and liaison office,
the Palestinians report. There is cooperation in this regard. So
kids get killed. For a soldier it means nothing. An officer can get
a 100 or 200 Shekel fine for such a thing.
100, 200 Shekel for a kid?
Yes.
Prison?
No,
no.
Trial? Is such a thing seriously investigated?
No. I
am sure it does not get beyond the battalion commander. I don’t know
[of any case] in which people were investigated. I cannot tell you
for certain that it didn’t happen… but I haven’t seen them being
taken for investigation, and I know nothing was done about that
later on.
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