Josh Mitnick, The Christian Science Monitor, Jul 15, 2009
Tel Aviv – Israeli combatants in the Gaza war against Hamas were told by commanders to minimize their own casualties even if it meant risking the lives of Palestinian civilians, a group of Israeli soldiers have alleged.
On Wednesday, Breaking the Silence published 54 anonymous testimonies from more than two dozen soldiers on its website. The organization, founded for the express purpose of compiling such accounts, accused the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) of sacrificing more rigorous rules of combat engagement for a political end: preventing high Israeli casualty numbers that would have splintered the country's unity over the January war.
During and after the war, Israeli officials often referred to the IDF as "the most moral army in the world."
Israel's army, which received an advance copy of the testimonials on Tuesday – nearly a week after the press – disputed the anonymous accounts as impossible to verify and therefore unreliable.
The soldiers who gave the accounts included both conscripts and reservists active on all four military corridors of invasion into the Gaza Strip, according to the organization. Some said that they were disturbed and disillusioned by what they saw as an erosion of the Israeli army's code of ethics, which requires soldiers avoid deliberate harm to civilians.
(Read on …)