Jew soldiers admit they are instructed to target children.

Palestine: the assault on health and other war crimes. Israeli soldiers confirm the shoot-to-kill policy.

http://www.flwi.ugent.be/cie/Palestina/palestina185.htm

by Derek Summerfield



Last October I published a review in the BMJ on the appalling human rights situation in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian Territories, providing detailed figures on civilian deaths (over 3000, including over 600 children, in only 4 years) which pointed unambiguously to a culture of impunity for Israeli Defence Force (IDF) soldiers. I also pointed to the rapid rise in poverty and destitution as a direct and foreseen consequence of Israeli policies, with documented rises in child malnutrition, the blocking of food aid distribution, denial of access to medical facilities (including for those critically ill), the killing, wounding and harassment of Palestinian health professionals on duty, and the destruction to the coherence of the Palestinian health system as a result of the apartheid Wall - all violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention. I was not recording a personal view: I was quoting documentation from the United Nations; Amnesty International; international aid agencies like Médecins Sans Frontières; Johns Hopkins (USA) and Al Quds (Jerusalem) Universities; the Israeli human rights organisations B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights; Health, Development, Information and Policy Institute (Ramallah), and the Palestinian Environmental NGOs Network (though these were not listed after the paper because the BMJ does not include references in this section of the journal). (1)

My paper attracted a mountain of support at bmj.com, with many correspondents adding personal testimony to the case. It also attracted a mountain of criticism, indeed vilification. Here the general tone was one of outrage and of almost unconditional refutation of the substance of the paper. Prominent Jewish organisations and spokespersons made hostile statements about the BMJ and declared the intention to complain formally. (2) Israeli mainstream newspapers published articles with titles like “BMJ refuses to apologise”. The BMJ felt obliged to quickly grant publication of a rebutting Personal View and later published a condemnatory letter from Yoram Blachar, longstanding president of the Israeli Medical Association and currently Chair of Council of the international watchdog on medical ethics, the World Medical Association. In his rapid response at bmj.com Dr Blachar wrote that “the lies and hatred in his piece are reminiscent of some of the worst forms of anti-semitic propaganda ever espoused.”

In the first paragraph of my paper I noted that two thirds of all Palestinian child fatalities had been caused by small arms fire (i.e. directed fire from relatively close range), and that in fully half of these cases the bullet or bullets had hit the head or upper torso - the sniper’s wound.

I went on to write that “clearly, soldiers are routinely authorised to shoot to kill children in situations of minimal or no threat”. This sentence appeared to cause more offence than any other in the paper, yet this week it has been confirmed in emphatic fashion - the authority being Israeli soldiers who have committed these acts themselves. (3) It is being widely reported that a pressure group of former soldiers calling themselves “Breaking the Silence” want the Israeli public to face the realities of army actions in their name. They expose the cynicism and hollowness of the IDF mantra, which my critics have clearly taken at face value, that everything possible is done to minimise the risk to Palestinian civilians. These soldiers, who include the son of an Israeli general, say that they were ordered in briefings to shoot to kill unarmed civilians, including children, even in periods of calm when there was no threat to themselves or colleagues, and without fear of reprimand from superior officers. In some areas of the Occupied Territories soldiers operated under standing orders to this effect. One soldier Moshe said that even on his sergeant’s training course there was “pressure to get kills”, and ambushes were set up in Jenin in May 2003 to get them.
The ex-soldiers of “Breaking the Silence“ talk about being ordered to “fire at anything that moved”, and “every person you see on the street, kill him…..and we would just do it”. Briefings before operations included express instructions to shoot the first person who climbed on armoured personnel carriers as they lumbered through narrow streets, as children often did, though there was no military threat involved. They described a child of 12, later said to be 8, who climbed on and was shot dead by “one of our sharpshooters”. Moshe told The Guardian that the attitude was: “so kids got killed. For a soldier it means nothing.” It does not seem he now believes that it means nothing.
A common theme in these testimonies, entirely in line with the conclusions of human rights observers over many years, is the desire to avenge Israeli casualties and inflict collective punishment on Palestinians as a people. After the deaths of 11 soldiers in operations in Gaza in May 2004, “the commanders said kill as many people as possible”. Rafi, an ex-officer in an elite unit, described Gaza at this time as “a playground for sharpshooters” (what my paper called snipers) licensed to use indiscriminate force. There were standing orders to shoot anyone who appeared to be touching the ground, or seen on a roof or balcony, whoever they were. Rafi alluded to the killing of the Moghayyer children, aged 16 and 13, in Gaza at this time as they collected washing and fed their pigeons on the roof of their home. The IDF initially tried to insist that they had been blown up by a roadside bomb, until journalists were shown the bodies in the morgue, each with a single bullet wound to the head. I mentioned this very case in my BMJ paper (I spelt their name as al-Mughayr), noting that Amnesty had called for an investigation into what the facts suggested was murder. Clearly many correspondents to bmj.com saw this as odious slander. What do they think now?

This is the climate of impunity I and others have been talking about. The Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem notes that the IDF does not maintain printed rules of engagement and what rules exist are kept secret. The instincts of the IDF are to lie or obfuscate when embarrassing cases arise (which means those that come to foreign attention: Palestinian public opinion is irrelevant). One ex-soldier Avi describes how his company commander confiscated an incriminating video showing a soldier shooting dead out of the blue a Palestinian man unloading his car in the street below. So too now, for the IDF hierarchy is trying to neutralise “Breaking the Silence”. The chief military prosecutor has labelled their testimony as “exaggerated” and “hearsay”.

Nonetheless 17 separate investigations have had to be started.

These ex-soldiers are speaking from the heart; what they have revealed is of course not ‘news’ to those familiar with a situation that has prevailed for many years, not least during the first intifada (1988-93). The lives of Palestinian civilians, including their children, have never been regarded as worth much in relation to IDF imperatives and operations. The human rights history of these times, which includes the state sanctioned use of torture on what Amnesty described as an entirely institutionalised basis, has been exhaustively documented - some of it by myself. The question is why it has made so little difference. Those who posted up outraged responses to my paper last year were doubtless decent, perhaps liberal citizens in relation to any other issue of the day: they provide a telling lesson in the power of selective moral blindness. Will they cling to the ‘explanations’ of the IDF military prosecutor, or regard the ex-soldiers of “Breaking the Silence” as stooges or worse? I do hope not. Further, would any of them admit that they castigated the BMJ and its editorial team unfairly? Will the Jewish organisations and representatives who protested last year at what they saw as anti-semitic lies respond at bmj.com to “Breaking the Silence”?

Lastly, are there BMA members who are prepared to lobby for some clear-cut action to be taken as a member organisation of the World Medical Association in relation to the other facet of this dismal picture: the systemic and ongoing violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention? These have been going on under the noses of the Israeli Medical Association, whose silence in Israel has been as telling as the words of their President to the BMJ. I have quoted above the views on my paper of Dr Blachar, WMA Council Chair and IMA President. This must say something worrying about the judgement and indeed moral probity of IMA and WMA when the case in hand is the Palestinian one, but if the International Committee of the BMA is concerned they are hiding it remarkably well. To date the responses I have elicited from the Committee (from Drs V. Nathanson and E. Borman) have been a case study in evasion. Why is this?



1 Summerfield D., "Palestine: the assault on health and other war crimes", British Medical Journal, 2004; 329: 924, URL: http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/

2 http://forum.mpacuk.org/archive/index.php/t-103.html

3 The Guardian. Israeli troops say they were given shoot-to-kill order: "Israeli soldiers tell of indiscriminate killings by army and a culture of impunity" (by Conal Urquhart, in Tel Aviv), 6 Sept 2005: http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1563255,00.html