" You've Got To Run Fast, Run Fast, Run Fast, Before It's All Over!": It's Not Just A Slogan On A T-Shirt
From a distance of 70 metres and through the sight of his machine gun, Assaf could tell that the Palestinian man was aged between 20 and 30, unarmed and trying to get away from an Israeli tank. But the details didn't matter much, because Assaf's orders were to "fire at anything that moved".
Assaf, a soldier in the Israeli army, pressed the trigger, firing scores of bullets as the body 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."
It was the summer of 2002, and Assaf and his armoured unit had been ordered to enter the Gaza town of Dir al Balah following the firing of mortars into nearby Jewish settlements.
His orders were, he told the Guardian, "'Every person you see on the street, kill him'. And we would just do it."
It was not the first time that Assaf had killed an innocent person in Gaza while following orders, but after his discharge he began to think about the things he did. "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."
- Israeli Soldiers Tell of Indiscriminate Killings by Army and a Culture of Impunity by Conal Urquhart; The Guardian, 6 Sept 2005.
Despite the ceasefire declared on Sunday, each morning since Israeli gunboats have fired towards Gaza's coastline. Nine people were injured as a result of such shelling from an Israeli gunboat, Amnesty International’s fact-finding team in Gaza was told on Wednesday.
In its fifth post on Amnesty International's Livewire blog, the team described how on Thursday, it had visited families whose homes had been forcibly taken over and used as military positions by Israeli soldiers during the recent three week long conflict.
In the houses, the team saw discarded Israeli army supplies, including sleeping bags, medical kits, empty boxes of munitions and spent cartridges, incontrovertible evidence of the soldiers’ occupation of the houses.
In every one of the homes the team visited, rooms had been ransacked, with furniture overturned and/or smashed. Clothing, documents and other personal items belonging to the families who lived there had been strewn over the floor and soiled, and in one case urinated on.
In one house in the Sayafa area in north Gaza several cardboard boxes full of excrement were left in the house – although there was a functioning toilet which the soldiers could have used. Walls were defaced with crude threats written in Hebrew, such as “next time it will hurt more". In every case the soldiers had smashed holes in the outer walls of the houses to use as lookout and sniper positions.
Chris Cobb-Smith, a military expert and part of Amnesty International's team, was an officer in the British Army for almost 20 years. He said he was staggered by what he saw and by the behaviour and apparent lack of discipline of the Israeli soldiers. “Gazans have had their houses looted, vandalized and desecrated. As well, the Israeli soldiers have left behind not only mounds of litter and excrement but ammunition and other military equipment. It’s not the behaviour one would expect from a professional army,” he said.
In most cases, the families had fled or were expelled by the soldiers. In some cases, however, the soldiers prevented the families from leaving, using them as "human shields".
Abu Abdallah told the Amnesty International team that the soldiers who took over his home in Hay al-Salam, east of Jabalia, north Gaza, had confined him, his wife and their nine children for two days in the basement. “We had no water to drink and the soldiers did not allow us to go get water. I had to take water from the toilet cistern with a small receptacle for the small children to drink. I went to the bathroom several times to weep. I did not wish my children to see me cry."
-- Amnesty International: Israeli soldiers leave Gaza homes in devastated condition; 23 January 2009.
The Smaller They Are - The Harder It Is!" [3]: It's Not Just A Slogan On A T-Shirt
Sixteen-year-old Asma Mughayer (back row, left, in this family photo from the Sydney Morning Herald) and her thirteen-year-old brother, Ahmed (front row, left) were shot dead while hanging out laundry on the roof of their home in Rafah, on the morning that the IDF launched a major attack ("Operation Rainbow") on the Tel al-Sultan refugee camp where they lived, on 18 May 2004.The IDF said of their deaths: "A preliminary investigation indicates they were killed by a bomb intended to be used against soldiers. It was set outside a building by Palestinians to hit an Israeli vehicle". But the Mughayer family said that the children had not been killed by a bomb, but shot by an Israeli sniper, operating out of a neighboring building.
An Australian journalist visited the Mughayer house, and found no signs of an explosion there, though he did find bullet holes on the roof, made by bullets which seemed to have been fired from the neighboring building. He visited the neighboring building, and found that its occupants had been held prisoner by an Israeli sniper team that had operated out of their house on the morning that Asma and Ahmed were killed, and left behind MRE wrappers and ammunition boxes (labelled in Hebrew) .
British journalists who examined the children's bodies at the morgue (AP Photo - Kevin Frayer) found no signs of injuries except for a single bullet hole through the head.After the British and Australian journalists published their findings, the IDF announced it would hold an internal investigation into the death of the Mughayer siblings. But six months later, while world attention was distracted by a new, large-scale invasion of the Gaza Strip refugee camps, the IDF quietly dropped its investigation.
The following year, some of the soldiers who took part in Operation Rainbow gave their testimonies to the Breaking the Silence exhibition. They testified that they had killed innocent Palestinian civilians, under orders from their superiors to kill any Palestinian they encountered, armed or not. They were concerned, in retrospect, that they were guilty of carrying out illegal orders, and one of them knew what had happened in the specific case of Asma and Ahmed Mughayer, who the IDF assured us were blown up by a Palestinian bomb:
According to Rafi, an officer in the Shaldag, an elite unit connected to the air force, the whole mission was about revenge. "The commanders said kill as many people as possible," he said.
He and his men were ordered to shoot anyone who appeared to be touching the ground, as if they might be placing a roadside bomb, or anyone seen on a roof or a balcony, as if they might be observing Israeli forces for military reasons, regardless of whether they were armed.
Asma Moghayyer, 16, and her brother Ahmed, 13, were shot as they went to collect clothes from a rooftop washing line. The Israeli army insisted the children had been blown up by a roadside bomb. However, journalists visiting the morgue saw only single bullet wounds to the head.
The truth, said Rafi, was that they were shot by an Israeli soldier following clear orders to shoot anyone on a roof regardless of their role in the conflict.
Rafi says that his overriding impression of the operation was "chaos" and the "indiscriminate use of force". "Gaza was considered a playground for sharpshooters."
-- Israeli Soldiers Tell of Indiscriminate Killings by Army and a Culture of Impunity by Conal Urquhart; 6 Sept 2005.
The following day, Jamal’s mother and sister went back to their home to check on Jamal. At that point Jamal was alive and had not been injured. His mother says:
-- Amnesty International: Shielded from scrutiny: IDF violations in Jenin and Nablus, 4 November 2002 (AI Index: MDE 15/143/2002); via Stop Caterpillar.
RAFAH REFUGEE CAMP, Gaza, May 24 -- On the same day that Israeli tank fire killed eight Palestinian protesters in an incident that dominated international broadcasts and headlines last week, another young Palestinian died a private, quiet death just a few hundred yards away.Thirteen-year-old Saber Abu Libdeh was killed by an Israeli sniper last Wednesday while trying to fetch drinking water for his family in the sealed-off neighborhood of Tel Sultan, his parents and siblings said. There were no headlines and no news stories. Even some of his relatives and neighbors, locked in their houses under military curfew, didn't know what had happened to him until days later, they said.
As Israeli tanks, armored bulldozers and soldiers began pulling out of Rafah Monday morning and military officials said they had suspended a seven-day offensive, the Abu Libdeh family emerged from seven days of fear to bury their son and tell the story of his death. It was a story that in many ways captured the suffering felt by about 25,000 Palestinians in a residential area transformed into a fighting field.
About 10,000 Palestinians attended a mass funeral for Saber Abu Libdeh and 15 other Tel Sultan residents on Monday, just hours after the army withdrew. But before the ceremony, dozens of distraught relatives and neighbors crammed into the front room of the boy's house in a ritual of grief, kissing his face and hugging his tightly wrapped body. His sister Asma fainted.
"See his blood? See my son's blood?" said the father, pointing at the wall. "He was 13 years old!"
At least 42 Palestinians were killed in the weeklong offensive here that Israeli military officials called Operation Rainbow. The officials said the offensive had targeted Palestinian guerrillas and uncovered three tunnels used for smuggling weapons and ammunition across the nearby border with Egypt. Palestinian officials said more than a thousand people have been rendered homeless by Israeli demolitions, and many more have fled attacks on residential neighborhoods.
The army came to Saber's neighborhood of concrete houses, narrow alleyways and wide streets before dawn last Tuesday morning, Saber's mother recalled. An Apache helicopter gunship fired missiles at men coming out of the Bilal mosque directly across from the house, killing several people, according to the mother, Hanim, and other relatives.
The crash of the missiles shattered the family's sleep, they recalled. Shrapnel rained against the front of the house and blew out their windows. The extended family of 16 stared through the broken glass at two corpses lying outside the mosque, where they remained for several hours because no one dared go outside as the Apaches flew overhead.
Saber, the youngest of seven, was doted on by his brothers and sisters and adored by his young nieces and nephews, family members recalled. He was afraid of the violence, his brothers said.
At around 7 a.m. that day, the Israeli army announced a curfew by loudspeaker. The Abu Libdeh family gathered in the back room of the house, the family members recalled.
Jeeps and tanks began circling the area, and it seemed to the Abu Libdehs that each issued a different announcement, once in Hebrew, once in Arabic. One called on members of the Palestinian Authority police forces to come into the street with their weapons above their heads, while another demanded that all males above 16 years old turn themselves in, family members and neighbors said.
By afternoon, the Abu Libdehs noticed that the tap water in their apartment had a foul smell. The special claw attached to Israeli tanks to detect planted bombs had apparently also dug up sewage and water lines, causing them to mix. No one in the area had electricity, telephone or drinking water, residents said. The family did have a few cell phones among them, with batteries that would not last long, and a few bottles of drinking water.
On Tuesday evening, the Abu Libdehs recalled, they ran out of water. They began feeding the children tomatoes to quench their thirst.
On Wednesday afternoon, Saber and his 16-year-old brother, Yousef, decided to cross the narrow alley to their older brother's house, where water was stored in tanks, to fill soda bottles with drinking water.
Yousef recalled that they listened for danger. They heard no rumblings of tanks or humming of Apache helicopters, he said. Their older brother Ayub, 26, who had been married the previous week, promised he would wait in the doorway and watch them the whole time, Yousef added. The two boys opened the door.
The first bullet hit Yousef in the stomach, and the second hit Saber in the chest, Yousef recalled. The boys dropped the bottles. Ayub reached out to help them, but Yousef was shot twice more, and Ayub was shot in the hand, according to Yousef and hospital medical records. An Israeli army spokesman later said that Israeli troops were "likely responsible" for the death.
Saber fell into the house and into his mother's arms, bleeding from his nose and mouth, his mother and Yousef recalled. The bullet had struck his heart, hospital records showed.
"He said, 'I'm dying,' " said his mother. "But I didn't believe it."
A Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance passing through the area after coordinating with the Israeli army got the call. Fathi Dirbi, a 30-year-old emergency medical technician, said Saber was in a coma when he arrived. Yousef and Ayub were conscious. "I told the brothers that we'll try to get him there in time," Dirbi recalled of the race to the hospital.
The evacuation was filled with delays, he said. A tank held up the ambulance's departure for 15 minutes while a soldier inside gave instructions from a loudspeaker for Dirbi to open the back door so that a camera affixed to the tank could examine its contents. The ambulance had to stop again at a second tank, and after five minutes Dirbi said he became impatient and walked up to the tank driver and yelled that he had to leave.
It was too late.
"When I got to the hospital, they told me to take Saber to the morgue," Dirbi said.
-- A Boy's Quiet Death Amid Rafah's Chaos: 13-Year-Old a Victim of Israeli Offensive
By Robin Shulman
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, May 25, 2004; Page A10
"We Won't Chill Till We Confirm The Kill": It's Not Just A Slogan On A T-Shirt
Below is the English translation from Hebrew of the radio communications between IDF soldiers that occurred shortly before and after the murder of nine-year-old Amira al-Hams in Rafah. The recording was submitted in January 2005 in the trial of the company commander, whose name has been withheld due to a military court order. He faces a maximum of three years in prison. Translated from the Hebrew by Nomi Friedman. Originally from Harper's Magazine, May 2005.
SENTRY: We spotted an Arab female about 100 meters below our
emplacement, near the light armored vehicle gate.
HEADQUARTERS: Observation post "Spain," do you see it?
OBSERVATION POST: Affirmative, it's a young girl. She's now running east.
HQ: What is her position?
OP: She's currently north of the authorized zone.
SENTRY: Very inappropriate location.
[Gunfire]
OP: She's now behind an embankment, 250 meters from the barracks. She keeps
running east. The hits are right on her.
HQ: Are you talking about a girl under ten?
OP: Approximately a ten-year-old girl.
HQ: Roger.
OP: OP to HQ.
HQ: Receiving, over.
OP: She's behind the embankment, dying of fear, the hits are right on her, a
centimeter from her.
SENTRY: Our troops are storming toward her now. They are around 70 meters from
her.
HQ: I understand that the company commander and his squad are out?
SENTRY: Affirmative, with a few more soldiers.
OP: Receive. Looks like one of the positions dropped her.
HQ: What, did you see the hit? Is she down?
OP: She's down. Right now she isn't moving.
COMPANY COMMANDER [to HQ]: Me and another soldier are going in. [To the squad]
Forward, to confirm the kill!
CC [to HQ]: We fired and killed her. She has . . . wearing pants . . . jeans
and a vest, shirt. Also she had a kaffiyeh on her head. I also confirmed the
kill. Over.
HQ: Roger.
CC [on general communications band]: Any motion, anyone who moves in the zone,
even if it's a three-year-old, should be killed. Over."
- via The Angry Arab News Service, 24 Jan 2006
"The Smaller They Are - The Harder It Is!": It's Not Just A Slogan On A T-Shirt
Sniper: “They forbid us to shoot at children”.
Journalist: “How do they say this?”
Sniper: “You don’t shoot a child who is 12 or younger”.
Journalist: “That is, a child of 12 or older is allowed?”
Sniper: “Twelve and up is allowed. He’s not a child anymore, he’s already after his bar mitzvah. Something like that”.
Journalist: “Thirteen is bar mitzvah age”.
Sniper: “Twelve and up, you’re allowed to shoot. That’s what they tell us”.
Journalist: “Under international law, a child is defined as someone up to the age of 18.”
Sniper: “Up until 18 is a child?”
Journalist: “So, according to the IDF, it is 12?”
Sniper: “According to what the IDF says to its soldiers. I don’t know if this is what the IDF says to the media.”
-- Amira Hass' interview with an IDF sniper, explaining why so many Palestinian children were killed in the first weeks of the intifada, when the IDF was largely confronted by stonethrowers. Published in Ha'aretz, Don’t shoot till you can see they’re over the age of 12, 20 November 2000.
"[T]wo-thirds of the 621 children killed at checkpoints, in the street, on the way to school, in their homes, died from small arms fire, directed in over half of cases to the head, neck and chest – the sniper's wound".
- Dr Derek Summerfield, reporting on the results of a four-year field study in the occupied Palestinian Territories for the British Medical Journal. (cite)
Photo: T-shirt printed for members of an IDF elite unit who had completed sniper training, reads "The smaller they are - The harder it is!".
Source: Dead Palestinian babies and bombed mosques - IDF fashion 2009 (Ha'aretz); via Mondoweiss.
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