Rogue IDF: O. Protective Edge 37° Dia

Ajude Gaza concretamente boicotando Israel e contribuindo no site abaixo
 https://www.byline.com/project/13  
IT NEVER HURTS TO DREAM

Quarta-feira, dia 13 de agosto de 2014

Six dead as Gaza disposal team was trying to disarm an Israeli missile in Beit Lahiya, in the north of the Gaza Strip. It comes hours before a three-day ceasefire agreed between Israel and the Palestinans is due to expire. 
Under heavy popular pression, during the night, the UK announced that if the fighting in Gaza continued after the ceasefire, they would suspend their military sales to Israel, while investigating whether they had been used properly.
The Palestinian factions announced a five day extension to the ceasefire.

Remembering the dead during Israeli offensive on Wednesday, August 13. Below, only Palestinian victims. 

Nome dos mortos palestinos no dia 13 de agosto de 2014.
Source/Fonte: IMEMC-International Midlle East Media Center. 2015

1. Simone Camilli, 37, Italian Journalist.
2. Ali Shihda Abu Afsh, Palestinian journalist.
3. Bilal Mohammad Sultan, 27. (Lieutenant)
4. Taiseer Ali al-Houm, 40. (Engineering Corps)
5. Hazem Abu Morad, 38. (Deputy Head Of The Engineering Corps)
6. Deema Klob, Gaza.
7. Kamal ad-Daly, 26, Khan Younis.

Reservistas da IDF, forças israelenses de ocupação,

Shovrim Shtika - Breaking the Silence

66.  “Not enough time for everyone to leave”
Area: Gaza strip
You said there were cases in which an operational necessity trumped the risk of causing harm to civilians. Could you give me an example?
Say there’s a building that’s over two stories high, and you know for certain there’s a meeting between two heads of [enemy] cells in there, and you decide to take it down.
And this is when you know that there are additional civilians in there, or this is when you prefer not to check?
On occasion, you do know.
Can you give me a specific example?
I don’t remember much – I do remember there was this one house of five or six stories in Khirbet Khuza’a. I remember there was ‘hot’ intel data on a meeting between militants there. The head of the cell was there for sure, and a decision was made to ’knock on the building’s roof,’ (a practice in which a small missile is fired at the roof of a building as an advance warning that it will shortly be destroyed in an air strike) and then immediately after that drop a bomb on it.
What’s ‘immediately?’
Not enough time for everyone to leave. Somewhere between 30 seconds and one minute.
Did you see anyone leaving the house?
Nope, actually – no one. I remember that after the ‘roof knocking,’ nobody left the house. I don’t know if that means they were being held there by force, or I don’t know what. I didn’t follow up to see whether harm was really inflicted upon civilians there, whether innocent people got killed there.
While you’re getting approval for [striking] the target, do you have any tools to find out whether there are other people in the house?
You can find out.
Do you try?
Absolutely, yes. You use all the means at your disposal to ascertain the number of militants that are in there, how many people, how many ‘hot spots.’ These probes don’t always work – either you didn’t manage to collect all the data you wanted, or you did and it’s not the answer you wanted to find. In any case, you decide to [bomb].
If you have all the means at your disposal to make sure there are no people [in the buildings], how come all those people were killed anyway?
There’s no way we can know everything. We do everything we can to know. If some family doesn’t have a phone and there’s no verification, and despite that you went ahead and ’knocked on the roof’ and nobody came out after a few minutes – then the assumption is that there’s nobody in there.
Is there some possibility that they would decide not to leave despite a ‘knock on the roof?’
There’s nothing you can do about people who are willing to sacrifice themselves. I’m not trying to justify such behavior. But the way the IDF sees it, if, say, ‘roof knocking’ was executed [and people stayed in the building] then there’s no way we can know about it. We have no way of knowing if there are people in there who chose not to leave.
Verifying that there are no civilians in the building – is that a mandatory prerequisite for carrying out a strike?
It’s not mandatory. Because even if there are civilians sometimes – [for example, while targeting] the Shuja’iyyadeputy battalion commander, [the strike] would be carried out if there weren’t too many civilians. When I say ‘too many’ I mean a double digit number.
This story, how atypical was it?
This was atypical due to the fact it was a multi-story building, five or six stories –because most of the houses that were seriously flattened were two, maybe three stories, tops. It was also atypical in the sense that there was information about the presence of innocent people in there. There was data about a certain number [of civilians] and it withstood the equation, apparently – and there was simply enough of an accumulation of intelligence and verified data about the presence of heads of cells in there, that they decided that the bombing was justified. 
67. "Wherever there aren’t any of our forces – you have permission to fire"
Rank: Lieutenant.   Unit: Infantry.   Area: Northern Gaza strip:
The specific night of the incursion [into the Gaza Strip], it sounded like the Yom Kippur War on the two-way radio. There was fire and you pull back and the battalion commander comes on and says, “We have two ‘flowers’ (an IDF term denoting wounded soldiers),” and a second later he comes on again and says, “No, it’s two ‘oleanders’ (an IDF term denoting soldiers killed in action).” Everyone was manic. I heard them saying on the assistive fire support radio that we were now firing at the entire area that was beyond our zone’s perimeter, right at the streets – central streets. Along those streets, along those tall buildings, there’s cannon fire, shells, combat choppers, everything was being used. All the targets that were marked in advance – streets, hideouts, control centers, tall buildings – the entire area blasted. All targets bombed. No playing around.
Where were you shooting at? 
At the area surrounding the spot where that incident happened, around it in a radius of 200 meters, right up to the 200 meter line, 210 meters. Boom, boom, boom. Firing protocol of three shells per minute, at all targets. If you have two [artillery] batteries you use both. Wherever there aren’t any of our forces – you have permission to fire.
Do you remember a specific such incident?
I remember an incident when one of the units (a ground forces commando unit) had casualties when they were advancing, it was when their senior commander was wounded, I think. There was a crazy panic and everyone started firing like crazy. ‘Started’ means the fire protocol was ready and the assistive fire support starts opening fire and I hear all the booms and see the flares up in the air, and it was obvious the entire area around them was in mayhem. That was a specific incident.  

Aerial view of the Rimal quarter in Gaza City, before OPE

Vista aérea do bairro Rimal, em Gaza

The swathe of destruction at Shujayia in Gaza city during OPE
O bairro de Shujayia hoje

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