'Breaking the Silence' offers new ammo on army misdeeds

http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/479929.html

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"The released soldiers behind the "Breaking the Silence" exhibition distributed to the press this week a new collection of soldiers' testimonies of incidents in the territories. The accounts focus on incidents in which officers and soldiers knowingly broke Israel Defense Forces open-fire regulations."

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"Among the incidents included by Breaking the Silence:

- An armored corps soldier reported gunfire intentionally directed at the water tanks atop homes in the Gaza Strip village of Dir al-Balah. Crew members in his tank would compete to see who could hit the most water tanks.

- An armored corps soldier serving in Rafah reported firing 1,500 rounds from a machine gun in a random manner that endangered human life.

- A soldier in the Golani Brigade's Egoz unit reported on an incident in the northern West Bank in which soldiers fired live ammunition at stone throwers. Armored corps soldiers in Jenin fired machine guns from afar at Palestinian homes without identifying specific targets.

- A Nahal Brigade officer reported on an incident outside the Muqata in Ramallah in which a colonel opened fire with live ammunition on a violent Palestinian demonstration when open-fire regulations - written by that same colonel - directed soldiers to use only riot control equipment."

the bombs will be smarter than the schmucks that are going to shoot them off.

And now even after having it spelled out for them, the people continue to do nothing.

When IDF officers and non-commission officers have put forth documented evidence that the IDF does target civilians, to hear others try to put the IDF (not all of the IDF) in a higher plain than those of the resistance and terrorists.

Until there's a conscience acceptance that both sides use unacceptable approaches to this conflict, we'll continue to fight in circles.

And isn't that what it comes down to?

I agree with you completely. Cylclical violence has done much to destroy free thought and diplomacy.

I understand a need to defend a population, but to provoke and then wonder why the violence continues is crazy.

....,

Which is mostly in Hebrew, that an IDF tank commander ordered his crew to crush a bunch of Palestinian cars for no reason whatsoever, and then the same commander was chosen to give an "ethics" lecture by the IDF high command.

Truly sublime moral standards.