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IDF source: Charges of civilian shootings false By YAAKOV LAPPIN
Allegations that IDF soldiers deliberately shot and killed Palestinian civilians in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead have been found to be categorically untrue in official army investigations, an IDF source told The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday.
IDF reservists enter the Gaza Strip during Operation Cast Lead.
The source spoke on condition of anonymity because the results of the investigations have not yet been officially released to the public. He stressed, however, that the investigations were close to completion. The investigations examined claims made by graduates of the Rabin Pre-military Academy during a conference held last month, which were later written up and printed in an academy pamphlet. Some Israeli media outlets, including Haaretz, then seized on the claims, and the allegations went on to make headlines around the world. During the conference, one soldier claimed a marksman opened fire on a mother and two of her children, after a squadron commander told them to walk into a no-entry zone. "All of the soldiers who were involved in the conference were questioned – not as a punishment – but in order to understand whether they had witnessed these things. From all of the testimonies we collected, we can safely conclude that the soldiers who made the claims did not witness the events they describe," the source said. "All of it was based on rumors. In the incident of the alleged shooting of the mother and her children, what really happened was that a marksman fired a warning shot to let them know that they were entering a no-entry zone. The shot was not even fired in their general direction," the source said.
Aftermath of IAF strike in Rafah at the start of Operation Cast Lead. Photo: AP
"The marksman's commander ran up the stairs of a Palestinian home, got up on the roof, and asked the marksman why he shot at the civilians. The marksman said he did not fire on the civilians. But the soldiers on the first floor of that house heard the commander's question being shouted. And from that point, the rumor began to spread," the source added. "We can say with absolute certainty that the marksman did not fire on the woman and her children. Later, the company commander spoke with the marksman and his commander. We know with certainty that this incident never took place," he said. The source said that a second allegation of killing of civilians was also false, though he could not provide further details at this stage. "We investigate every allegation in order to see whether these incidents took place, and to draw conclusions if necessary," the source stressed. "Unfortunately, due to competition, sections of the press picked up this story and ran with it. It is a shame the media promoted this sort of spin all over the world," he added. It is unlikely the damage to Israel's image from the allegations can be repaired, irrespective of the results of the investigation, he noted. "It is a shame that the media allowed Palestinian manipulations to spread," he said. "Look at the allegation that we killed 48 civilians in a UN school in Gaza. In reality, seven people were killed, and four to five of them were terrorists. The UN apologized, but the damage is done," the source said.
Link: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1237727539851&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull In response to this thread: http://www.englishbaby.com/forum/LifeTalk/thread/269661 More articles:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1238409229712&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/middleeast/news/article_1467740.php/Israeli_closes_probe_into_Gaza_killings_saying_claims_were_hearsay_ Tel Aviv – Israel's military Advocate General has closed a probe into reports that soldiers taking part in Israel's recent offensive in the Gaza Strip intentionally killed civilians, after he found the claims 'were based on hearsay and not supported by specific personal knowledge.'
'It was found that once the claims were checked, they were not supported by the facts as determined by the investigation,' an Israel Defence Force(IDF) statement released Monday afternoon said.
The investigation was launched after soldiers who participated in the Israeli operation told a symposium last month of lax rules of engagement that allowed civilians to be killed.
One squad leader recounted an incident where the company commander ordered that an elderly Palestinian woman be shot and killed. She was walking on a road about 100 metres from a house the company had commandeered.
The IDF statement said that 'the soldier witnessed no such thing, and was only repeating a rumour he had heard.'
'This same soldier admitted that he had not witnessed the additional disrespectful and immoral incidents he had described during the conference,' the statement added.
Another soldier at the conference had described how a sniper shot dead a mother and her two children from the roof of a house, after soldiers on the ground floor had failed to inform him he should hold his fire because they were ordering the families living in the building to leave.
According to the IDF statement, the soldier had also not witnessed this incident.
'After checking the claim, it was found that during this incident a force had opened fire in a different direction, towards two suspicious men who were unrelated to the civilians in question,' the statement said.
The IDF also said that during its investigation, participants at the symposium admitted that their claims regarding the Israeli army's use of phosphorous munitions had been based on what they had heard and read in media reports, rather than on their personal knowledge.
'It is unfortunate that none of the speakers at the conference was careful to be accurate in the depiction of his claims, and even more so that they chose to present various incidents of a severe nature, despite not personally witnessing and knowing much about them,' Military Advocate General, Brigadier Avichai Mendelblit, said.
Brigadier Mendelblit's conclusions referred only to the claims from the symposium, the IDF said, and were not a substitute for other investigations.
The claims from the symposium raised a furore when they were published in the Ha'aretz daily on March 19, and nine Israeli human rights organizations demanded the country's attorney general establish an 'independent' investigative body, not linked to the military, to examine the allegations.
They said the government's failure to establish an independent investigation constituted a violation of Israel's responsibilities under international law and charged that the Israeli military had a history 'of failures to investigate suspicions of serious crimes and illegitimate officer orders.'
Israel launched its 'Operation Cast Lead' on December 27, in response to repeated rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip on its southern towns and villages.
During the campaign, which began with a week of heavy air strikes before the ground troops entered the enclave, 1,417 Palestinians were killed and over 5,000 were wounded, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights said.
The Israeli army said 1,166 Palestinians died in the offensive, adding it had collected their names and that 709 of them were militants.
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