Now I know this news is going to upset one particular Malaysian pro-Israeli blogger because what I have been saying all along, for months now over at BolehTalk, has now become even more irrefutable.
This person is a bit like Major Sharon Finegold, an Israeli army spokeswoman who boasted that the Israeli army is a role model for many armies in the world and pioneers in the war on terror. While I can understand why Finegold defends the Israeli Army – she is Israeli after all and an IAF spokesperson - I can't that particular person. ;-)
The news is that a group of 300 former Israeli service personnel calling themselves the Breaking the Silence group have come forward with stories of widespread Israeli military abuses against the Palestinians - indeed abuses of the most draconian kind. They have made damaging accusations against the behaviour of the so-called model Israeli soldiers.
And it’s not just coffee-shop badmouthing. In public testimonies, these former servicemen, very much troubled by their consciences, stated that the Israeli Defence Force routinely carried out "deterrent gunfire" into Palestinian areas without a specific target, in other words, just pouring fire on, for example, schools and other inhabited areas - and tough sh*t if anyone gets blown away. These former soldiers condemned such behaviour as sheer ‘moral corruption’.
I mentioned schools because there have been a series of complaints by UN officials of such Israeli military criminality.
Additionally the Israeli army also pushed Palestinian civilians forward as cannon fodder by forcing them to investigate suspected roadside bombs, and also used those civilians as human shields during arrest operations.
Well, it's more than just "moral corruption" - it's Nazi-like persecution of the worst kind motivated by cowardice.
Such confessions by Israeli soldiers are not new. Previously a number of officers of the crème de la crème of the Israeli Defence Force, its Air Force pilots, had refused to participate in bombing, rocketing and machine-gunning Palestinian towns. Some of these objectors were highly decorated pilots. They couldn’t stomach such unchivalrous and in fact criminal actions. They cried out “We are air force pilots, not the Mafia.”
That certainly gave one an idea of what they had been instructed to perpetrate.
Under Ariel Sharon, most of the Israeli military has turned into vicious but cowardly sturmtroopers.
But at the same time we must salute those Israelis who have stepped forward to tell all because of their conscience.
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