IDF soldiers ordered to shoot at Gaza rescuers, note says

[Violet_Crumble]

GAZA STRIP - "Rules of Engagement: Open fire also upon rescue," was handwritten in Hebrew on a sheet of paper found in one of the Palestinian homes the Israel Defense Forces took over during Operation Cast Lead. A reservist officer who did not take part in the Gaza offensive believes that the note is part of orders a low-level commander wrote before giving his soldiers their daily briefing.

One of the main themes in news reports during the Gaza operation, and which appears in many testimonies, is that IDF soldiers shot at Palestinian and Red Cross rescuers, making it impossible to evacuate the wounded and dead. As a result, an unknown number of Palestinians bled to death as others cowered in their homes for days without medical treatment, waiting to be rescued.

The bodies of the dead lay outside the homes or on roadsides for days, sometimes as long as two weeks. Haaretz has reported a number of such cases, some of them as they happened. The document found in the house provides written proof that IDF commanders ordered their troops to shoot at rescuers.

The sheet of paper entitled "Situational Assessment" was found by a field researcher of The Palestinian Center for Human Rights in the home of Sami Dardone's family in Jabal al-Rayes, east of Jabalya. The extended Dardone family lives in about 40 homes in this neighborhood, built on a hilltop. Some of the homes were taken over by the army to house troops during the offensive and to serve as sniping positions, or for shooting in general.

Most of the homes were seriously damaged when the IDF directly bombed them or other targets nearby at the start of the ground operation. This was also the reason the homes' residents fled on January 4. When the residents returned to the neighborhood at the end of the offensive on January 18, they found that the IDF had completely destroyed some of the homes, in addition to those that had been damaged by shelling and others that were wrecked when soldiers broke in through the walls. Sometimes the soldiers needed explosives to break in.

A military source told Haaretz that "the document that was found is not an official document signed by a particular commander, and as such the IDF cannot comment on fragments of sentences that were jotted down on a piece of paper, and asks that this not be interpreted as directives and instructions that were issued by commanders."

http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1072830.html

[safeinOhio]

1. No need to interpret, actions speak volumes.

[shira]

2. no need to think critically, Israel is always guilty

Someone "discovering" a note in hebrew in Gaza is incriminating evidence, you know. It's not like any Gazans know hebrew.

And, at worst, it's not as though Palestinians have never used rescue vehicles before to transfer terrorists and carry out operations.

[safeinOhio]

3. We know what Israel wants to do

We these historic quotes.


Israeli Prime Minister (at the time) in a speech to Jewish settlers New York Times April 1, 1988

5. "When we have settled the land, all the Arabs will be able to do about it will be to scurry around like drugged cockroaches in a bottle."


Golda Meir, March 8, 1969.

7. "There was no such thing as Palestinians, they never existed."


Israeli General Matityahu Peled, Ha'aretz, 19 March 1972.

9. "If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country. It is true God promised it to us, but how could that interest them? Our God is not theirs. There has been Anti - Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault ? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?"


9a. Ben Gurion also warned in 1948 : "We must do everything to insure they ( the Palestinians) never do return....The old will die and the young will forget."

10. "We have to kill all the Palestinians unless they are resigned to live here as slaves."


Moshe Dayan, address to the Technion, Haifa, reported in Haaretz, April 4, 1969.

17. "We walked outside, Ben-Gurion accompanying us. Allon repeated his question, what is to be done with the Palestinian population?' Ben-Gurion waved his hand in a gesture which said 'Drive them out!'"


Theodor Herzl, founder of the World Zionist Organization, speaking of the Arabs of Palestine, Complete Diaries, June 12, 1895 entry.

22. "One million Arabs are not worth a Jewish fingernail"

[henank]

4. Fake quotes

Every one of them.
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.jewish/browse_thread/thread/61d990951e8bd43d

[safeinOhio]

5. and these?

"The public almost automatically associates Jews and Israel. The press continues to refer to "the Jewish State." Israeli politicians often speak "in the name of the Jewish people." Yet the Zionist movement and the creation of the State of Israel have caused one of the greatest schisms in Jewish history.
- Yakov M. Rabkin, 2006
(See: A threat from within: New book describes a century of Jewish opposition to Zionism)

"It is not only the political unacceptability of Israel's Occupation which makes the call for sanction urgent and obligatory, it is the massive violations of Palestinian human rights, of international law and of numerous UN resolutions that the Occupation entails. If Israel as the Occupying Power is not held accountable for the intolerable situation within its ability, indeed, within its responsibility to end, the entire international system of justice is rendered meaningless and empty. And that is what makes the Occupation an international issue. If Israel succeeds in defying the Fourth Geneva Convention and making its Occupation permanent, if an entire population is literally locked behind walls and its right of self-determination trampled, then the ability of human rights to win out over an international order founded on power politics and militarism is jeopardized. We all have a stake in ending the Occupation"
- Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, 2005
(See: Sanctions Against the Israeli Occupation: It's Time)

“I imagine that if I were a Palestinian of the right age, I would, at some stage, have joined one of the terror organizations.”
- Ehud Barak, Israeli general, and Prime Minister 1999 - 2001

“What cause have we to complain about their fierce hatred to us? For eight years now, they sit in their refugee camps in Gaza, and before their eyes we turn into our homestead the land and villages in which they and their forefathers have lived.”
- Moshe Dayan, Israeli general, 1956
(See: Israeli Apartheid and Terrorism)

[safeinOhio]

6. and the videos, if you don't trust words

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8ST5m9pREQ
http://www.progressiveislam.info/showDiary.do?diaryId=1811
http://palsolidarity.org/2009/01/4148
http://palestinethinktank.com/2008/12/06/israeli-terrorist-settler-shooting-palestinians-in-hebron/
http://palsolidarity.org/2009/02/5065

[henank]

10. Quoting from a rabidly anti-Zionist like Rabkin

does not exactly prove your point. Which is ... what exactly? I still don't quite understand what you're trying to say. That Israelis are all apartheid-loving racist evil blood-sucking bloodthirsty trigger-happy drooling lunatics who should never see the light of day outside of an asylum?

OK, I get your point.

You've obviously never set foot in Israel and equally obviously you've never met an ordinary Israeli man-in-the-street.

Stay with your delusions. I hope they keep you warm at night.

Meanwhile for a little bedtime reading, I bring you here the Hamas covenant which will show you what warm fuzzy bunnies they really are. http://www.mideastweb.org/hamas.htm

[azurnoir]

7. Thanks for the Google site

and the 2 posters who discredited the quotes as "Palie" lies the reference used by one of them for Palestinians oh and one by that raging antiSemite Benny Morris

[Violet_Crumble]

12. Why doesn't it surprise me that a bigot like the one you linked to would be someone you believe...

'Pallies'? WTF? That's pretty bigoted. Hey, but you've investigated all the primary sources for those quotes, coz there's no way you'd just swallow as fact what a bigoted bozo (and bigoted bozos aren't renowned for their intelligence or being well read) on a newsgroup has to say, right?

Just at a glance, I know for a fact that one of them isn't a fake quote at all.

"One million Arabs are not worth a Jewish fingernail" While I haven't been able to track down that Herzl wrote that, the quote itself is very real and was said by Rabbi Perrin at the funeral of Baruch Goldstein.

Also, as I said to another poster in a recent thread, you seem to be of the belief that someone like Ben-Gurion never advocated ethnic cleansing (they used to call it 'transfer' back then) of Arabs from Palestine. Of course he did. His most explicit support of it was at a Zionist meeting in 1938 where he said: 'I support compulsory transfer. I don't see in it anything immoral.' Ben-Gurion was a hardliner, not the dove that some seem intent on portraying him as...

[Name removed]

8. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[EFerrari]

9. It was identified by a reservist. He must be part of the conspiracy.

[Violet_Crumble]

11. It's a bit of a problem when people don't bother reading articles that are posted...

Foot in mouth ensues. It's so much easier just to try to blame Palestinians or to make out that it's acceptable not to evacuate wounded and dead civilians because their rescuers could be terrorists. Anyone who'd read the article would also know that testimony from eye-witnesses already exists that state that rescuers were not allowed to reach dead and wounded civilians....

[EFerrari]

15. On that score, I have been among the guilty myself.

:)

[shira]

17. it was discovered by a PCHR field rep

as bad as the note seems to be on the surface, it may just be something as simple as the IDF field commander receiving info. to be alert about Hamas commandeering some rescue vehicles during that particular time or day. That has been known to happen before and it has cost Israeli lives.

[azurnoir]

16. Gosh could this be why Israel won't allow notebooks in to Gaza?

that way it will be a lot harder for those Palestinians to forge incriminating notes, its just amazing that more these have been found or do you think they'll stop at one to make it more convincing?

[Scurrilous]

13. Rights group: IDF killed 16 medical workers during Gaza op

<snip>

"Israel Defense Forces soldiers did not consider medical teams as entitled to receive the special protection granted to them within the framework of their duties during Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, according to a new report by Physicians for Human Rights due to be released on Monday.

PHR quoted figures issued by the World Health Organization, which showed 16 Palestinian medical personnel were killed by Israeli fire during the offensive and that 25 were wounded while performing their duties.

It said Israel attacked 34 medical care facilities, including eight hospitals.

The report also raises questions of whether IDF soldiers violated the IDF's own ethical code and basic humanitarian values, when they prevented treatment and the evacuation of the wounded and fired at emergency rescue teams and Palestinian medical facilities.

Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHR) described alleged incidents that "reveal that not only did the not evacuate besieged and wounded families, it also prevented Palestinian teams from reaching the wounded."

PHR's report followed accusations by other human rights groups and Palestinians that Israel's actions during the 22-day offensive in the Palestinian coastal enclave, controlled by the Islamist Hamas group, warranted war crimes investigations."

more

[safeinOhio]

14. My point is

Neither side is without fault. I've talked to some one who has spent time in the West Bank as an peace observer, she is a nun, and the stories of the brutality of the settlers is terrible. She said, most Israelis have nothing good to say about the settlers. I'm not really in favor of any country based on either religion or race. I don't see any move by Israel toward a two state solution. I'd be fine with them moving back to the 68 borders and then building their wall on their own side. While some will not agree to Israels right to be, the other side doesn't think the Palestinians deserve their own home. The whole thing stinks and both sides are equally to blame.