... the sky is blue, grass is green, water is wet, and Israel is once again being pounded by the media:
Israeli soldiers who fought in last winter's Gaza War say the military used Palestinians as human shields, improperly fired incendiary white phosphorous shells over civilian areas and used overwhelming firepower that caused needless deaths and destruction, according to a report released Wednesday.
The testimonies were by far the strongest allegations to come from war veterans that the army used excessive force during the three-week offensive and echoed claims already leveled by Palestinian and human rights groups. The military rebutted the report, saying the accounts were anonymous and impossible to verify.
The accounts of 26 war veterans were collected by Breaking the Silence, an organization of Israeli army reservists critical of their country's treatment of Palestinians. They described demolishing buildings, vandalizing homes and using more than essential firepower, given the relatively light resistance they encountered. One said the army needlessly used white phosphorous, a masking agent that can cause severe burns, for smokescreens. Others said regulations for opening fire were vague, and that soldiers were expected to do whatever was necessary to protect themselves.
Looks pretty bad at first glance... what with the eyewitnesses being Israeli soldiers and all. Yet, with a little digging, we learn a little more about Breaking the Silence. Bookie is... well... shovel ready:
Unlike the credulous reporters, who assumed that Breaking the Silence must be speaking the truth because it’s results jibed perfectly with their own ideological view (Israelis: murderers; Palestinians: victims), I was immediately suspicious.
One of the first tip-offs was the way Breaking the Silence is designated as a “human rights organization.” Long experience shows that those groups are never concerned with human rights in the abstract. They are always leftist organizations that are concerned with proving that America and Israel brutally victimize other people and they’re willing to sleep in any beds (politically speaking) to make their points. The fact that this is an Israeli group (which has the potential to destroy Israel) didn’t seem to affect that agenda.
Still, the organization’s self-identification is circumstantial evidence at best. I needed more, so I contacted the people who were most likely to know: Robert Avrech at Seraphic Secret, Soccer Dad, Thomas Lifson of American Thinker, Omri Ceren at Mere Rhetoric; Freedom Fighter at JoshuaPundit; and Carl at Israel Matzav. They were all swift and unanimous in thier response: Breaking the Silence is a Leftist group that is more dedicated to Leftism than it is to its members own survival.
Take the time to go and read all of Bookie's post, especially her ending. She hits a logical home run.
In the mean-time, Israel is fighting back on their own:
A newly-released collection of anonymous accusations of alleged human rights abuses by Israeli soldiers in Gaza has prompted reservists who served there to deliver signed, on-camera counter-testimonies about Palestinian terrorists' use of Gazans as human shields.
The dozen English-language testimonies were delivered in response to a report by Breaking the Silence, an organization which says it is attempting to collect accounts by Israel Defense Soldiers in order to expose "moral corruption" within the IDF, as explained in the movement's Web site.The accusations were made by anonymous people who said they were reserves soldiers, and whose faces were blurred in filmed talks. Some recounted hearing from other soldiers that the IDF used Palestinians as human shields during Operation Cast Lead in January. Others recalled destroying Palestinian property.
On the Web site www.soldiersspeakout.com, soldiers do identify themselves. "We came upon an ambulance from a local children's hospital," Pinchas Sanderson from Jerusalem recounted in his counter-testimony. The 29-year-old Canadian-born student is one of three native English-speakers who appear on the new Web site.
"It was suspicious because there was a very old lady in the ambulance of a children's hospital. Inside we found three RPG rocket launchers," he said. "We couldn't believe someone would use an ambulance to move them."
Johannesburg-born Jeremy Lipshitz, 24, recounted how his unit discovered a Hezbollah hideout in Lebanon but was ordered to hold fire. Lipshitz, a reserves Intelligence Corps field combatant who settled in Ra'anana after moving to Israel six years ago, said it was because the terrorists were using civilians as human shields.
Shane Goodson, a 23-year-old reserves paratrooper from Herzliya who in 2005 also immigrated to here from Pretoria, South Africa, described how the IDF is made up of "ordinary Israelis with families, jobs and a respect for family values."
In another testimony, an Israeli-born commando soldier talks about his ordering of his soldiers to clean up a Palestinian home after they were in it and how they collected items from their own food parcels from home and left it for the family.
So... who to believe... anonymous soldiers who hide their faces but not their ideologies or those who testify openly, publicly and unashamedly?
God... isn't this hard?
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