Thread by @ireallyhateyou

🧵"One of the senior commanders in the sector ordered to shoot a man who waved a white flag and raised his hands, when he was unarmed and very far from the IDF forces. When he was told that the man was holding a white flag and you could see for sure that he was not armed, he replied: "I don't know what a white flag is, shoot to kill."

It took more than a year for Haim Har Zahav, Israeli journalist and army reservist, to see that the "war" he takes part in is immoral. He learned that while serving for 86 days in the infamous "Netzarim Corridor/Territory". And yet he continues to serve, claiming that most war crimes are actually in the "grey area".

A piece by him published in Ha'aretz yesterday is very revealing regarding the nature of the "fighting" in the Gaza Strip. Following are a few translated excerpts.

Regarding 5 Palestinians who tried to go back to North Gaza and were detained and interrogated:
"Towards evening the investigators had to decide which of the five would be released, if any, and who would be transferred for further investigation in Israel. "I can tell you've been here only a few days," one of the interrogators told me with a smile when I asked what the decision was and how to carry out the release of those who are not needed for further investigation. When I asked how he knew we were new, he smiled again and answered: "Because you are still taking captives."

"A human life in the Gaza Strip is worth less than the lives of the thousands of stray dogs that roam it looking for food. While there is a clear order that forbids shooting dogs, unless there is a real danger to the soldier when the dog's jaws are fixed on him, it is allowed to shoot humans without any real restrictions, except for the personal moral limits of the soldier holding the weapon."

"So what do we do? Systematic destruction of buildings. In this “corridor” it is impossible to find an intact building that is more than half a meter high, except for the buildings that the IDF uses. They have all been blown up. The exceptions are the Islamic University, which Barak Hiram ordered to blow up, and only the outer frame of the building is still standing, more or less, and the Turkish hospital, which is still standing despite heavy damage. Everything else is gone.

Where there used to be neighborhoods and houses, there is now sea sand and dust. The dunes are slowly covering the little concrete that wasn't blown up, and in a few months no one will be able to guess that there were families, roads, cars, schools, fields, greenhouses there. Only a few stubborn plants and trees somehow managed to survive the blowing up of the houses and the D9."

"The method is quite simple: raid a certain area, make sure it is empty of people (and if not, expel the residents) and set off explosives. It used to be customary to use standard explosives, but by January-February we were already using old mines, and today we use all kinds of chemicals to create the required explosion. This reflects the need more than anything else: the weapons factories do not meet the requirements, and there are still a lot of buildings in the Strip to blow up."

"No one tells the Palestinians what the red line is that they are not allowed to cross as they move north, towards the corridor. They find out the hard way: they are shot to death as they approach the imaginary line that the IDF has decided on, and which changes from time to time... The second the sniper bullets, or the grenade dropped from a drone, or the mortar shell fired from a distance hit them, they officially become terrorists and enter the statistics."

"One day, a general alert was received that a Hamas spotter might be stationed in one of the buildings south of the corridor in the future... In the same building, a man was seen hanging laundry on the roof the next morning, and the drone flying overhead reported this... The drone operator was asked if he recognized an observation device next to the laundry hanger suspected of being a potential spotter. He said no, and that he saw other people near one of the corners of the building... During the conversation between the drone and the other elements in the sector, someone used the word "dirty" instead of "person." "Dirty" is a code name for a terrorist. This word, said by someone in a radio conversation, was enough to give permission for a tank in the sector to fire on the building... The result, according to the Palestinians, was many injuries and eight deaths, including children."

"And so the days passed, with dozens of buildings being blown up almost every week, and occasionally Palestinians who cross an imaginary red line being killed... Whoever wants to kill Arabs because they are Arabs will indeed kill Arabs, and no one will ask him questions, nor will he be interrogated, nor will he be punished."

The archived article (Hebrew):
archive.md/04OTg