🧵Haaretz published a Hebrew-only article today, nominally about Israeli soldiers facing PTSD from their time in Gaza, with numerous admissions to killing children. 
“… ‘We enter the area…and start spraying, firing hundreds of bullets. Then we charged forward, and then I realized that it was a mistake.’ There was no terrorist there. ‘I saw two bodies of children, maybe eight years old, maybe ten’… the company commander arrived and said coldly, as if he wasn't human, 'They entered the extermination area, it's their fault, that's how it is in war.’”
"‘Every day we have the same mission, to secure the humanitarian aid in the northern Gaza Strip’… the residents try to move forward to take a good place in line, but there is a line ahead of them that they do not notice. ‘A line that if they cross, I can shoot them,’ explains Benny. ‘It's like a game of cat and mouse. They try to come from a different way every time, and l'm there with the sniper rifle, and the officers are shouting at me, 'Take it down, take it down. I shoot 50-60 bullets every day, I stopped counting Xs. I have no idea how many I killed, a lot. Children.’”
“‘The officers don't care if children die, nor do they care what it does to my soul. As far as they're concerned, I'm just another tool.’”
“One of them even said that during one of the operations in the Gaza Strip, the platoon's soldiers accidentally killed a woman and her two children, who had entered an arbitrary extermination zone set by the army. ‘We didn't know, we saw three figures and we shot according to orders,’ he said.”
The article details soldier suicides, denial of mental health care, and even imprisonment for breakdowns—and twice mentions soldiers pissing themselves.
Haaretz usually translates its Hebrew articles into English within a few days. In the meantime, here’s the original: haaretz.co.il/news/magazine/…
And while you are here, be sure to check out my latest Substack post, American Snipers, about two assassins who made the news this week: one who will never see freedom again after killing Charlie Kirk, the other who will likely never pay a real price after celebrating the execution of 100+ unarmed Palestinians. infinitejaz.substack.com/p/american-sni…
It should be noted that this article is about soldiers firing indiscriminately into civilian areas and killing children. Yesterday the Dutch newspaper @volkskrant published (yet another) investigation into children being killed by single sniper bullets to the head or chest. (More in my newsletter, linked above.)
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