US Intelligence Enables Israeli Attacks

This interview is from couple years back when Gaza was under attack by Israel. But, since, nothing has changed in conditions of Gaza, Israel or other stakeholders (US, Middle East countries etc.), this interview is still very much relevant today. This interview is interesting due to its discussion of 3 main topics which give Israel the legitimacy to build an open air prison (Gaza is essentially an open air prison) & then use it as its weapons testing facility (which Israel actually does, as discussed in another blog post earlier in 2017):

1. US sharing intelligence with Israel is nothing new. Israel is considered an staunch ally in the Middle East by US, & hence, it bends over backwards to accommodate any reasonable or unreasonable Israeli requests. US would even throw its own citizens under the bus, proverbially speaking, to furnish Israel's requests. US may not have enough money to help solve its own problems (homelessness, education, crime, unemployment etc.) but it has to give billions in financial aid to Israel every year, besides, military & intelligence sharing.

2. Arab dictators legitimizing Israel's occupation of Palestinian land is the worst form of crime against Muslims. Muslims fully expect to be railroaded by non-Muslims, but what can be said & felt when your own Muslim leaders, esp. those leaders who are called the "custodian of the 2 holy mosques" of Islam, make friends with Israel. Why? Because they operate per the idea that enemy of my enemy is my friend. Since. Iran is considered an enemy by both Israel & Saudi Arabia; that enmity of Iran made friends & allies of Israel with Saudi Arabia.

On top of that, since, Saudi Arabia is the leader of Sunni Arab world, other Middle Eastern / prominent members of the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) are also following the lead of Saudi Arabia; countries like Kuwait, UAE, Qatar etc.

So, Palestinians not only have Israeli, European, & North American Zionists & Evangelical Christians to deal with, they also have Muslim leaders from Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, & Kuwait etc. working against them & Iran.

Further to that, another tangential, but related, point, is that this alliance of Israel, US, & Saudi Arabia & its followers, show the American hypocrisy. The slogan of democracy is all well & good in theory, but in reality, as long as, American political & energy interests are secure, it doesn't matter to US & Western governments, what happens to human rights in Middle Eastern countries. As Glenn Greenwald says in the interview that the Western governments "... actually give the Saudis training and technology that bolster their surveillance, one of the most repressive regimes in the world, at the very same time that we pretend to be campaigning for democracy."

3. The role of media in US has become more of propagating what the government is saying. So, although, the Western governments talk about freedom of the press, the mainstream press has lost its way, & become the mouthpiece of their respective governments. The public has realized that & hence, a large majority disregard the media, & that's exactly, what Trump seized on, but he & his followers took the problem to the other extreme & label anything spewing out of Trump as facts & everything else as lies.

Western governments & press disregard media of countries they think are their enemies, for instance, North Korea, Russia, China etc. & bill the national media outlets of these countries as mere mouthpieces of their respective governments. But aren't the media of the Western governments doing the exact same thing for their own governments? For example, American news outlets like CNN, ABC, Fox, MSNBC etc. played a crucial role in drumming up the war rhetoric for Gulf War I, Gulf War II, Afghanistan, Iraq & Libya.

We can all blame the actions of the media losing its integrity due to their never-ending chase of the TV ratings & advertisement dollars but what's more troubling is the hypocrisy; bringing the perfect proverb to my mind that "kettle is calling the pot black."

The new administration of Mr. Trump is predictably doing what several other past administrations have tried to do, previously; broker a peace deal between Israel & Palestine, & finally bring the peace in the Middle East. However, the peace deal is like a corporate vision, which will never actually be attained & always remain an elusive dream, because the peace deals are not being negotiated with honesty. Hypocrisy & double agendas rule the day. Israel needs Gaza & West Bank to always show the world that they are in threat & is the victim (in addition to being those places as live testing places for Israel's billion-dollar arms industry). America needs Israel & repressive Middle Eastern regimes to control its own interests in Middle East. American media has also become the pawn of the government & the public is being fed the lies about Muslims, Islam, Israel, Palestine, & Arab countries to help manufacture domestic support for whatever American government actually wants to do in the Middle East.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMuxNOtNL9Q

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: So what do we know about this targeting? If I understand it correctly, the documents that Snowden released aren't about this particular attack or this specific attack on Gaza, but in the past there's evidence not only of intelligence sharing, but the word that leaked off the page to me when I was reading your piece was targeting. What do we know about that?

GLENN GREENWALD, AWARD-WINNING JOURNALIST, THE INTERCEPT: It's no secret that the U.S. is the key party enabling Israeli militarism and aggression. In general, it provides, obviously, huge amounts of cash to the Israelis, even in an ongoing attack, such as the one currently taking place in Gaza. The U.S. just in the last week has furnished arms and munitions and grenades to the Israelis that they're using in the attack.

So our piece focused on the role that the NSA and the intelligence apparatus that the United States has built plays in enabling the Israeli attack. And we revealed some documents showing that the relationship has grown substantially over the last decade between the NSA on the one hand and the Israeli counterpart, the SIGINT National Unit, on the other, in which the NSA provides the Israelis with all kinds of surveillance technology, training, but also lots of data that they collect in the course of doing surveillance that the Israelis then use to target people in Gaza, in the West Bank, and throughout the region, first for surveillance, but then, obviously, also for targeting with violence. And so the U.S. really is at the center of every form of Israeli aggression that takes place in that region.

JAY: Now, we're led to believe that the American satellites have the capability of actually seeing faces on streets. I mean, one, do we know whether that's true? And two, if that level of technology is being transferred, that would mean active, real-time involvement of the U.S. intelligence or U.S. army in Israeli warfare.

GREENWALD: The Americans share the vast bulk of their surveillance technology and surveillance activities in the region with the Israelis. It's a very close cooperative sharing arrangement.

I don't think there's any question that the Israelis are being reckless and more or less indiscriminate in the violence they're wreaking on Gaza. I mean, there are Israeli generals who have inadvertently acknowledged, essentially, that they are attacking heavily civilian areas and with their knowledge that lots of civilians are going to be killed. They have targeted UN schools that they knew and that coordinates for which had been provided to them many, many times. And so I don't think there's a lot of efforts being undertaken by the Israelis to be very precise or careful in the kinds of people that they're killing.
...

... I think they're interested in knowing the whereabouts of people who are of greatest interest to them. And certainly the sharing arrangement with the U.S. helps them to know where people are, and it helps them to geo-locate them. ... .

... I think the important point is this is not a careful and precise operation, where they're targeting people very carefully and then killing only them. They're engaged in the destruction of entire blocks, blowing up huge apartment buildings and homes. And that's why the death toll of innocent people has been so high.

JAY: Is there any limits on what type of technology the United States gives to Israel that you're aware of? Are they getting the same kind of technology that the American Armed Forces has itself?

GREENWALD: A lot of it, yeah. ... there was an agreement whereby the NSA agreed to provide raw communication, even of U.S. citizens, to the Israelis without first even minimizing--meaning safeguarding the identity of the American citizens to whom that communication pertained. ... it isn't that the NSA just wholesale hands over everything to Israel. But in some cases the NSA cooperates more aggressively with the Israelis than they do even with their closest surveillance partners in the U.K., Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. ... it's just reflective of this overall policy that the U.S. government has to be incredibly loyal to the Israelis when it comes to providing pretty much anything the Israelis want.
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JAY: ... the political side of the American administration's essentially driven by domestic politics. But ... this is more about big money than it is about Jewish voters.

GREENWALD: ... what's interesting is there's this sort of taboo on how you're supposed to talk about the role that domestic politics plays in our policy toward Israel, because it touches on longstanding anti-Semitic tropes about Jewish money controlling foreign policy for the benefit of Israel and at the expense of the United States or other countries. But if you look at what political consultants and the like say when they're speaking candidly, ... that's more or less what they say. Hank Sheinkopf is one of the most sort of savvy and experienced political operatives. He was a high-level aid to the Clintons. He helped run Hillary Clinton's Senate campaigns in New York. And there's this fascinating New York Sun article from 2007 that talks about how all of the Democratic presidential candidates, like John Edwards and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and the like, are parading before AIPAC and speaking very, very aggressively and militaristically about Iran. And they asked Hank Sheinkopf why that is. And he said, well, it's very simple to understand: it's because Jewish voters are essentially the ATM of American politics--in New York.

But I think it's not just Jewish voters. I think it's really important to understand that one of the biggest factions supporting Israel, probably in a more aggressive way than a lot of Jewish voters, are evangelicals, who for religious reasons believe that it's really crucial that Israel occupy not only Israel but sort of what they view as greater Israel, which includes the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, because they believe God wanted Israel to possess that land and that a unified Israel, as they see it, is necessary for the return of Jesus and for the rapture. And so you have not just Jewish voters, but evangelical Christians who are very fervent in their demands that the U.S. government support Israel, even at the expense of American interest. And that definitely is a big part of the domestic pressures.

JAY: ... the other issue is do you not think that much of the foreign-policy elite, professional and political, share this vision of Israel as this necessary outpost for America in a sea of oil with angry Arabs that don't like Americans very much, so it's not just about the potential money in American elections, it's also a convergence of interest and seeing that Israel, for better or worse, is absolutely essential to American hegemony in the Middle East?

GREENWALD: Yeah, I think it's an important point. First of all, ... I don't think that the issue with Israel is different in terms of domestic politics than pretty much every other issue, which is that money dominates, and there's much more money on the side of pro-Israel or support for Israel than there is, say, support for the Palestinians, which is why it's so lopsided. ... .

But the point you make is an important one, which is sometimes it gets depicted that Israel is this kind of domineering force that kind of commandeers American politics for its own interest at the expense of the United States. I think you're right, though-- it's much more of a two-way street than that. The Americans definitely look at Israel as an important weapon that they use to advance their interests in the Middle East, just like they look at support for the dictatorial regimes that are their allies as well, in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Jordan, Bahrain. You know, these are just ways that the United States kind of dominates that region in order to secure their energy and oil interests. And Israel is an important weapon in the eyes of a lot of American policymakers. It's not just that they're forced to do so because of domestic political constraints.

JAY: And this relationship with the Saudis is kind of an interesting piece of this puzzle, because ... the Saudis are also in on this intelligence sharing. So you have both Israel and Saudi Arabia within the American intelligence confidence circle. Supposedly, the Saudis are so in support of the Palestinians. But sort of at a deeper level, you almost have a kind of quasi-alliance between the Saudis and the Israelis to help manage the region under this American intelligence and military umbrella.

GREENWALD: Oh, there's definitely a de facto alliance, or at least a coalition, between the U.S., the Saudis, and Israel. Especially since the Saudis began viewing Iran as their great rival in the region, they viewed working cooperatively with the Israelis as something that was very much in their interest. And, of course, they made kind of meaningless pronouncements in support of the Palestinians because they need to do so for political consumption. I mean, even the Saudi tyrants care a little bit about the public not viewing them as partners of the Israelis.

But that is one of the most undercovered and underexamined issues in U.S. foreign policy is the unbelievably close relationship between the U.S. and the Saudis, and now increasingly the Israelis. I mean, we did do an article a week ago publishing the documents showing very close intelligence sharing between the Saudis and the Americans. We actually give the Saudis training and technology that bolster their surveillance, one of the most repressive regimes in the world, at the very same time that we pretend to be campaigning for democracy.

But the thing that's even more amazing about that is we've had this 12 year period of running around trying to pin the blame of 9/11 on all sorts of parties, from Saddam Hussein to Iran to whoever the sort of enemy du jour is, and the Taliban in Afghanistan, and yet the country that probably bears most of the blame, if anyone does, is Saudi Arabia. 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi. You have people in the Saudi government who at the very least were close to some of the people who were helping to plan the 9/11 attack, probably financing the people who were responsible. And yet they become our closest allies. It's just one of those ironies that underscores how propagandistic the war on terror has become.

JAY: ... how much is mainstream media paying attention to the some of the kind of stuff you're breaking?

GREENWALD: I mean, I think they're paying attention in several different respects. I mean, the stories that we've broken, the Snowden revelations in general, have made a big impact on the media landscape. I think part of that is just the drama of it all, the sort of spycraft, the drama about where Snowden can go or where he would get asylum, all of that.
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... I think that the stories themselves get some media attention. But I do think that some get more attention than others based upon not what's actually newsworthy, but based upon the kinds of things the American media likes to systematically ignore.
...

And I think some of the revelations that we published about spying with Saudi Arabia, about spying with Israel, have been more or less ignored by the American media for the same reason, that it's just so contrary to the narrative that we like to sustain about what the role of the U.S. government in the world is, and any kind of attention to that sort of stuff would require a whole lot of digging and further investigation that American media outlets in general like to avoid because of how uncomfortable it makes people.
...

... They like to propagate that narrative and avoid things that call any of it into question. And I think that's actually one of the reasons why people have lost faith in established media outlets is because it doesn't really seem to serve any real purpose if all they're doing is bolstering and propagating what the government is saying instead of questioning and investigating it.

Israeli soldiers cast doubt on legality of Gaza military tactics

Well, Muslims already dislike Israeli occupation of Palestine, but reading these kinds of stories / articles, I wonder how come others still support the occupation, wholeheartedly. Heck, saying anything against the Israeli occupation is considered "anti-Semitic" & many developed countries are outlawing it, outright (Canada, included). And then the whole world considers the developed countries of the West as fair, just, & humane?

But then, is it fair to solely blame the West for supporting Israel in its illegal occupation of Palestine? After all, the leader of the country, where Islam's 2 holiest sites are located, who is also known as, "custodian of the 2 holy mosques," collaborated with Israelis against Iran, for its own geopolitical agenda.

It was not that surprising to read the gung-ho, radicalized, extreme hateful attitudes of the Israeli soldiers towards Palestinians. It wasn't surprising to read how bombings were conducted or civilians were killed ("shoot in memory of our comrade" who was killed by friendly fire). It was not surprising that how sites which should not have been bombed (UN schools being used as refugee centers, for example) were bombed & reported in the world media that they were never bombed (because the firing order was given for a few hundred meters out of the supposedly-protected site, & then given a "correction order" to fire again at the site, & only the first firing order is logged in the records, not the "correction fire.")

It wasn't surprising, at least to me, & I assume that to millions more around the world, because these kinds of stories about Israel are not uncommon. There are news articles, opinion pieces, movies, etc. for as long as I can remember. Heck, with internet, it's becoming even easier to spread these kinds of stories around. But, the situation on the ground have only gotten worsen in the past half century, & not become better in any way.

Be it any war waged by anyone (US, UK, NATO, Israel etc.) for any reason (usually to kill a threat), it usually achieves the opposite. The threat never goes away & actually, increases much more. Because, the person whose innocent family has been killed off right before him/her, has no reason or hope to keep living. Then, that person becomes a suicide bomber & joins a party which allows it to take revenge.

On top of that, actions like these by countries waging wars make their own populace further insecure, since now, they don't know if & when that person will strike back. This was all very nicely portrayed in a Canadian movie, "Inch'Allah". It even showed how adversely these hardline tactics affect Israeli soldiers themselves, since their hearts know what they are doing is wrong (assuming they are conscientious enough), but they have to follow orders. This long-term conflict between the hearts & minds give them PTSDs. So nobody is winning with this illegal occupation of Palestine.

People who have their eyes closed will keep defending Israel & dismiss stories like these, even though, these are accounts of the war from soldiers who were themselves involved in that uni-lateral Gaza war of 2014. These people don't just stop there but take away anyone's right to criticize Israel, too.

As George Orwell said, "The further a society drifts from truth, the more it will hate those that speak it."
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http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/04/israeli-soldiers-cast-doubt-on-legality-of-gaza-military-operation

Testimonies provided by more than 60 Israeli soldiers who fought in last summer’s war in Gaza have raised serious questions over whether Israel’s tactics breached its obligations under international law to distinguish & protect civilians.
 
The claims – collected by the human rights group Breaking the Silence – are contained in dozens of interviews with Israeli combatants, as well as with soldiers who served in command centres & attack rooms, a quarter of them officers up to the rank of major.
 
They include allegations that Israeli ground troops were briefed to regard everything inside Gaza as a “threat” & they should “not spare ammo”, & that tanks fired randomly or for revenge on buildings without knowing whether they were legitimate military targets or contained civilians.
 
In their testimonies, soldiers depict rules of engagement they characterised as permissive, “lax” or largely non-existent, including how some soldiers were instructed to treat anyone seen looking towards their positions as “scouts” to be fired on.
 
The group also claims that the Israeli military operated with different safety margins for bombing or using artillery & mortars near civilians & its own troops, with Israeli forces at times allowed to fire significantly closer to civilians than Israeli soldiers.
 
Phillipe Sands, professor of law at University College London & a specialist in international humanitarian law, described the testimonies as “troubling insights into intention & method”.

“Maybe it will be said that they are partial & selective, but surely they cannot be ignored or brushed aside, coming as they do from individuals with first-hand experience: the rule of law requires proper investigation & inquiry.”

Describing the rules that meant life & death in Gaza during the 50-day war – a conflict in which 2,200 Palestinians were killed – the interviews shed light for the first time not only on what individual soldiers were told but on the doctrine informing the operation.
 
Despite the insistence of Israeli leaders that it took all necessary precautions to protect civilians, the interviews provide a very different picture. They suggest that an overarching priority was the minimisation of Israeli military casualties even at the risk of Palestinian civilians being harmed.
 
While the Israel Defence Forces Military Advocate General’s office has launched investigations into a number of individual incidents of alleged wrongdoing, the testimonies raise wider questions over policies under which the war was conducted.
 
Post-conflict briefings to soldiers suggest that the high death toll & destruction were treated as “achievements” by officers who judged the attrition would keep Gaza “quiet for 5 years”.

The tone, according to one sergeant, was set before the ground offensive into Gaza that began on 17 July last year in pre-combat briefings that preceded the entry of 6 reinforced brigades into Gaza.

“[It] took place during training at Tze’elim, before entering Gaza, with the commander of the armoured battalion to which we were assigned,” recalled a sergeant, one of dozens of Israeli soldiers who have described how the war was fought last summer in the coastal strip.

“[The commander] said: ‘We don’t take risks. We do not spare ammo. We unload, we use as much as possible.’”
 
“The rules of engagement [were] pretty identical,” added another sergeant who served in a mechanised infantry unit in Deir al-Balah. “Anything inside [the Gaza Strip] is a threat."
 
The area has to be ‘sterilised,’ empty of people – & if we don’t see someone waving a white flag, screaming: “I give up” or something – then he’s a threat & there’s authorisation to open fire ... The saying was: ‘There’s no such thing there as a person who is uninvolved.’ In that situation, anyone there is involved.”
 
“The rules of engagement for soldiers advancing on the ground were: open fire, open fire everywhere, first thing when you go in,” recalled another soldier who served during the ground operation in Gaza City. The assumption being that the moment we went in [to the Gaza Strip], anyone who dared poke his head out was a terrorist.”

Soldiers were also encouraged to treat individuals who came too close or watched from windows or other vantage points as “scouts” who could be killed regardless of whether there was hard evidence they were spotting for Hamas or other militant groups. “If it looks like a man, shoot. It was simple: you’re in a motherfucking combat zone,” said a sergeant who served in an infantry unit in the northern Gaza strip.

“A few hours before you went in the whole area was bombed, if there’s anyone there who doesn’t clearly look innocent, you apparently need to shoot that person.” Defining ‘innocent’ he added: “If you see the person is less than 1.40 metres tall or if you see it’s a lady ... If it’s a man you shoot.”

In at least one instance described by soldiers, being female did not help 2 women who were killed because one had a mobile phone. A soldier described the incident: “After the commander told the tank commander to go scan that place, & 3 tanks went to check [the bodies] ... it was 2 women, over the age of 30 ... unarmed. They were listed as terrorists. They were fired at. So of course they must have been terrorists.”

The testimonies raise questions whether Israel fully met its obligations to protect civilians in a conflict area from unnecessary harm, requiring it not only to distinguish between civilians & combatants but also ensure that when using force, where there is the risk of civilian harm, that it is “proportionate”.

“One of the main threads in the testimonies,” said Michael Sfard, an Israeli human rights lawyer & legal adviser to Breaking the Silence, “is the presumption that despite the fact that the battle was being waged in urban area – & one of most densely populated in the world – no civilians would be in the areas they entered.”

That presumption, say soldiers, was sustained by virtue of warnings to Palestinians to leave their homes & neighbourhoods delivered in leaflets dropped by aircraft & in text & phone messages which meant – in the IDF’s interpretation – that anyone who remained was not a civilian.
 
Even at the time that view was deeply controversial because – says Sfard & other legal experts interviewed – it reinterpreted international law regarding the duty of protection for areas containing civilians.
 
Sfard added: “We are not talking about a [deliberate] decision to kill civilians. But to say the rules of engagement were lax gives them too much credit. They allowed engagement in almost any circumstances, unless there was a felt to be a risk to an IDF soldier.”

If the rules of engagement were highly permissive, other soldiers say that they also detected a darker mood in their units that further coloured the way that soldiers behaved. “The motto guiding lots of people was: ‘Let’s show them,’ recalls a lieutenant who served in the Givati Brigade in Rafah. “It was evident that was a starting point. Lots of guys who did their reserve duty with me don’t have much pity towards [the Palestinians].”

He added: “There were a lot of people there who really hate Arabs. Really, really hate Arabs. You could see the hate in their eyes.”

A second lieutenant echoed his comments. “You could feel there was a radicalisation in the way the whole thing was conducted. The discourse was extremely rightwing ... [And] the very fact that [Palestinians were] described as ‘uninvolved’ rather than as civilians, & the desensitisation to the surging number of dead on the Palestinian side. It doesn’t matter whether they’re involved or not … that’s something that troubles me.”

And the testimonies, too, suggest breaches of the IDF’s own code of ethics – The Spirit of the IDF – which insists: “IDF soldiers will not use their weapons & force to harm human beings who are not combatants or prisoners of war, & will do all in their power to avoid causing harm to their lives, bodies, dignity & property.”

Contrary to that, however, testimonies describe how soldiers randomly shelled buildings either to no obvious military purpose or for revenge.
 
One sergeant who served in a tank in the centre of the Gaza Strip recalls: “A week or two after we entered the Gaza Strip & we were all firing a lot when there wasn’t any need for it – just for the sake of firing – a member of our company was killed.

“The company commander came over to us & told us that one guy was killed due to such-and-such, & he said: ‘Guys, get ready, get in your tanks, & we’ll fire a barrage in memory of our comrade” … My tank went up to the post – a place from which I can see targets – can see buildings – [and] fired at them, & the platoon commander says: ‘OK guys, we’ll now fire in memory of our comrade’ & we said OK.”

How Israeli forces used artillery & mortars in Gaza, says Breaking the Silence, has raised other concerns beyond either the rules of engagement or the actions of specific units.
 
According to the group’s research during the war, the Israeli military operated 2 different sets of rules for how close certain weapons could be fired to Israeli soldiers & Palestinian civilians.
 
Yehuda Shaul, one of the founders of Breaking the Silence, & himself a former soldier, explains: “What our research during this project uncovered was that there were 3 designated ‘Operational Levels’ during the conflict – numbered 1 to 3. What the operational level was was set higher up the chain of command. Above the level of the Gaza division. What those levels do is designate the likelihood of civilian casualties from weapons like 155mm artillery & bombs from ‘low’ damage to civilians to ‘high’.

“What we established was that for artillery fire in operational levels 2 & 3 Israeli forces were allowed to fire much closer to civilians than they were to friendly Israeli forces.”

Ahead of the conflict – in which 34,000 shells were fired into Gaza, 19,000 of them explosive – artillery & air liaison officers had been supplied with a list of sensitive sites to which fire was not to be directed within clear limits of distance. These included hospitals & UN schools being used as refugee centres, even in areas where evacuation had been ordered.

“Even then,” explains Shaul, “we have a testimony we took that a senior brigade commander issued order how to get around that, instructing that the unit fired first outside of the protected area & then calling for correction fire on to the location that they wanted to hit.

“He said: “If you go on the radio & ask to hit this building, we have to say no. But if you give a target 200 metres outside then you can ask for correction. Only thing that is recorded is the first target not the correction fire.”

And in the end, despite the high number of civilian casualties, the debriefings treated the destruction as an accomplishment that would discourage Hamas in the future.

“You could say they went over most of the things viewed as accomplishments,” said a Combat Intelligence Corps sergeant. “ “They spoke about numbers: 2,000 dead & 11,000 wounded, half a million refugees, decades worth of destruction. Harm to lots of senior Hamas members & to their homes, to their families. These were stated as accomplishments so that no one would doubt that what we did during this period was meaningful.

“They spoke of a five-year period of quiet (in which there would be no hostilities between Israel & Hamas) when in fact it was a 72-hour ceasefire, & at the end of those 72 hours they were firing again.”

Without responding to the specific allegations, the Israeli military said: “The IDF is committed to properly investigating all credible claims raised via media, NGOs, & official complaints concerning IDF conduct during operation Protective Edge, in as serious a manner as possible.

“It should be noted that following Operation Protective Edge, thorough investigations were carried out, & soldiers & commanders were given the opportunity to present any complaint. Exceptional incidents were then transferred to the military advocate general for further inquiry.”