The most moral army in the world ~ DEFCON 3

Sometimes you just have to shut up. At least on public and with the cameras pointing at you. Not Gabi Askhenazi, chief of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). In an event with new recruits, Askhenazi said:

"I can say that the IDF is the most moral army in the world".

Really? Well, without digging too much in the dirt, it is quite easy to find just in the last two weeks examples of the opposite.

Like last weekend, when Haaretz newspaper uncovered the story about supposed irregularities in the rules of engagement, lax moral and arbitrariety -even cruelty- in the behavior of the troops involved in Cast Lead operation in Gaza. From the lips of the own soldiers.

One of the squad commanders of that so moral army, being asked why an old woman was shot dead by a sniper even she was unarmed, a civilian and didn’t represent a threat, answered this:

“What’s great about Gaza — you see a person on a path, he doesn’t have to be armed, you can simply shoot him”.

Those snipers have been as well this week in the media for another worrying issue. Apparently, a unit of the IDF has been purchasing T-shirts with claims, at best, offensive. In one of them we can appreciate an Arab pregnant woman inside a rifle scoop over the sentence “One shot, two kills”. IDF fashion items for this summer.

Apparently this doesn’t worry the IDF a lot. But hey, when it comes to a Chinese awards whose logo reminds kinda vaguely to that of the Hitler’s SS, then, Israel’s embassy in Beijing starts to claim for revenge under the anti-Semitism shield. Even though they recognize that anti-Semitism in China is something quite unlikely.

Back to the IDF actions, to the protests from various international groups, the UN and the report from Amnesty International regarding the use of White Phosphorus (WP) by Israel in the Operation Cast Lead, now we have to add another one from Human Rights Watch that confirms that matter. According to the New York-based lobby, Israel (and Hamas in a lesser way) used white phosphorus at least once illegally in Gaza.

White phosphorus is a permitted weapon used under determinate circumstances. Those include the use of it to make smoke columns as way of screening movements or aiming to deactivate booby traps and mines; but never used as an incendiary weapon against people or buildings, never against civilians and never in populated areas..

Marc Garlasco, the senior analyst who has made the report for Human Rights Watch, describes that Israelis used this weapon in three different ways. First, the shot it in open rural areas, maybe to deactivate mines and hidden explosives. Then, in cities’ outskirts, probably to screen their movements and hide themselves to Hamas. Anything illegal there.

Trouble comes with the third use, with air-burst WP sprout in crowded urban areas. Everytime soldiers though they had seen a Hamas’ compound, they sent in a rain of white phosphorus. That’s how a school, a hospital and an UN building were hit. For Mr. Garlasco, this was a tactic destinated to burn down the buildings.

The problem came with the civilians in between. Reports from doctors on the ground, like the head of Sifa Hospital’s burnt unit, Dr. Nafez Abu Shaban, confirm this.

But what it was even more problematic, according to Mr. Garlasco -former chief of High Value Targeting on the Joint Chiefs of Staff- is that he doesn’t find any explanation to why Israel used the WP this way. Air-burst WP minimizes the effect of the smoke while maximizes the incendiary effects. And the buildings attacked where too big for the WP to be able to deactivate hidden explosives or mines inside..

Garlasco adds:

“It still boggles my mind, what the military utility was”.

Of course, many of the brutalities in Gaza went directly from the commanders. And not only from those on the ground. Radicalization in Israeli society is a fact -shown in the latest elections-, the same way Gaza war has radicalized the Palestinians.

As the Palestinians have thrown themselves on the Islamists’ arms, the IDF has thrown itself on rabbis’ arms. In fact, many religious men called for a holy war in Gaza during Cast Lead operation.

Whit somehow less drama, also this week, soldiers from the IDF also targeted another dangerous threat: kids with balloons. The Israeli police banned the celebrations around the Arab Day 2009, hosted this year in Jerusalem -which was a de facto boycott to the event itself. When some kids where celebrating it in a schoolyard, letting free red, white, green and black (for the Palestinian flag) balloons into the air, soldiers form the IDF run into the school and “shot down” the rest of the balloons.

And that’s just from the last week. Not taking into consideration these other news appeared on the media in the last month:

- Israeli Army Now Less Careful About Civilian Deaths?
- Witnesses say white flags didn't keep Israeli troops from firing at and killing Palestinians.
- Final Gaza toll shows 960 civilians killed.
- Gazans say Israeli troops forced them into battle zones.
- Israeli troops killed Gaza children carrying white flag, witnesses say.

What does the IDF do meanwhile? Uhm... Oh, yes; it is busy celebrating the election of one of his corporals as Miss Israel 2009 and preparing the trip to Bahamas. Oh, and living morality lessons!