Operation Protection Edge

Israel's last operation in Gaza Operation Protection Edge seems to have been conducted on a much longer scale(with over 2,200 Palestinians deaths nearly double the deaths of Operation Cast Lead and second Lebanon war) and disregard for civilians then previous operations(United Nation for office of coordination for humanitarian affairs believes 1,492 deaths out of 2,220 or 67% of death were civilians, Israeli intelligence and terrorism center believe it's 48.7% civilians and 51.3% terrorists identified, according to Israeli military it's 45% civilians and 55% terrorist identified . Operation protective edge was launched in response to Hamas launching(from November 12 2012 ceasefire there were 63 rocket and 11 mortar attacks from Gaza during 2013 rockets mostly from groups like Islamic Jihad that didn't obey the ceasefire) ( after crackdown on Hamas following kidnapping and killing of three Jewish teenagers by Hamas members(though not acting on orders from Hamas leadership). 36,000 shells, 19,000 of which were artillery were used in the operation. Artillery is inaccurate especially used in dense urban areas like Gaza. Artillery kills anyone within 50 meters and injuries anyone within 150 meters. Standard deviation the amount that artillery can hit without being considered a miss is 400 meters. In comparison mortar kills within 10m range and injury within 20m range. In the Shujiaiyeh district 4,800 artillery shells were used(causing 130 Palestinians to die) within seven hours in an attempt to prevent capture of Lt. Hadar Goldin.
http://972mag.com/gunning-for-destruction-in-gaza-you-want-to-see-people-in-pieces/106293/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Israel–Gaza_conflict

A recent 237 page Breaking the Silence(formed by Israeli soldiers in 2004 who served in Hebron that aims to expose Israeli public to reality of occupation) shows that rules of engagement were lax. Generally everyone in areas seemed to be viewed as combatants due to warnings given to the population before Israeli ground forces entered into Gaza. Here are some excerpts from Breaking the silence
"We entered a neighborhood with orchards, which is the scariest. There were lots of stories going around about being surprised by tunnels or explosive devices in these orchards. When you go in you fire at lots of suspicious places. You shoot at bushes, at trees, at all sorts of houses you suddenly run into, at more trees. You fire a blast and don’t think twice about it. When we first entered [the Gaza Strip] there was this ethos about Hamas – we were certain that the moment we went in our tanks would all be up in flames. But after 48 hours during which no one shoots at you and they’re like ghosts, unseen, their presence unfelt – except once in a while the sound of one shot fired over the course of an entire day – you come to realize the situation is under control. And that’s when my difficulty there started, because the formal rules of engagement – I don’t know if for all soldiers – were, “Anything still there is as good as dead. Anything you see moving in the neighborhoods you’re in is not supposed to be there. The [Palestinian] civilians know they are not supposed to be there. Therefore whoever you see there, you kill.”
http://www.breakingthesilence.org.il/testimonies/database/611701

"The rules of engagement are pretty identical: Anything inside [the Gaza Strip] is a threat, the area has to be ‘sterilized,’ empty of people – and if we don’t see someone waving a white flag, screaming “I give up” or something – then he is a threat and there is authorization to open fire. In the event that we arrest and restrain him, then one strips him to make sure there is no explosive device on him.

To get authorization to open fire, does he need to be armed, or with binoculars?
I think he just needs to be there.

When you say open fire, what does that mean?
Shooting to kill. This is combat in an urban area, we’re in a war zone. The saying was: ‘There’s no such thing there as a person who is uninvolved.’ In that situation, anyone there is involved. Everything is dangerous; there were no special intelligence warnings such as some person, or some white vehicle arriving… No vehicle is supposed to be there – if there is one, we shoot at it. Anything that’s not ‘sterile’ is suspect. There was an intelligence warning about animals. If a suspicious animal comes near, shoot it. In practice, we didn’t do that. We had arguments about whether or not to do it. But that was just a general instruction; in practice you learn to recognize the animals because they are the only ones wandering around.

During the period that you were there, did you see an armed Palestinian?
Nothing, I didn’t see a single living human being, except for the guys in my platoon and a few from the Armored Corps."
http://www.breakingthesilence.org.il/testimonies/database/132517

"There were 30-40 [Palestinian] guys in the first house at which we arrived. An opening was made [by our forces] in its outer wall with a breaching frame



–
it’s this device with explosives in it – and then we entered.

Was there a public warning for people to get out?
We didn’t know they were inside at that moment. Before that stage there had been all these leaflets (warning people to leave), and we saw them running away when we started entering [the Gaza Strip]. It was evident that the civilians understood that we were coming. At this point there was a massive deployment of backup forces, of the various relief forces. This specific house hadn’t been hit by any tank shells when we entered it. As far as I could tell this was due to a mistake – it was supposed to have been hit. Lucky for them it hadn’t. But in general, every house you were meant to enter was supposed to have been fired at beforehand, if not with a tank shell then with a tank-mounted 0.5 [machine gun]. This one was a house with a very, very large courtyard, and that’s where they were all gathered; there were signs indicating that they had packed quickly. I think they may have been under the impression that they would be able to stay. The field interrogator grabbed one of them and took him aside with the company commander; I have no idea what happened there, I suppose he tried to get as much information out of him as was possible. Ultimately, it was made clear to them that now they need to get the hell out of the place. They did.

Where to?
Further south, I guess. This absolutely did not concern me. At 04:00 AM, four or five women came over – they had put bags on a stick, like white flags. I don’t speak Arabic, but from their gesturing I gathered that they had come back – so they claimed – to take stuff they had forgotten in the house, stuff they considered critical. Obviously that didn’t happen.

What did you do at that point?
We fired toward their feet. "
http://www.breakingthesilence.org.il/testimonies/database/16337

Excess destruction of property also seemed to happen during the conflict.

"
With regard to artillery, the IDF let go of the restraints it once had. Ahead of every ground incursion there was a day of scouting and artillery was fired at the houses that formed the front line. There’s an artillery coordination officer in every unit, that’s his job. He works with maps, talks to the artillery corps and directs fire. I have no doubt – and I say this loud and clear – I have no doubt that artillery was fired on houses. Tanks, too, were firing a lot in there.

In what sort of situation is a tank’s aim directed at a house?

A unit commander speaks with the armored corps’ company commander, telling him, “I want you to shoot here, here and here. I’m going to go in there a little while. Shoot, so that if by any chance there are people in there that we don’t know about, at least the house will take a few hits before we enter.” You stay a safe range from the forces and fire.

The D9s (armored bulldozers) are operating during this time?

Always. Whenever tanks pass through central routes there will always be a D9 going through and clearing out the terrain before them in every direction, so that they’ll be able to pass through if there’s an explosive device or something in there. One of the high ranking commanders, he really liked the D9s. He was a real proponent of flattening things. He put them to good use. Let’s just say that after every time he was somewhere, all the infrastructure around the buildings was totally destroyed, almost every house had gotten a shell through it. He was very much in favor of that. "
http://www.breakingthesilence.org.il/testimonies/database/71388

"We entered [the Gaza Strip] in two files, the entire battalion, with tanks accompanying us the whole way, right alongside us. One thing that struck me as something we had never seen before was that the tanks were firing shells while we were [walking] just a few meters from them. A flash of light, boom.

What were they shooting at?
I got the impression that every house we passed on our way got hit by a shell – and houses farther away too. It was methodical. There was no threat. It’s possible we were being shot at, but I truly wouldn’t have heard it if we were because that whole time the tanks’ Raphael OWS (machine guns operated from within the tanks) were being fired constantly. They were spraying every house with machine gun fire the whole time. And once in a while blasting a shell into each house. There isn’t a single moment that you don’t hear the rumble of the tank next to you, or the next one up.

Was there also artillery cover fire at the same time?
Sure, constant shelling. We started hearing it before the entrance [into the Gaza Strip].

When you got near houses, was there resistance? Were you being shot at?
I don’t know, it’s possible – but during our walk there was no sign of any face-off or anything. There was a lot of shooting, but only from us. We entered the house when it was already daylight. Half the battalion waited in the courtyard of one of those houses and then they fired a MATADOR (portable anti-tank rocket). See, the battalion commander doesn’t want to go in through the front door, so you open up a way in through the side. There was an outer wall and an inner wall, and he shot a missile, which passed through the outer wall and then through the inner side one. A sweep was conducted in this really large house, which apparently belonged to one really big family. It was four stories high, there was enough room in there for the entire battalion. We would sleep on the floor, and we had made a round of the house to collect pillows and stuff, so there would be what to sleep on. Whoever managed to get hold of a bed, he was set. When we left, I remember the living room was an absolute mess – but I don’t know whether that was intentional or just because when you pass through, you go in with a heavy carrier backpack and you step on stuff. You’re tired after the night, you aren’t going to start worrying about their couches or whatever.

How is the sweeping of a house conducted, when you enter it?
We would go in ‘wet’ (using live fire). I could hear the shooting, everything was done ‘wet.’ When we entered this house everything inside it was already a mess. Anything that could shatter had been shattered, because everything had been shot at. Anything made of glass – windows, a glass table, picture frames – it was all wrecked. All the beds were turned over, the rugs, the mattresses. Soldiers would take a rug to sleep on, a mattress, a pillow. There was no water, so youcouldn’t use the toilet. So we would (*)(*)(*)(*) in their bathtub. Besides that, the occasional hole you would see in the house that was made by a shell, or ones made as firing posts – instead of shooting from the window, where you would be exposed, you would make a hole in the wall with a five-kilo hammer and that was used as a shooting crenel. Those were our posts. We had a post like that and we manned it in shifts. We were given a bizarre order that every hour we needed to initiate fire from that room.

Toward what?
There was a mosque identified [as a hostile target] that we were watching over. This mosque was known to have a tunnel [opening] in it, and they thought that there were Hamas militants or something inside. We didn’t spot any in there – we didn’t detect anything, we didn’t get shot at. Nothing. We were ordered to open fire with our personal weapons in that direction every hour. That was the order.

A few bullets or half a magazine?
The order didn’t specify. Each soldier as he saw fit. "

Who gave that order?
The commander. “Anything you see in the neighborhoods you’re in, anything within a reasonable distance, say between zero and 200 meters – is dead on the spot. No authorization needed.” We asked him: “I see someone walking in the street, do I shoot him?” He said yes. “Why do I shoot him?” “Because he isn’t supposed to be there. Nobody, no sane civilian who isn’t a terrorist, has any business being within 200 meters of a tank. And if he places himself in such a situation, he is apparently up to something.” Every place you took over, anything you ‘sterilized,’ anything within a range of zero to 200 meters, 300 meters –that’s supposed to be a ‘sterilized’ area, from our perspective.

Did the commander discuss what happens if you run into civilians or uninvolved people?
There are none. The working assumption states – and I want to stress that this is a quote of sorts: that anyone located in an IDF area, in areas the IDF took over – is not [considered] a civilian. That is the working assumption. We entered Gaza with that in mind, and with an insane amount of firepower. I don’t know if it was proportionate or not. I don’t claim to be a battalion commander or a general. But it reached a point where a single tank – and remember, there were 11 of those just where I was – fires between 20 and 30 shells per day. The two-way radio was crazy when we entered. There was one reservist tank company that positioned itself up on a hill and started firing. They fired lots – that company’s formal numbers stood at something like 150 shells per day. They fired, fired, fired. They started pounding things down two hours ahead [of the entrance].

What did they fire at?
They were providing cover during the entrance [to the Gaza Strip]. They were shooting mostly at al-Bureij, which is a neighborhood with a dominant geographical vantage point, and is also a Hamas stronghold, according to what we were told. I don’t know exactly what they were firing at and what they were using, but I do know they were firing a lot, tearing down that neighborhood, tearing it down to a whole new level. About 150 shells per day. "
http://www.breakingthesilence.org.il/testimonies/database/864024

"We reached the first line of houses and the platoon commander ‘cleared up’ a few key spaces with grenades. You never ‘open’ houses ‘dry’ (without live fire) – you throw a grenade [before you enter]. It busts the walls, brings down plaster and paint. At some point you take over the house. Only a few minutes after we would finish taking over the houses, the area was ‘sterilized,’ a sweep was conducted, one made sure there was no terrorist with an anti-tank missile… Then tanks and D9s (armored bulldozers) come over at the same time. It was one of the most beautiful orchards I’d ever seen – it looked just like an old-style Moshav (a type of rural town), and within a few hours it was totally erased – reduced to piles of powdered sand. Tanks drove over it and broke up the ground, smashing it to smithereens. ֿ

Was [the orchard] ruined on purpose, or because heavy equipment was moving through?

It simply was not taken into consideration. It’s not like they said, “Hey, there’s an orchard here.” You don’t think in those terms. No one was told to destroy the orchard – it’s simply that the earth was pushed up; it was needed for a rampart. It’s not as if they were trying to consider the Society for the Protection of Nature or the JNF (Jewish National Fund) in worrying about the trees and the animals.

The area was needed for a specific reason?

Right, and so it was used. [Inside the house] what we do is use a hammer to break the tiles for the sandbags. One of the soldiers said he wasn’t willing to do that because we could bring in sand from outside. They told him he couldn’t do that, and there was some arguing about it. We broke tiles in a corner of the house, in a place where we wouldn’t be sitting. We put sandbags and camouflage nets in the windows, so that when you guard there you’re protected, so that only a very small part of you is visible. The next night they told us, “We’re switching houses.” You take over another house, and the same procedure all over again, sandbags and so forth. When we went to take over [the next house], there was an orchard on the way. And crossing that is scary, you don’t know what’s in there. There was this crazy part when tanks were firing shells non-stop, and then all at once spraying machine gun fire into the entire orchard. You fire shells at the houses and spray bullets [at the orchard]. Eight, 10minutes like that, and then they say, “OK, you can start going through now.” There are people whose job it is to strategically analyze what constitutes a threat, and there are lookout posts. If movement is detected, the house is blown up. If you detect movement inside a house that’s in an area where combat has been taking place for more than two days, it’s pretty clear that they didn’t just drop by to make some coffee.



You see a man smoking a cigarette in a window, are you supposed to shoot him?

You’re asking questions only a civilian would ask. [That doesn’t happen]. "
http://www.breakingthesilence.org.il/testimonies/database/868128

"We went in [to the Gaza Strip] through the Nahal Oz entrance, we drove a bit north and then continued west. The houses were already in ruins by the time we got there. The D9 (armored bulldozer) used the rubble from the houses to form a rampart compound for us. There were chicken coops that weren’t destroyed by the aerial strikes, and the D9 simply came and peeled them apart. There was concern about tunnels there, so the coops were just crushed. The D9 comes over, lowers its blade on those houses and within an hour and a half everything is wrapped up into itself. Chickens in metal panels, in all those cages they have there, really big and pretty and it smells like roses. It was total destruction in there – the photos online are child’s play compared to what we saw there in reality. It wasn’t so much razing there – it was havoc, mostly: wrecked houses, collapsed balconies, exposed living rooms, destroyed stores. That’s what we saw. I never saw anything like it, not even in Lebanon. There was destruction there, too – but never in my life did I see anything like this.

And were tunnel shafts found in the coops?
No. There were no shafts in the coops. "
http://www.breakingthesilence.org.il/testimonies/database/25091

"
There were lots of discussions on ethics before we entered [the Gaza Strip]: what we can do, what we can’t do. When we enter a house, can we sleep on the beds? Should we sleep on the floor? But when I’m actually going into combat, whether or not it’s OK to sleep on their bed is the last thing I’m worried about. What’s sleeping on their bed compared to my life? Some people did voice concerns. When we left the first house [we had taken over], we slogged away cleaning it for about three hours because there was some claim that we shouldn’t let it be detected that we had been in there – and also because of the moral aspect – that we need to try and return the house to its former state, as much as possible. When we left [the Gaza Strip], most of the houses we had stayed in were blown up, so it’s kind of funny… But the way we treated all the following houses was different. It becomes clear that you don’t have it in you to deal with this – not emotionally, not physically. You don’t have the patience to keep a house clean. It was a dilemma, when we entered houses. There’s one image that’s burned into my memory. There was a house that we entered, which we stayed in for a very long time – we had taken to sitting on the couches – and if the floor got wet we tore off a piece of mattress to wipe it up with. In the end, one thing that was very dangerous was the illnesses. We used whatever we had around in the house. At a certain point you have to go to the bathroom.

Did you use the bathrooms in the houses?

Yes. You use a plastic bag and then throw it out. But when you wake up in the middle of the night you’re a little more disrespectful – when it comes down to it, it’s a difficult situation emotionally, and you don’t have the emotional energy – especially when it comes to your most basic needs: peeing, (*)(*)(*)(*)ting, and eating. So sometimes you find yourself peeing in a toilet that you know is getting flooded, and whoever comes back to that house will have a very hard time getting the place back to the way it was.

You said earlier that the houses you stayed in got blown up afterward.

Yes. After we left I heard a boom. I looked back and I saw an air bombardment, and they told us, “Yeah, there’s going to be a ceasefire, so we want to have ‘the final word’ before we leave.”


Who told you that?

All kinds of lectures from our commander. I saw it with my own eyes, it was a kilometer away. It’s hard not to notice a half-ton bomb getting dropped on a house. And after that three more bombs, and then five more, and then another 20. It was impossible to sleep, really. At a certain point there was this crazy thing, the only thing left standing was one wobbly house. This was three weeks, two weeks in. Two weeks in, the reaction that this got was a cynical one, and it really couldn’t have led to any other kind of reaction.


What do you mean by 'a cynical reaction'?

“Aww shoot, look, now they’re blowing everything up, damn, why didn’t we allow ourselves to use that couch, it looked so comfortable.” , "
http://www.breakingthesilence.org.il/testimonies/database/713875

"When we entered the [Gaza] Strip, our role as infantry was to take over houses and sort of turn them into little posts. Using the Palestinians’ houses in which we were stationed, we secured the tanks, which were operating mostly in our area. When we entered those houses, it was a very, very violent entrance – with lots of firepower, in order to make sure there wasn’t any hostile force within the structure. After we had stationed ourselves in the houses, then what’s called ‘post routine’ began. What happens is we start setting up posts – we decide which rooms overlook which directions, and what we can put to use. Every room that’s chosen as a post room, we cover its windows with shading nets, and then we use the house’s curtains. We used nails to attach them to the inside of the windows, and stretched them out with duct tape. And from that point the guarding routine begins, because you’re on guard duty almost half the time, during which you need to be looking around at what’s happening. While we were stationed there, the armored forces would fire at the surrounding houses all the time. I don’t know what exactly their order was, but it seemed like every house was considered a threat, and so every house needed to be hit by at least one shell, so that there’s no one in there. The armored [corps] fired a lot, relatively. All the houses around, when you looked at the landscape, they looked sort of like Swiss cheese, with lots of holes in them. Houses were erased during the time we were there – the ground was flattened, it all looked different. Any areas with sheds, the D9s (armored bulldozers) took them down – there was a big greenhouse area there, which was marked on the map as being used for firing [rockets] and storing munitions – the D9 flattened stuff over there, too.

What do markings on maps represent?
They just detail places where according to intelligence there’s a tunnel, or houses that belong to militants, I think, or locations designated as ‘hot spots’ that weren’t exactly defined – training zones, tunnels, launching sites. And booby-traps – places that were booby-trapped were marked.

After you left, were there still any houses left standing?
Hardly any. Once when we went to a house to which we were called, in which there was believed to be a militant, so we walked and the paths were more broken-up wherever the tanks had passed through – it was just sand, it wasn’t agricultural land with plants any longer. Uprooted olive trees everywhere. The houses themselves were broken, scattered about, a mound where a building once stood, houses simply scattered around. We didn’t actually get an operational order stating that that was the objective – but ultimately, no house was supposed to be left standing. A 500-meter radius where not a single house is left standing. "
http://www.breakingthesilence.org.il/testimonies/database/849459

 

More quotes

"Before the first ceasefire they told us we were going in [to the Gaza Strip] to take down a house. We went down quick and got the gear we needed ready and then we asked, “Which house are we taking down?” And they said, “We want to make a big boom before the ceasefire.” Like that, those were the words the officer used, and it made everyone mad. I mean, whose house? They hadn’t picked a specific one – just ‘a’ house. That’s when everyone got uneasy. At that moment we decided pretty unanimously that we would go speak with the team commander and tell him we simply aren’t going to do it, that we aren’t willing to put ourselves at risk for no reason. He chose the most inappropriate words to describe to us what we were being asked to do. I guess that’s how it was conveyed to him. “We’re not willing to do it,” we told him. It was a very difficult conversation. Him being an officer, he said, “First of all, so it’s clear to everyone, we will be carrying this thing out tonight, and second, I’m going to go find out more details about the mission for you.” He returned a few hours later and said, “It’s an ‘active house' (being used by combatants for military purposes) and it’s necessary you take it down, and not someone else, because we can’t do it with jets – that would endanger other houses in the area, and that’s why you’re needed.” In the end the mission was miraculously transferred to a battalion with which we were supposed to go in, and we were let off the hook. After the ceasefire a bulldozer and emulsion trucks (transporting the explosive liquid) and the driller (a drilling system for identifying tunnels) came to our area, and work started on the tunnels in our zone. It took two nights. At that stage, we returned to pretty much the same area in which we were stationed before, and we didn’t recognize the neighborhood at all because half the houses were just gone. It all looked like a science fiction movie, with cows wandering in the streets – apparently a cowshed got busted or something – and serious levels of destruction everywhere, levels we hadn’t seen in [Operation] ‘Cast Lead.’ No houses.
In Shuja’iyya too?
Yes. Every house that’s standing – which of course no longer look like houses because each has a hole in it – at least one – from a shell. Bullet holes, everything riddled with holes. The minaret of a mosque over which we had previously provided cover fire was on the ground, everything was really in ruins. And non-stop fire all the time – I don’t know why they were shooting non-stop, maybe so that none of the population would return. During the whole period of work there was constant fire. Small arms fire in the background the whole time. In addition to the shelling. "
http://www.breakingthesilence.org.il/testimonies/database/603892








"

A week or two after we entered the Gaza Strip and 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. I remember it happened on Friday afternoon and we – my force, which is a tank platoon, we were separated from the rest of the company, not connected to them physically or in terms of missions – we were with an engineering force doing something else, and the rumours started flowing our way.

They started saying that some guys were injured, some guys may be killed, seriously injured, and the game of where and who-knows-what-happened got going. The company commander came over to us and told us that one guy was killed due to such-and-such, and he said: ‘Guys, get ready, get in your tanks, and we’ll fire a barrage in memory of our comrade.’ In the meantime the platoon stood in a sort of stationary circle, people were crying, people also broke some windows in the area with their weapons, and we got in the tanks and started them up. And the platoon commander asked the company commander: ‘We are preparing for engagement, OK?’ ‘Engagement’, that is, a tank firing at something. The company commander says: ‘Authorised, at your own time.’ We went up, my tank went up to the post – a place from which I can see targets, can see buildings, can ensure that I can fire at them, and the platoon commander says: ‘OK guys, we’ll now fire in memory of our comrade’, and we said OK.

We were firing purposelessly all day long. Hamas was nowhere to be seen – it’s not like they stood up on some roof for you holding a sign that says: ‘We are Hamas militants.’ You have no idea what’s going on, and because you don’t, your human nature is to be scared and ‘over’ defensive, so you ‘overshoot’. And no one discusses that because it goes without saying that everyone wants to … And the rules of engagement were pretty easy-going – I was shocked when I first heard them."
http://www.theguardian.com/world/20...s-israeli-troops-break-ranks-on-gaza-campaign

 

Strange that Hamas makes up only two percent of the population but have themselves confirmed that their casualties accounted for almost forty percent and that children who make up over fifty percent of the population account for less than twenty percent . One can only say that it seems that the targeting was directed at the two percent of the population.

 

So you prefer belive an anonymous report, instead of believing a real report? Because "Breaking the Silence" report is all anonymous, without any names and proofs that what is written in the report is true.
On the other hand, there are alot of real soldiers that call this report “a wicked story” and a “stab in the back.” For instence, one soldier, Matan his name, shows us a total different story on what is written in this report:

Or here is another soldier, that repsonded to the allegetions that made by "Breaking the Silence" in the Israeli Channel 2, regarding the operation in 2008: The soldier is Lt. Oren (a pseudonym), was a platoon commander in the 7th Brigade during the previous Operation Cast Lead, which began in late 2008:

Another soldier (a Lt. Col.) came forward and told what was really happened in the operation, contardicting Breaking the Silence's ellegations:

Source'1: http://www.onlysimchas.com/news/107...tails-israels-efforts-to-spare-civilian-lives
Source'2: http://www.algemeiner.com/2015/05/0...the-silence-report-on-gaza-war-a-‘total-lie’/

 

Over 70 of them have come out publicly with their names and identities revealed and they weren't questioned by IDF.
http://rt.com/news/israeli-soldiers-abuse-children-581/

Breaking the silence also points out "The testimonies we publish are meticulously researched, and all facts are cross-checked with additional eye-witnesses and/or the archives of other human rights organizations also active in the field" Most of them choose to remain anonymous due to pressure from official military personal and society at large(a reflection of this attitude was some protests during operation protective edge were attacked by counter protesting right wingers). An example of this process was Likud Mk Oren Hanzan who lied to Breaking the silence in an attempt to discredit Breaking the silence the attempt failed. Breaking the silence found numerous inconsistencies with Oren Hanzan's testimony who claimed to be a reservist named Asaf Hazan and decided not to publish it.
Unusual cases are corroborated by two independent sources.
http://www.haaretz.com/print-editio...out-israeli-ngo-report-on-idf-abuses-1.462300
http://www.breakingthesilence.org.il/about/organization
http://www.timesofisrael.com/likud-mk-lies-to-lefty-ngo-in-attempt-to-embarrass-it/

Israeli news site NRG published an audio clip of two way radio of tank salute(which was part of breaking silence testimony) on a medical clinic and also rebroadcast by Israel's channel 10.
http://972mag.com/how-an-alleged-war-crime-goes-away-and-resurfaces-a-year-later/107357/

Beside the above, there is the fact that 19,000 artillery shells were used which are known for being inaccurate at one of the most density populated places in the world.

 

I wonder if the IDF soldiers are proud of what they have done?

 

I wonder if the Gazan Terrorists are proud of lobbing 6000 missiles at civilians in Israel?

 

According to you, they decided to remain anonymous, and by doing so their testimonies cant be proven because there is no face to such testimony.

As I already wrote to you:
So you prefer belive an anonymous report, instead of believing a real report? Because "Breaking the Silence" report is all anonymous, without any names and proofs that what is written in the report is true.

They fired and in the article and from the part of the article in the Channel 10 both say that when the soldiers fired then it cant be tell if it was or wasnt a need to fire toward it, thus you cant blame no one in this case, because simply it isnt clear to the public (just to those who perticipeted in the event) if it was a need or not. Even the IDF said that the case is been looked into.