TikunOlam: "For the past few days Haaretz has carried numerous stories about the riveting eyewitness testimony from IDF officers concerning cold-blooded murders of unarmed Palestinian civilians. The second day of their testimony wasn't available in the English edition of Haaretz last night, which was why I translated excerpts. But Haaretz now does have the English version available in a fuller translation than my own hastily composed one.
Iris Hefets also informs me that Israeli blogger and seruvnik Idan Landau has compared Haaretz's Hebrew version of the eyewitness transcript to the original and finds several telling phrases omitted (he uses the term 'censored'). If you read Hebrew you can follow that interesting sidebar of the main story."
Haaretz: "'Rules of Engagement: Open fire also upon rescue,' was handwritten in Hebrew on a sheet of paper found in one of the Palestinian homes the Israel Defense Forces took over during Operation Cast Lead. A reservist officer who did not take part in the Gaza offensive believes that the note is part of orders a low-level commander wrote before giving his soldiers their daily briefing.
One of the main themes in news reports during the Gaza operation, and which appears in many testimonies, is that IDF soldiers shot at Palestinian and Red Cross rescuers, making it impossible to evacuate the wounded and dead. As a result, an unknown number of Palestinians bled to death as others cowered in their homes for days without medical treatment, waiting to be rescued."
Haaretz: "During Operation Cast Lead, Israeli forces killed Palestinian civilians under permissive rules of engagement and intentionally destroyed their property, say soldiers who fought in the offensive.
The soldiers are graduates of the Yitzhak Rabin pre-military preparatory course at Oranim Academic College in Tivon. Some of their statements made on Feb. 13 will appear Thursday and Friday in Haaretz. Dozens of graduates of the course who took part in the discussion fought in the Gaza operation.
The speakers included combat pilots and infantry soldiers. Their testimony runs counter to the Israel Defense Forces' claims that Israeli troops observed a high level of moral behavior during the operation. The session's transcript was published this week in the newsletter for the course's graduates."
Haaretz: "Dead babies, mothers weeping on their children's graves, a gun aimed at a child and bombed-out mosques - these are a few examples of the images Israel Defense Forces soldiers design these days to print on shirts they order to mark the end of training, or of field duty. The slogans accompanying the drawings are not exactly anemic either: A T-shirt for infantry snipers bears the inscription 'Better use Durex', next to a picture of a dead Palestinian baby, with his weeping mother and a teddy bear beside him. A sharpshooter's T-shirt from the Givati Brigade's Shaked battalion shows a pregnant Palestinian woman with a bull's-eye superimposed on her belly, with the slogan, in English, '1 shot, 2 kills'. A 'graduation' shirt for those who have completed another snipers course depicts a Palestinian baby, who grows into a combative boy and then an armed adult, with the inscription, 'No matter how it begins, we'll put an end to it.'"
TonyGreenstein: "Lenni Brenner is a legend in his lifetime. An American Trotskyist, albeit unaffiliated, he has documented painstakingly the close affiliations between Zionism and anti-Semites of all shades, including Nazis. He has been a thorn in the side of the Zionist establishment for over 20 years. He has written some excellent books, including the pathbreaking 'Zionism in the Age of the Dictators' which provides as excellent summary as one could hope to the major episodes of Zionist collaboration with fascism."
Reuters: "Rabbis in the Israeli army told battlefield troops in January's Gaza offensive they were fighting a 'religious war' against gentiles, according to one army commander's account published on Friday."
