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- Written by Adam Horowitz Adam Horowitz
- Published: 27 January 2011 27 January 2011
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More vindication for Goldstone: British news reports Israeli soldiers were ordered to ‘cleanse’ Gaza neighborhoods during Cast Lead
It sounds really terrible to say 'cleanse' but those were the orders.
- Israeli tank commander
Wednesday night the British television network Channel 4 ran the story above using footage from a documentary shot by Israeli filmmaker Nurit Kedar. These testimonies, like those collected by Breaking the Silence, confirm many of the findings of the Goldstone Report, including the intentional targeting of wide swaths of Gaza's civilian infrastructure.
In the video a 24-year-old tank commander recounts being told that the Israeli soldiers entry into Gaza was to be "disproportionate". He says that his orders were clear:
"We needed to cleanse the neighbourhoods, the buildings, the area. It sounds really terrible to say "cleanse", but those were the orders....I don't want to make a mistake with the words."
Another solider recalls the absurdity of killing chickens and destroying the Sawafeary chicken farm. About this event the Goldstone Report said:
The Mission finds that the Sawafeary chicken farms, the 31,000 chickens and the plant and material necessary for the business were systematically and deliberately destroyed, and that this constituted a deliberate act of wanton destruction not justified by any military necessity.
The report added, "The systematic destruction along with the large numbers of killings of civilians suggest premeditation and a high level of planning. Even in the context of a campaign that had many serious violations of international humanitarian law, the events in Zeytoun at this time stand out."
One thing that comes across in this short clip is not only the dehumanization of Gazans that took place during the fighting, but the toll this took on the Israeli soldiers themselves. One soldier remembers in disgust how soldiers would compare the number of Gazans they killed. Another soldier named Shay is clearly still shaken by what he did in Gaza, especially in contrast to his comfortable life in Israel.
Read the full article and see the videos on MondoWeiss . . .