My Military's Moral Low

Since the major military operations in Gaza stopped last week, the full effects of the heavy-handed assault that my country conducted there have become increasingly clear. Our leaders' responses to the carnage are shocking: after each "misfire" of our artillery, hitting a school or hospital, some high-ranking general or politician apologizes for the "mistake." Usually they talk about a Hamas militant firing from the area or using civilians as human shields.

As a former soldier in the artillery forces of the Israel military, I watch and shake my head in disbelief. From the Qassam rockets falling on Sderot and other Israeli cities in the South, we know that Hamas intentionally targets civilians with their bombs, but I wonder how the men and women of my country's artillery corps can do what they are doing while our leaders speak with such cynicism. I wonder what has happened to the moral compass of the Israeli military.

Drafted into the Israeli military in 2000, I served in the artillery corps as a gunner in artillery crew M109. The bombs we used, which are also being used today in Gaza, have a 50 meter kill radius. Anybody caught within 200 meters is likely to be wounded. Because these bombs are imprecise, our military regulations prohibited firing them to within a 350 meter radius of fellow soldiers in an open area (or within 250 meters if they were in an armored vehicle). To fire these shells into a heavily populated area like Gaza City carries a known risk of injuring and killing civilians within this range.

Experts reviewing the evidence have also concluded that soldiers in Gaza have also fired white phosphorus shells, which were in the arsenal when I served in the army as well. These shells contain 116 small wafers of phosphorus. To maximize their effect, the shells explode some tens of meters before they hit the ground, sending 116 flaming wafers over an area up to 250 meters.

Since the beginning of the current incursion, I have been watching the news with anger and shock. I am stunned that the soldiers of my country are firing artillery into a densely populated city, and that the ammunition they are using appears to have involved white phosphorus. With the high number of Palestinian civilian casualties in this incursion, my military has outdone itself in cultivating disregard for the loss of civilian life. Even if our political and military leaders cannot know the precise civilian cost of each shell, we do know well in advance that the weapons are using now in Gaza will have severe consequences for the human beings in a wide radius around them.

As a soldier who used these weapons in Lebanon, I am outraged at our leaders' apologies and explanations for loss of innocent civilian life. Minister of Defense Ehud Barak is a decorated former head of military who should know what every combat soldier learns in basic training. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert led an unsuccessful war in Lebanon only two years ago, and we remember the dire civilian consequences (still unfolding) of our military's use of cluster bombs there.

I want to know what goes on in the heads of these experienced leaders when they decide to use such weapons in the field, this time using artillery fire in a densely populated urban area. I wonder whether they think they can get away with their claims that they were aiming only at terrorists.

Challenging them, we must quote not only the numbers of dead civilians, many of them women and children, but we must also say openly that the methods used by our military were ones with known results. Our government knew in advance that the artillery shells would result in hundreds of civilians dead and wounded and thousands of homes destroyed. When they decided to move forward anyway, they did so in complete disregard of international law, dragging our military to a new moral low.

Simcha Leventhal is a veteran of the Israeli military artillery corps, where he served between 2000 -2003. He is a founding member of Breaking the Silence, a group of former members of the Israel Defense Forces.

Comments

[CapitalistRebel]

Thank you for speaking out against the atrocities being committed by the IDF. Let us hope that a diplomatic solution can be reached that will bring peace to the people of Israel as well as the Palestinians.

[Amomma]

One more question. Why are these smuggling tunnels used for weapons? It seems like the Arab world does not help the Pals, but keeps them as puppets to incite. Why smuggle stupid Rockets? Why not smuggle help. Educate, nourish, provide underground bomb shelters. If nothing else the surrounding countries have an obligation to provide shelter from the storm. Why is this Israel's responsibility and Israel's alone

[nochaos]

Ask chaos4700! IT will have an answer!

[nochaos]

Full stomachs and contented people will not continue to try to wipe out Israel...t­hat;s why,Sparky! The surrounding Arabs use the Pals as their front line to fight Israel! They need them angry and hopeless!

[arvay]

You're obviously a man of deep courage and humanity. It's very encouraging to see that people like yourself are willing to speak up clearly and unequivocally.

Thank you for telling the world the truth.

[Amomma]

Simcha,

I write as if you are going to read this. I visited Israel only once. I saw every young person in the Army walking with machine guns slung across their shoulders, I thought it was a given, not a draft.

My maiden name is Levenson. The paternal side of my family immigrated to the US in the late 1800's They, nor I, am religious.

My Mom's family came from Germany and kept family pictures of cousins that perished in Nazi Germany.
I first learned of the Holocaust from the history channel when I was 12. I felt,
ashamed, vividly ashamed of myself and the black and white images of starved people who I knew were connected to me, marching to death without a fight. Haunted, I never asked why.

So I think never again should Jews not fight.

My Dad fought in WW ll. I love the USA. People in Israel would say why don't you move to Israel? I would say because the United States is my country.

Are you in Israel now?

Has Terrorism sunk to new lows by hiding behind civilians?

Israel's options shrink, Hamas and Iran and many others do not recognize Israel's right to exist and Rockets keep the people of Southern Israel, and beyond running to bomb shelters.

Shalom

[arvay]

The horrors of what was done to European Jews does not justify the crimes committed against the Palestinians, who did nothing to the European Jews. Putting the Israeli state among these people without their agreement, and displacing huge numbers of them, is a crime.

[research]

Thank you for speaking out.

Doesn't Israel have computerized guns that can shoot down rockets?

The US is buying them to intercept RPGs.

[chaos4700]

Like many things we here in the US waste our military budget on, I'm guessing it doesn't work as advertised. Go look up the HEL (High Energy Laser) as well as the much vaunted Star Wars project from the 1980's -- and it's descendant, the missile shield we are trying to install in eastern Europe. There's a whole slew of shoddy military projects we are flushing taxpayer money down into as part of the US-Israel military-industrial complex.

[research]

Sometime a project that works, slips through.

[research]

This look promising:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/2258075/Israel-tests-%27Iron-Dome%27-anti-rocket-system.html

[nochaos]

PLEASE stop using all Israeli -invented medicines!!

[piul05]

Well, when their Prime Minister has no qualms about going public vowing a disproportionate response to rocket attacks http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7863500.stmm); i.e. killing women and children in response to a damaged roof, what do you expect?

Something is very rotten within that apple in the Middle East.

[oxi]

Moral dilemma:

If Israeli civilians pay taxes to buy the weapons that have attacked and killed Pals, elect officials that make the decision to attack Gaza and manage the military commanders, would that not make all Israeli civilians targets?

Just an observation!

[sticksnstones]

I'm afraid your dilemma omits an important ingredient. Although Israel directly purchases weapons, munitions, and armaments outright from its major supplier, the USA, billions of dollars worth of this war material is donated to Israel, all paid for with OUR taxes. The dilemma, as you describe it, would make all US civilians targets also.

Peace in the Mid-East will be a reality only when those countries supporting the conflict and situated at a perceived safe and comfortable geographic remove from the dangers realize that twenty-first century asymmetric warfare is fast, mobile, anonymous, and that nations' borders offer no real impediment to a committed enemy.

[fisharefreinds]

Nothing is donated. The reason why we give so much money to Israel is so they can afford to buy our military industrial complex.

But I don't know for sure, I think this "incursion" is about more then Gaza firing on Israel,

[fisharefreinds]

Thye are not allowed to use that money for arms, but how could Israel afford it otherwise and the US does not do nothing for nothing.
I believe the Israelis have anquish as this happens and want peace enough to write articles like this. They need a corresponding voice.

[al3038]

I really don't know where your getting your information, but from what I have read and heard from various news sources is that they are mainly using mortars guided by GPS and not artillery rounds in the cities. I have heard Arab sources discussing the phosphorus rounds but I don't consider those as reliable sources as they won't even mention the rockets fired into Isreal. The only thing I know for sure is that hundreds of people have been killed over the years and hundreds of more will be killed in the future because there will always be war in the middle east.

[caphillprof]

You fail to discredit his information.

[piul05]

Typical attempt at watering down unpalatable realities; first, start with some hear/say backed by no reliable source (precision weapons vs indiscriminate shooting); then throw here and there some prejudice, disguised as objective comment (i.e. Arab sources are not reliable) and finally come to a inane fatalistic conclusion such as "there'll be always war in the ME".

[ab73]

Where does he get his info? He was an artilleryman in the IDF. He knows. He has done this himself.

You read stuff somewhere, and base your opinions on the typical Israelis good, Arabs bad stereotypes.

I love the way you have swallowed the fetishisation of military technology whole.

GPS guided mortars - if they were using them then they were experimenting with such devices during this conflict. Read around and you will see these are being developed rather than being produced. They sound great, but how do you know the coordinates of a mobile target? They can be guided using lasers, which means someone on the ground has to point a laser at the target, which means they must have line of sight. In a built up urban environment this means they need to be close, which of course means they can see the civillians.

You see no evidence for WP shelling. Did you not notice the prominent photo attack the attack on a UN school on the Huffpost "Palestinian Territories" front page. The Guardian as a very pretty montage of this attack
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2009/jan/21/gaza-israelandthepalestinians

enjoy

[SilviaMaria]

You are brave for speaking the truth.

[GKJames]

Commendable as your inquiry is, I suspect that for Israel's leaders it is a matter of political, not military, calculation. The leaders chose to do what they did because they could; no one can stop them. And with half the country howling about the need to do something about Hamas's rockets into Israel -- equally outrageous in intent, though certainly not in effectiveness -- and with elections looming, offing some Arabs is sure to be a vote getter. All the rhetoric notwithstanding, Israelis and their leaders know that the existential-threat card is played not because the threat exists, but because it permits the perpetuation of execrable policies. In the end, Israel has killed hundreds -- some even unintentionally, it is said -- not to solve a problem, but to keep re-telling itself as well as the Palestinians the story that it wants told: Israel's the toughest punk on the block, and the Arabs better not forget it. As for the military heroes of this turkey shoot, they are yet one more example out of human history to confirm how easy it is to kill when the risk to oneself is close to nil.