One of the most incendiary charges to emerge from Israel's three week military offensive in Gaza was that Israeli soldiers killed Palestinian women and children carrying white flags.
Today, investigators at Human Rights Watch released a new report that documents seven cases where Palestinians say Israeli soldiers opened fire on groups carrying white flags, killing 11 people, including five women and four children.
"In each of these incidents," the report states, "the evidence strongly indicates that, at the least, Israeli soldiers failed to take feasible precautions to distinguish between civilians and combatants before carrying out the attack. At worst, the soldiers deliberately fired on persons known to be civilians."
In five of the seven cases, said HRW researcher Fred Abrahams, Israeli soldiers opened fire on civilians as they sought to flee battle zones.
In those cases, Abrahams said, the shootings appeared to be the tragic result of Israeli military directives to soldiers that they take few risks combined with poor coordination between Israeli units when civilians had a green light to flee.
“I don’t think in those cases soldiers said ‘There’s a civilian, let’s take one out,’” Abrahams said. “A lot of this comes for a combination of their ‘take no casualties/quick trigger finger’ approach and poor internal communication.”
One of the more stark cases involves Khaled Abed Rabbo, a former Fatah police officer who said that an Israeli soldier opened fire on his mother, wife and three girls as they stood on the steps of their northern Gaza Strip home holding a white flag for several minutes.
The report itself revealed some discrepancies in Abed Rabbo's story. In January, Abed Rabbo's mother told McClatchy Newspapers that her son was on the steps with them when the shooting started. But Abed Rabbo told HRW that he was inside the house at the time.
The incident is one of five the Israeli government recently revealed that it is already investigating.
In its response, the Israeli military did not address the specific cases, but stated that carrying a white flag does not always shield someone from attack.
"Merely displaying a white flag does not automatically grant immunity, and in cases of suspicion that a person holding a white flag is endangering security forces, they are authorized to take necessary precautionary steps and, in accordance with rules of engagement, to verify and neutralize the threat," the Israeli military said in its statement.
After the report was released, the Israeli military released new video (below) that it said shows a Palestinian militant planting an IED during the Gaza offensive and then trying to evade capture by trying to blend in with a group of Palestinians waving a white flag to surrender to Israeli forces.
"Sadly," the Israeli military said, "Hamas terror operatives ruthlessly pervert the intent of the IDF's obligations to prevent harm to civilians by exploiting those with white flags as cover for belligerent action and to protect themselves from return fire. Any person who displays a white flag in this way acts illegally, does not enjoy protection from retaliatory action, and endangers nearby civilian populations."
HRW said it uncovered no evidence in these seven cases that the civilians holding white flags were being used by Gaza militants as human shields.
Abrahams expressed doubt about the Israeli military's willingness and ability to conduct a thorough investigation. He noted that the Israeli military had yet to contact Abed Rabbo or his family.
Amos Guiora, a University of Utah law professor and former officer in the Israeli military's Judge Advocate General's Corps, said it is critical that the Israeli military carry out a thorough investigation of the allegations. That, he said, should include talking to the witnesses, collecting medical records and interviewing any soldiers who might know about the allegations.
After reading the report, Guiroa said he would be "hard pressed" to believe that Israeli soldiers unjustly opened fire on Palestinians carrying white flags.
"But if something like this happened, we need to know about it," said Guiora. "We all send our kids to the army and we need to know. And the army needs to know if it is not sufficiently training its soldiers."
(Photo: Yusuf Abu Hajjaj holds the white flag he said his sister Majida was holding when Israeli forces fatally shot her and his mother Rayya in Gaza on January 4, 2009. © 2009 Bill van Esveld/Human Rights Watch)
"...Guiroa said he would be "hard pressed" to believe that Israeli soldiers unjustly opened fire on Palestinians carrying white flags."
This sums up my feelings on incidents like this quite well. Sure, there may be rotten apples in the IDF as there are anywhere in the world, but knowing what I know of Israel, Israelis and the IDF--having had experiences with all of the above--it's very hard to beleive that soldiers would deliberatley have killed civilians with that specific intent.
Posted by: Charlie H. Ettinson | August 16, 2009 at 12:47 AM
This is a link to a list of inconsistencies in the Khaled Rabbo story.
http://camera.org/index.asp?x_context=2&x_outlet=62&x_article=1624
"Most residents of Jebel al-Kashif claim there were no Hamas fighters in the area at the time of the alleged incident, but a middle-aged farmer in a battered army jacket took me aside and said, in a near whisper, that Hamas had been firing rockets from the vicinity of where the episode took place.- Time Magazine
"http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1874850-2,00.html
The HRW decided to ignore this, and not even mention it in a footnote. Who knows what else they "forgot" to mention.
Who'd expect less from Joe Stork, who seems to have once said that the Munich Massacre was good for Palestinian morale.
Posted by: Ian | August 18, 2009 at 06:21 PM
Apologetics aside, and there are no shortage on either side, dead babies and the undenied presence of an armed and active military force operating in a civilian environment are the stuff of what makes war 'hell'.
Posted by: popsiq | August 23, 2009 at 08:19 AM
This is absolute nonsense...
1)The IDF should be responsibility to protect the lives of civilians first and foremost. I'm sick to death of listening how they kill a dozen children because maybe there was a armed millitant in the area. Would the IDF kill all the passengers of a hijacked Isaeli aircraft in order to get to the hijackers?
2)The IDF attacked a civilian city with rockets, mortars, phosphorous and possibly depleted uranium. They killed 1400 people in retribution for 8 Israeli deaths in 5 years of homemade rocket attacks (which were largely provoked by Isreal's seige over Gaza in the first place). Clearly this disproportionate killing illustrats a wanton disregard of the IDF for civilian life.
3) The IDF's policy of destrying infrastructure, businesses, schools, farms is consistent first and foremost with a policy of ethnic cleansing. Anyone familiar with Isreal must understand that this is the ultimate goal as Israel's Jewish majority is threatened by what they call a demographic timebomb. Over 40 years the effort has been to drive the Palestinians out of
the occupied territories by making their lives unbearable. It doesn't take much to see the strategy past the thinly disguised actions.
4) The IDF deliberately denied access to any journalists to the area and fails to cooperate in any independent investigations.
I am so sick of listening to nit picking details in individual incidents. It's like trying to hide the forest behind trees.
People apply some common sense. In the 1970 the US supported death squads in South America... in the 1980's it vehemently vetoed UN sactions against aparthide in South Africa. The US is not infallable.
Why does anyone deny that this might just be yet another tragic foreign policy nightmare that supports some of the most viscious injustices and ill treatment of civilians seen anywhere on the planet.
Of course... one would need to look past the whitewash of mainstay US media.
Posted by: Brian | August 24, 2009 at 06:55 PM