Gosh, maybe I shouldn't diary this, because it might be "inflammatory". Well, sorry!
The soldiers’ testimonies include accounts of an unarmed old woman being shot at a distance of 100 yards, a woman and her two children being killed after Israeli soldiers ordered them from their house into the line of fire of a sniper and soldiers clearing houses by shooting anyone they encountered on sight.
"That’s the beauty of Gaza. You see a man walking, he doesn’t have to have a weapon, and you can shoot him," one soldier told Danny Zamir, the head of the Rabin pre-military academy ...
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/...
It gets worse.
The same unnamed NCO said that his commanding officer ordered soldiers on to a rooftop to shoot an old woman crossing a main street during the fighting, which a Palestinian rights groups said left 1,434 people dead, 960 of them civilians.
"I don't know whether she was suspicious, not suspicious, I don't know her story," the NCO said. "I do know that my officer sent people to the roof in order to take her out... It was cold-blooded murder."
This is Israel "defending its right to exist?"
If you read the whole article there's even more of this. And then, it takes an even more shocking turn:
Another disturbing element reported by the soldiers was the role of military rabbis in distributing booklets that framed the fighting as a religious war. "All these articles had a clear message: we are the Jewish people, we have come to the land by miraculous means, and now we have to fight to remove the Gentiles who are getting in our way and preventing us from occupying the Holy Land... a great many soldiers had a feeling throughout this operation of a religious war," said one soldier.
And America is supporting this without question because ....?
What is America getting out of this relationship whereby it supports these types of inhuman war crimes?
The recent recommended diary here a day or two ago, saying we should reserve the word "outrage" for things other than monetary theft comes to mind. This pretty much pegs out the true "outrage" meter.
UPDATED:
Wanted to include this link to a Reuters story, provided by bustacap in the comments below:
A squad commander from Ram's Givat Brigade, named as Aviv, recounted his misgivings about orders to break down doors with armoured vehicles and shoot anyone inside, floor by floor. In the event, the order was amended to include "operating megaphones" so advancing troops could tell people they had five minutes to get out or be killed.
Aviv said "there was a very annoying moment" when he briefed his men and one challenged that order, saying: "Yeah? Anyone who is in there is a terrorist, that's a known fact..."
"And then his buddies join in: 'We need to murder any person who's in there, yeah, any person who's in Gaza is a terrorist' and all the other things that they stuff our heads with, in the media," Aviv was quoted as saying.
I'm still waiting for anyone in the comments to explain to me why America supports this stuff without question. Remember, there was a vote in Congress which was deliberately designed to state FULL SUPPORT for Israel's actions.
What is America getting out of this relationship?
Why do we unquestioningly give them billions of dollars?
Why do we have the "It's Okay If You're Israel" policy?