(RT) – Israeli soldiers were ordered to ‘fire at every person you see’ during the Gaza war, while civilian areas were deliberately targeted with inaccurate weapons, a report by the Israeli group Breaking the Silence NGO asserts.
Breaking the Silence, an NGO run by former Israeli soldiers, spent eight months after Operation Protective Edge ended
interviewing more than 60 Israeli servicemen from the army, navy and air force up to the rank of major.
The result is 237-page report.
The report tells a different story to the official Israeli narrative that great care was taken to avoid civilian causalities. Critics of Israeli tactics during the Gaza war say the army and the IDF responded disproportionately to Hamas’ rocket attacks.
The testimonies gathered by Breaking the Silence include the acts of individual soldiers who shot civilians dead and of lethal decisions being made at the top of the Israeli military, where other courses of action could have been taken.
“The guiding military principle of ‘minimum risk to our nforces, even at the cost of harming innocent civilians,’ alongside efforts to deter and intimidate the Palestinians, led to massive and unprecedented harm to the population and the civilian infrastructure in the Gaza Strip. Policymakers could have predicted these results prior to the operation and weresurely aware of them throughout,” the report reads.