Genocide is the intentional systematic destruction of a genos in whole or in part. 

In John Docker’s words, Lemkin ‘took great care to define genocide as composite and manifold.’³ And, as will be discussed, this is an inherent aspect of genocide. This is why the distinction drawn by Mark Levene between genocide, and a ‘genocidal process’ is a false one.⁴ Genocide is a genocidal process, it is not a discreet act. Genocide is not restricted by a given time-frame, but continues as long as there is a clear succession of definable perpetrators continuing acts of genocide against a genos, even if those acts change entirely in their nature.

What, then, is a genos? This can be gleaned from Lemkin’s work as follows: Any collectivity that can be defined by a degree, however small, of distinct biological interconnectedness. Raphaël Lemkin considered that Nazi conceptions of ‘biological interrelations’ and the quest for ‘biological superiority’ were basic foundations for genocide.⁷ That is not to say that genocide results from some peculiar Nazi ideology of race. Lemkin himself used the term ‘biological structure’ as an argument for inventing a new term,⁸ and in the context of stating that biological structures needed protection.⁹ Indeed the very logic of his work, and its very genesis, shows that he apprehended that there was a strategic logic of genocide which, though very prominent and overt in the Nazi regime, was by no means exclusive to them, and biological interconnectedness is central to that logic.

Raphaël Lemkin did not have access to detailed scholarship about the nature of genocides such as a modern scholar might have. As such it is not surprising that he lacked the sort of vocabulary and apprehension that we might have today. Nor should it be surprising that there are often seeming uncertainties and vague aspects in his writing, but underlying this is a strong apprehensible logic that with a little interpretation in light of current knowledge provides the key to the strategic rationality of genocide – a matter which Lemkin clearly apprehended but could not fully delineate.

How then do ‘biological interrelations’ fit within a strategic framework? Unfortunately Lemkin and later scholars have been somewhat blinded by the dazzle of Nazi racial ideology and the chilling modernity of their extermination techniques. However, it has been found that nearly all genocides are planned and set in motion by small secretive governmental cabals,¹⁰ or at other times by equally closed groups which putatively do not command state power.¹¹ Both ‘insiders’ and the public tend to object to genocidal policies to whatever extent they are allowed to understand them. As Noam Chomsky writes of Nazi Germany:

…despite Hitler’s personal appeal, direct support for his genocidal projects was never high. In an important study of this matter, Norman Cohn observes that even among Nazi party members, in 1938 over 60% “expressed downright indignation at the outrages” carried out against Jews, while 5 percent considered that “physical violence against Jews was justified because ‘terror must be met with terror’.” In the Fall of 1942, when the genocide was fully under way, some 5% of Nazi Party members approved the shipment of Jews to “labor camps,” while 70% registered indifference and the rest “showed signs of concern for the Jews.” Among the general population, support for the Holocaust would have surely been still less. The Nazi leaders required no popular enthusiasm in order to carry out what the Nazi press described as the “defensive action against the Jewish world-criminals,” “the liberation of all non-Jewish humanity,” “the mobilization of the German people’s will to destroy the bacillus lodged in its body,” and to purify the society, and the world, by eliminating the “bacteria, vermin and pests [that] cannot be tolerated.” For these tasks, the leadership needed little more than “a mood of passive compliance,” apathy, the willingness to look the other way….¹²

I will return the functional usage of racism in the Holocaust, which induced apathy in most and the willingness to kill in those selected to carry out mass murder, but it should be understood that in the US context racism, dehumanisation and the constant devaluation of human life are primarily means for maintaining public apathy. The relevance to the Holocaust can be understood when it is revealed that the Nazi inner circle were not, as a whole, animated by heartfelt racial hatred (though many individuals may have been), but rather saw it as a tool. Gunnar Heinsohn makes the following revelations:

There can be no doubt that the annihilation of European Jewry was justified time and again in terms of racism by German perpetrators including Hitler himself. In public Hitler has employed every brand of anti-Semitism to carry out his genocidal agenda. He has sided with Christian Jew-haters, with jealous economic or intellectual competitors of Jews, with supposed victims of “international Jewish finance,” with Slavic nationalists, with Baltic anti-Bolsheviks, etc. All these alliances betray Hitler’s flexibility in carrying through his objective. Yet, what exactly was it? After all, personally he did not believe in racist anti-Semitism. This can, last but not least, be gleaned from a correspondence to Martin Bormann on February 3, 1945: …

“Our Nordic racial consciousness is only aggressive toward the Jewish race. We use the term Jewish race merely for reasons of linguistic convenience, for in the real sense of the word, and from a genetic point of view there is no Jewish race. Present circumstances force upon us this characterization of the group of common race and intellect, to which all the Jews of the world profess their loyalty, regardless of the nationality identified in the passport of each individual. This group of persons we designate as the Jewish race. […] The Jewish race is above all a community of the spirit. […] Spiritual race is of a more solid and more durable kind than natural race. Wherever he goes, the Jew remains a Jew […] presenting sad proof of the superiority of the ‘spirit’ over the flesh.”

Hitler did not only understand that there was no Jewish race in a biological sense but he had the same insight regarding the Germans or any people. Again, he expressed this in private – even before 1933 – because he had no intention to forego the bloody help of the racists:

“A people in today’s political sense is no longer a racial unity, a pure racial community. The large migrations of world history, wars, periods of enemy occupation, but also natural mixing becoming ever more frequent through international trade, have caused everywhere, within the borders of a state, all existing races as well as mixtures of races to live together.”¹³

He then strengthens the case by revealing that in Hitler’s early life he displayed a degree of admiration for Jews:

After anti-Semitic Vienna had been identified by many researchers as the seedbed of Hitler’s personal anti-Semitism they now had to learn that he actually sided with the Jewish oppressed. This was summarized by one of those scholars, Gordon A. Craig, in his review of the English translation of [Brigitte] Hamann’s book [Hitlers Wien]:

“Hamann tells us of a stormy discussion in 1910 about Empress Elizabeth’s veneration for Heinrich Heine, in which Hitler defended the [German-Jewish] poet and regretted that there were no statues to him in Germany. In other discussions in the men’s hostel, he was reported to have praised Maria Theresia’s great reforming minister Joseph von Sonnenfels and Jewish musicians like Mendelssohn and Offenbach. He had Jewish friends with whom he discussed religious questions and the future of the Zionist movement and upon whom he could rely for loans and other help in his worst times. He always preferred to sell his watercolors to Jewish dealers, because he thought that they were more honest and gave him better prices. No reliable source has reported Hitler making any anti-Semitic remarks in his Vienna period; on the contrary, he was known to have expressed admiration for the courage with which the Jews had withstood a long history of persecution.”¹⁴

Not only did Hitler not believe the racial ideology of hatred and superiority that he espoused, but he confided such to some who were close to him. The scapegoating of Jews allowed Hitler to cohere the entire Nazi base of support in the face of the fact that many expected economic and social change, in line with rhetoric, which was contrary to the many conservative aspects of the putatively revolutionary Party:

It was the Jew who helped hold Hitler’s system together…. The Jew allowed Hitler to ignore the long list of economic and social promises he had made to the SA, the lower party apparatus, and the lower middle classes. By steering the attention of these groups away from their more genuine grievances and toward the Jew, Hitler succeeded in blunting the edge of their revolutionary wrath.¹⁵

Secondly, the Jewish population of Germany was disproportionately politically active and disproportionately beholden to political ideologies inimical to Nazism, even if it were stripped of its anti-Semitic content. One thing that Hitler consistently avowed was anti-Bolshevism, and one can only conclude that Hitler’s attacks on the putatively Jewish led international communist movement were not as a way of extending the scope of his quintessentially anti-Semitic attacks,¹⁶ but rather a way of harnessing the anti-Semitic scapegoating of the German public and his own party to his own fanatical anti-communist beliefs. When he joined, and soon took over leadership of, the then Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (DAP, soon changed by adding Nationalsozialistische to NSDAP or Nazi) it already had a strong anti-Semitic strain which clearly resonated with other right-wing platforms probably closer to Hitler’s heart. After all, if Hitler’s nationalistic version of social Darwinism was highly antithetical to an internationalist egalitarian movement. But it does not end there, because individual Jews were not only prominent as members and leaders of communist, socialist and anarchist organisations, others were also equally prominent as liberal ideologues and democrats. In short, Jews were, by-and-large, anti-fascistic. Even in Italy, though there was again a disproportionate number of Jews who were active at high levels of politics, there was only one within the Fascist party hierarchy.¹⁷

This brings us to the third pressing matter – why would a particular collective have identifiable political characteristics, especially the highly assimilated German Jewish population? In writing of a ‘community of spirit’ Hitler, in some respects, paralleled Theodor Herzl’s earlier observation that both anti-Semitism and the very identity of being Jewish resisted assimilation and even atheism, which led him to believe in the existence of an incipient Jewish nation entirely separate from religious identity.¹⁸ Of course, our contemporary understanding tends to emphasise view the creation of the ‘Other’ as a functional reification by the hegemonic group – of particular utility in justifying systematic deprivation, but also of equal utility in creating a willingness to kill.¹⁹ Nevertheless, it is also true that there is an internal mechanism of identity and value transmission within any genos, it also creates networks which are a source of power or social capital outside of the perpetrators’ control. It is this mechanism, one of biological interconnectedness, which genocide seeks to extinguish.

Indeed, the answer to why a biological structure is the target of genocide stared Lemkin, and many others, right in the face. It was so close to apprehension that it was implicitly enshrined in the UNCG. The answer is, quite simply, that in the vast majority of cases, and certainly when considering any genos as a whole, biological interconnectedness corresponds inextricably with familial interconnectedness. This is why both Lemkin and the UNCG recognised the transfer of children to the perpetrator population as an act of genocide, and why the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission acknowledged that the forcible removal of Aboriginal children from their parents was an act of genocide.²⁰ In terms of racial ideology this would make no sense whatsoever, ‘blood’ is not changed by environment. It is not the biological nature which is destroyed, but the biological/familial connection – a step in eliminating the genos in its nature as a biological structure.

The extended and nuclear family units are the most basic and profound human collectivities. Authoritarian utopianists, and some libertarian utopianists, going back at least as far as Hobbes, have often desired the destruction of the family which was recognised as an insurmountable impediment to exerting the control necessary to create perfect order (or freedom) in society. The family is a barrier to assimilation and uniformity where it replicates the distinct identity of the genos. Once again, Theodor Herzl shows an affinity with this line of thought: ‘Assimilation, by which I understood not only external conformity in dress, habits, customs, and language, but also identity of feeling and manner – assimilation of Jews could be effected only by intermarriage.’²¹ It is common (though not universal) that those with hegemonic power will be threatened or at least inconvenienced by the competing power structure of a genos. Where this is not true it is often the case that a distinct genos facilitates a divide-and-rule strategy of oligarchs over the lower class of the hegemonic genos. The former instance lends itself to the logic of assimilation and genocide. In the latter instance an imperial power may elevate or debase any given minority genos to promote division, but the ruling class of a majority dominated polity will engage in persecution, reification and in maintenance of the otherness of the target genos. No ruling class, however, is monolithic and hence partakes of both logics in varying degrees, which in effect means that there is no distinct line between chronic persecution and genocide. In a case such as the Third Reich, where nationalism combined with a vision of monolithic authoritarianism (or ‘totalitarianism’), extreme forms of genocide are an inevitable result.

With regard to external relations and imperial aggression, genocide is most relevant in its current form with regard to ‘nation-states’. When a polity is formed, especially in modern times, at varying speed a genos of greater or lesser fragility and significance will inevitably cohere, and much of the ‘state building’ efforts of newly decolonised states, for example, can be seen as endeavours to create a strong nation-state genos. As with Herzl’s observation with regard to assimilation, it is not sufficient that the population adopt a nominal national identity and wave the national flag on the national holiday; but rather it results from the mobility of the population within the borders of the polity. Mobility tends to create personal interconnection which leads to procreation and the formation of familial bonds, where it is not consciously proscribed. The British, for example, took steps to prevent intermarriage in India, not because of concerns for racial purity, which would later come to predominate in the Victorian era,²² but because it increased both the ability and propensity to for British employees to act for themselves against the interests of their employers, referred to as the ‘agency problem’.²³ The strategic imperative, therefore, precedes the creation of a racist ideology, and, as will be discussed below, led imperialism to become inherently genocidal. It is also important to note that the origins of anti-miscegenation sentiment in the United States were highly contingent and functional. Before the 19th century, where they were a source of common cause between the poor of both African and European descent, they were disapproved and illegal. Where they were a source of bonded labour, particularly where wealthy Europeans fathered mulattos, they were approved and licit. Tellingly, however, this was provided that the father did not acknowledge paternity, for which he would be subject to penalties. In other words they were encouraged to procreate, but not form family bonds.²⁴ In each case this familial interconnection threatens to create not only a power structure and communication networks, but a mutual empathy and sense of identity which, where it takes root deeply, far exceeds that generated by mere ideologies of nationhood.

Of course, the coherence of politically generated genos varies widely. Most of China, for example, has been politically unified for a very long time, but the Han nation, as such has only recently begun to develop to the depth which we would normally associate with nationhood.²⁵ Over the centuries mobility in the vast polity has been largely confined to an upper echelon and thus there remain, even now, very different regional groups with distinct cultures and physiological tendencies as well as mutually incomprehensible languages, although, due to a shared history, it is easy for Chinese to identify what, or rather whom, is or is not and cannot be Han.²⁶ In seeking to attack such a polity, genocide is most likely to be an ineffectual way of dominating or degrading the whole. Instead it is more efficient to effectuate a ‘decapitation’ of political élites and military forces – something which has occurred many times in Chinese history. It is arguable, however, that a form of ‘top-down’ genocide was effectuated against the Chinese by an unprecedented powerful conglomeration of Western states and Japan who often openly espoused the destruction and partition of the Chinese state. In a variation on decapitation, instead of cutting off the head and replacing it, they repeatedly kicked it, bending China’s vulnerable ruling class to their will, often with extremely small but irresistable military forces such as the 20,000 from Japan, Russia, Britain, the US and France who in 1900 managed to invade from the coast and occupy Peking in a matter of 10 days.²⁷ This degradation and domination of the ‘head’ had a devastating indirect (but in the circumstances inevitable and arguably intentional),²⁸ effect on millions of Chinese, exacerbating, if not causing, civil wars such as the Taiping rebellion and aggravating the lethal effects of drought, particularly by forcing the Qing rulership to abandon maintenance of irrigation and transport canals.²⁹ All told, tens of millions of Chinese deaths were caused directly or indirectly by foreign degradation and exploitation of the Qing power structure.

In another variation, decapitation of Incan and Aztec polities preceded genocides of the disparate peoples of these empires, which Adam Jones describes thus:

A holocaust it indeed proved for the Indians enslaved on the plantations and in the silver-mines of the former Inca empire, where the Spanish instituted another genocidal regime of forced labor. Conditions in the mines – notably those in Mexico and at Potosí and Huancavelica in Upper Peru (Bolivia) – resulted in death rates matching or exceeding those of Hispaniola. According to David Stannard, Indians in the Bolivian mines had a life expectancy of three to four months, “about the same as that of someone working at slave labor in the synthetic rubber manufacturing plant at Auschwitz in the 1940s.”³⁰

“No Such Thing As A Person Unfit For Detention” this video is of testimony relating regular violent mistreatment of child detainees.

The testimony comes from Breaking the Silence an organisation publishing such testimonies. An edited volume, Our Harsh Logic: Israeli Soldiers’ Testimonies From the Occupied Territories, 2000-2010, was published in September and co-editor Oded Na’aman published the following through TomDispatch.

“It’s Mostly Punishment…”
Testimonies by Veterans of the Israeli Defense Forces From Gaza and the Occupied Territories
By Breaking the Silence

“There is no country on Earth that would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its borders,” President Barack Obama said at a press conference last week. He drew on this general observation in order to justify Operation Pillar of Defense, Israel’s most recent military campaign in the Gaza Strip. In describing the situation this way, he assumes, like many others, that Gaza is a political entity external and independent of Israel. This is not so. It is true that Israel officially disengaged from the Gaza Strip in August 2005, withdrawing its ground troops and evacuating the Israeli settlements there. But despite the absence of a permanent ground presence, Israel has maintained a crushing control over Gaza from that moment until today.

The testimonies of Israeli army veterans expose the truth of that “disengagement.” Before Operation Pillar of Defense, after all, Israel launched Operations Summer Rains and Autumn Clouds in 2006, and Hot Winter and Cast Lead in 2008 — all involving ground invasions. In one testimony, a veteran speaks of “a battalion operation” in Gaza that lasted for five months, where the soldiers were ordered to shoot “to draw out terrorists” so they “could kill a few.”

Israeli naval blockades stop Gazans from fishing, a main source of food in the Strip. Air blockades prevent freedom of movement. Israel does not allow building materials into the area, forbids exports to the West Bank and Israel, and (other than emergency humanitarian cases) prohibits movement between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. It controls the Palestinian economy by periodically withholding import taxes. Its restrictions have impeded the expansion and upgrading of the Strip’s woeful sewage infrastructure, which could render life in Gaza untenable within a decade. The blocking of seawater desalination has turned the water supply into a health hazard. Israel has repeatedly demolished small power plants in Gaza, ensuring that the Strip would have to continue to rely on the Israeli electricity supply. Daily power shortages have been the norm for several years now. Israel’s presence is felt everywhere, militarily and otherwise.

By relying on factual misconceptions, political leaders, deliberately or not, conceal information that is critical to our understanding of events. Among the people best qualified to correct those misconceptions are the individuals who have been charged with executing a state’s policies — in this case, Israeli soldiers themselves, an authoritative source of information about their government’s actions. I am a veteran of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), and I know that our first-hand experiences refute the assumption, accepted by many, including President Obama, that Gaza is an independent political entity that exists wholly outside Israel. If Gaza is outside Israel, how come we were stationed there? If Gaza is outside Israel, how come we control it? Oded Na’aman

[The testimonies by Israeli veterans that follow are taken from 145 collected by the nongovernmental organization Breaking the Silence and published in Our Harsh Logic: Israeli Soldiers’ Testimonies From the Occupied Territories, 2000-2010.  Those in the book represent every division in the IDF and all locations in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.]

1. House Demolition

Unit: Kfir Brigade

Location: Nablus district

Year: 2009

During your service in the territories, what shook you up the most?

The searches we did in Hares. They said there are sixty houses that have to be searched. I thought there must have been some information from intelligence. I tried to justify it to myself.

You went out as a patrol?

It was a battalion operation.  They spread out over the whole village, took over the school, smashed the locks, the classrooms. One was used as the investigation room for the Shin Bet, one room for detainees, one for the soldiers to rest. We went in house by house, banging on the door at two in the morning. The family’s dying of fear, the girls are peeing in their pants with fear. We go into the house and turn everything upside down.

What’s the procedure?

Gather the family in a certain room, put a guard there, tell the guard to aim his gun at them, and then search the rest of the house. We got another order that everyone born after 1980… everyone between sixteen and twenty-nine, doesn’t matter who, bring them in cuffed and blindfolded. They yelled at old people, one of them had an epileptic seizure but they carried on yelling at him. Every house we went into, we brought everyone between sixteen and twenty-nine to the school. They sat tied up in the schoolyard.

Did they tell you the purpose of all this? 

To locate weapons. But we didn’t find any weapons. They confiscated kitchen knives. There was also stealing. One guy took twenty shekels. Guys went into the houses and looked for things to steal. This was a very poor village. The guys were saying, “What a bummer, there’s nothing to steal.”

That was said in a conversation among the soldiers?

Yeah. They enjoyed seeing the misery, the guys were happy talking about it. There was a moment someone yelled at the soldiers. They knew he was mentally ill, but one of the soldiers decided that he’d beat him up anyway, so they smashed him. They hit him in the head with the butt of the gun, he was bleeding, then they brought him to the school along with everyone else. There were a pile of arrest orders signed by the battalion commander, ready, with one area left blank. They’d fill in that the person was detained on suspicion of disturbing the peace. They just filled in the name and the reason for arrest. There were people with plastic handcuffs that had been put on really tight. I got to speak with the people there. One of them had been brought into Israel to work for a settler and after two months the guy didn’t pay him and handed him over to the police.

All these people came from that one village?

Yes.

Anything else you remember from that night?

A small thing, but it bothered me — one house that they just destroyed. They have a dog for weapons searches, but they didn’t bring him; they just wrecked the house. The mother watched from the side and cried. Her kids sat with her and stroked her.

What do you mean, they just destroyed the house?

They smashed the floors, turned over sofas, threw plants and pictures, turned over beds, smashed the closets, the tiles. There were other things — the look on the people’s faces when you go into their house. And after all that, they were left tied up and blindfolded in the school for hours. The order came to free them at four in the afternoon. So that was more than twelve hours. There were investigators from the security services there who interrogated them one by one.

Had there been a terrorist attack in the area?

No. We didn’t even find any weapons. The brigade commander claimed that the Shin Bet did find some intelligence, that there were a lot of guys there who throw stones.

2. Naval Blockade

Unit: Navy

Location: Gaza Strip

Year: 2008

It’s mostly punishment. I hate that: “They did this to us, so we’ll do that to them.” Do you know what a naval blockade means for the people in Gaza? There’s no food for a few days. For example, suppose there’s an attack in Netanya, so they impose a naval blockade for four days on the entire Strip. No seagoing vessel can leave.  A Dabur patrol boat is stationed at the entrance to the port, if they try to go out, within seconds the soldiers shoot at the bow and even deploy attack helicopters to scare them. We did a lot of operations with attack helicopters — they don’t shoot much because they prefer to let us deal with that, but they’re there to scare people, they circle over their heads. All of a sudden there’s a Cobra right over your head, stirring up the wind and throwing everything around.

And how frequent were the blockades? 

Very. It could be three times one month, and then three months of nothing. It depends.

The blockade goes on for a day, two days, three days, four, or more than that?

I can’t remember anything longer than four days. If it was longer than that, they’d die there, and I think the IDF knows that. Seventy percent of Gaza lives on fishing — they have no other choice. For them it means not eating. There are whole families who don’t eat for a few days because of the blockade. They eat bread and water.

3. Shoot to Kill

Unit: Engineering Corps

Location: Rafah

Year: 2006

During the operations in Gaza, anyone walking around in the street, you shoot at the torso. In one operation in the Philadelphi corridor, anyone walking around at night, you shoot at the torso.

How often were the operations?

Daily. In the Philadelphi corridor, every day.

When you’re searching for tunnels, how do people manage to get around — I mean, they live in the area.

It’s like this: You bring one force up to the third or fourth floor of a building. Another group does the search below. They know that while they’re doing the search there’ll be people trying to attack them. So they put the force up high, so they can shoot at anyone down in the street. 

How much shooting was there?

Endless.

Say I’m there, I’m up on the third floor. I shoot at anyone I see?

Yes.

But it’s in Gaza, it’s a street, it’s the most crowded place in the world.

No, no, I’m talking about the Philadelphi corridor.

So that’s a rural area?

Not exactly, there’s a road, it’s like the suburbs, not the center. During operations in the other Gaza neighborhoods it’s the same thing. Shooting, during night operations — shooting.

It there any kind of announcement telling people to stay indoors?

No.

They actually shot people?

They shot anyone walking around in the street. It always ended with, “We killed six terrorists today.” Whoever you shot in the street is “a terrorist.”

That’s what they say at the briefings?

The goal is to kill terrorists.

What are the rules of engagement?

Whoever’s walking around at night, shoot to kill.

During the day, too?

They talked about that in the briefings: whoever’s walking around during the day, look for something suspicious. But something suspicious could be a cane.

4. Elimination Operation

Unit: Special Forces

Location: Gaza Strip

Year: 2000

There was a period at the beginning of the Intifada where they assassinated people using helicopter missiles.

This was at the beginning of the Second Intifada?

Yes. But it was a huge mess because there were mistakes and other people were killed, so they told us we were now going to be doing a ground elimination operation.

Is that the terminology they used? “Ground elimination operation”?

I don’t remember. But we knew it was going to be the first one of the Intifada. That was very important for the commanders and we started to train for it. The plan was to catch a terrorist on his way to Rafah, trap him in the middle of the road, and eliminate him.

Not to arrest him?

No, direct elimination. Targeted. But that operation was canceled, and then a few days later they told us that we’re going on an arrest operation. I remember the disappointment.  We were going to arrest the guy instead of doing something groundbreaking, changing the terms. So the operation was planned…

Anyway, we’re waiting inside the APC [armored personnel carrier], there are Shin Bet agents with us, and we can hear the updates from intelligence. It was amazing, like, “He’s sitting in his house drinking coffee, he’s going downstairs, saying hi to the neighbor” — stuff like that. “He’s going back up, coming down again, saying this and that, opening the trunk now, picking up a friend” — really detailed stuff.  He didn’t drive, someone else drove, and they told us his weapon was in the trunk. So we knew he didn’t have the weapon with him in the car, which would make the arrest easier. At least it relieved my stress, because I knew that if he ran to get the weapon, they’d shoot at him.

Where did the Shin Bet agent sit?

With me. In the APC. We were in contact with command and they told us he’d arrive in another five minutes, four minutes, one minute. And then there was a change in the orders, apparently from the brigade commander: elimination operation. A minute ahead of time. They hadn’t prepared us for that. A minute to go and it’s an elimination operation.

Why do you say “apparently from the brigade commander”?

I think it was the brigade commander. Looking back, the whole thing seems like a political ploy by the commander, trying to get bonus points for doing the first elimination operation, and the brigade commander trying, too. . . everyone wanted it, everyone was hot for it. The car arrives, and it’s not according to plan: their car stops here, and there’s another car in front of it, here. From what I remember, we had to shoot, he was three meters away. We had to shoot.  After they stopped the cars, I fired through the scope and the gunfire made an insane amount of noise, just crazy. And then the car, the moment we started shooting, started speeding in this direction.

The car in front?

No, the terrorist’s car — apparently when they shot the driver his leg was stuck on the gas, and they started flying. The gunfire increased, and the commander next to me is yelling “Stop, stop, hold your fire,” but they don’t stop shooting. Our guys get out and start running, away from the jeep and the armored truck, shoot a few rounds, and then go back. Insane bullets flying around for a few minutes. “Stop, stop, hold your fire,” and then they stop. They fired dozens if not hundreds of bullets into the car in front.

Are you saying this because you checked afterward?

Because we carried out the bodies. There were three people in that car. Nothing happened to the person in the back. He got out, looked around like this, put his hands in the air. But the two bodies in the front were hacked to pieces…

Afterward, I counted how many bullets I had left — I’d shot ten bullets. The whole thing was terrifying — more and more and more noise. It all took about a second and a half. And then they took out the bodies, carried the bodies. We went to a debriefing. I’ll never forget when they brought the bodies out at the base.  We were standing two meters away in a semicircle, the bodies were covered in flies, and we had the debriefing. It was, “Great job, a success. Someone shot the wrong car, and we’ll talk about the rest back on the base.” I was in total shock from all the bullets, from the crazy noise. We saw it on the video, it was all documented on video for the debriefing. I saw all the things that I told you, the people running, the minute of gunfire, I don’t know if it’s twenty seconds or a minute, but it was hundreds of bullets and it was clear that the people had been killed, but the gunfire went on and the soldiers were running from the armored truck. What I saw was a bunch of bloodthirsty guys firing an insane amount of bullets, and at the wrong car, too. The video was just awful, and then the unit commander got up. I’m sure we’ll be hearing a lot from him.

What do you mean?

That he’ll be a regional commanding officer or the chief of staff one day. He said, “The operation wasn’t carried out perfectly, but the mission was accomplished, and we got calls from the chief of staff, the defense minister, the prime minister” — everyone was happy, it’s good for the unit, and the operation was like, you know, just: “Great job.” The debriefing was just a cover-up.

Meaning?

Meaning no one stopped to say, “Three innocent people died.” Maybe with the driver there was no other way, but who were the others?

Who were they, in fact?

At that time I had a friend training with the Shin Bet, he told me about the jokes going around that the terrorist was a nobody. He’d probably taken part in some shooting and the other two had nothing to do with anything. What shocked me was that the day after the operation, the newspapers said that “a secret unit killed four terrorists,” and there was a whole story on each one, where he came from, who he’d been involved with, the operations he’d done. But I know that on the Shin Bet base they’re joking about how we killed a nobody and the other two weren’t even connected, and at the debriefing itself  they didn’t even mention it.

Who did the debriefing?

The unit commander. The first thing I expected to hear was that something bad happened, that we did the operation to eliminate one person and ended up eliminating four. I expected that he’d say, “I want to know who shot at the first car. I want to know why A-B-C ran to join in the big bullet-fest.” But that didn’t happen, and I understood that they just didn’t care.  These people do what they do.  They don’t care.

Did the guys talk about it? 

Yes. There were two I could talk to. One of them was really shocked but it didn’t stop him. It didn’t stop me, either. It was only after I came out of the army that I understood. No, even when I was in the army I understood that something really bad had happened. But the Shin Bet agents were as happy as kids at a summer camp.

What does that mean?

They were high-fiving and hugging. Really pleased with themselves. They didn’t join in the debriefing, it was of no interest to them. But what was the politics of the operation? How come my commanders, not one of them, admitted that the operation had failed? And failed so badly with the shooting all over the place that the guys sitting in the truck got hit with shrapnel from the bullets. It’s a miracle we didn’t kill each other.

5. Her limbs were smeared on the wall

Unit: Givati Brigade

Location: Gaza Strip

Year: 2008

One company told me they did an operation where a woman was blown up and smeared all over the wall. They kept knocking on her door and there was no answer, so they decided to open it with explosives.  They placed them at the door and right at that moment the woman came to open it. Then her kids came down and saw her. I heard about it after the operation at dinner.  Someone said it was funny that the kids saw their mother smeared on the wall and everyone cracked up. Another time I got screamed at by my platoon when I went to give the detainees some water from our field kit canteen. They said, “What, are you crazy?” I couldn’t see what their problem was, so they said, “Come on, germs.” In Nahal Oz, there was an incident with kids who’d been sent by their parents to try to get into Israel to find food, because their families were hungry. They were fourteen- or fifteen-year-old boys, I think.  I remember one of them sitting blindfolded and then someone came and hit him, here.

On the legs.

And poured oil on him, the stuff we use to clean weapons.

6. We shot at fishermen

Unit: Navy

Location: Gaza Strip

Year: 2007

There’s an area bordering Gaza that’s under the navy’s control. Even after Israel disengaged from the Strip, nothing changed in the sea sector. I remember that near Area K, which divided Israel and Gaza, there were kids as young as four or six, who’d get up early in the morning to fish, in the areas that were off-limits. They’d go there because the other areas were crowded with fishermen. The kids always tried to cross, and every morning we’d shoot in their direction to scare them off. It got to the point of shooting at the kids’ feet where they were standing on the beach or at the ones on surfboards. We had Druze police officers on board who’d scream at them in Arabic. We’d see the poor kids crying.

What do you mean, “shoot in their direction”?

It starts with shooting in the air, then it shifts to shooting close by, and in extreme cases it becomes shooting toward their legs.

At what distance?

Five or six hundred meters, with a Rafael heavy machine gun, it’s all automatic.

Where do you aim?

It’s about perspective. On the screen, there’s a measure for height and a one for width, and you mark where you want the bullet to go with the cursor. It cancels out the effect of the waves and hits where it’s supposed to, it’s precise.

You aim a meter away from the surfboard?

More like five or six meters. I heard about cases where they actually hit the surfboards, but I didn’t see it. There were other things that bothered me, this thing with Palestinian fishing nets. The nets cost around four thousand shekels, which is like a million dollars for them. When they wouldn’t do what we said too many times, we’d sink their nets. They leave their nets in the water for something like six hours. The Dabur patrol boat comes along and cuts their nets.

Why?

As a punishment.

For what?

Because they didn’t do what we said. Let’s say a boat drifts over to an area that’s off-limits, so a Dabur comes, circles, shoots in the air, and goes back. Then an hour later, the boat comes back and so does the Dabur. The third time around, the Dabur starts shooting at the nets, at the boat, and then shoots to sink them.

Is the off-limits area close to Israel?

There’s one area close to Israel and another along the Israeli-Egyptian border… Israel’s sea border is twelve miles out, and Gaza’s is only three. They’ve only got those three miles, and that’s because of one reason, which is that Israel wants its gas, and there’s an offshore drilling rig something like three and a half miles out facing the Gaza Strip, which should be Palestinian, except that it’s ours… the Navy Special Forces unit provides security for the rig. A bird comes near the area, they shoot it. There’s an insane amount of security for that thing. One time there were Egyptian fishing nets over the three-mile limit, and we dealt with them. A total disaster.

Meaning?

They were in international waters, we don’t have jurisdiction there, but we’d shoot at them.

At Egyptian fishing nets?

Yes. Although we’re at peace with Egypt.

Oded Na’aman is co-editor of Our Harsh Logic: Israeli Soldiers’ Testimonies from the Occupied Territories, 2000–2010 (Metropolitan Books, 2012).  He is also a founder of Breaking the Silence, an Israeli organization dedicated to collecting the testimonies of Israel Defense Force soldiers, and a member of the Israeli Opposition Network. He served in the IDF as a first sergeant and crew commander in the artillery corps between 2000 and 2003 and is now working on his PhD in philosophy at Harvard University.  The testimonies in this piece from Our Harsh Logic have been adapted and shortened.

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter @TomDispatch and join us on Facebook.  Check out the newest Dispatch book, Nick Turse’s The Changing Face of Empire: Special Ops, Drones, Proxy Fighters, Secret Bases, and Cyberwarfare.

Copyright 2012 Breaking the Silence

This video is entitled “Imagine if London was Occupied” – it deals with the issue of checkpoints in the West Bank.

Why Israel Desires to be Hated by Palestinians » Counterpunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names.

Why Israel Desires to be Hated by Palestinians

In photos: Gaza buries its children as Israeli attacks intensify.

In photos: Gaza buries its children as Israeli attacks intensify

Mourners gather around the bodies of the al-Dalu family during their funeral in Gaza City, 19 November.

(Majdi Fathi / APA images)

Israeli attacks on Gaza killed 33 on the sixth day of an ongoing military campaign that has so far claimed 117 lives, according to the Ma’an News Agency. At least two dozen of the dead are children.

In the latest attack, four-year-old twin boys Suhaib and Muhammad were killed instantly when their home in the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Lahiya was hit by an Israeli airstrike. Their parents Fuad Hijazi and Amna Hijazi died in hospital. Eighteen people were reported injured in the attack (“Family killed in new Israeli airstrike,” Ma’an News Agency).

No ceasefire has yet been reached as Israel continued to pound Gaza overnight Monday; three Israeli civilians were killed when a rocket fired from Gaza hit an apartment building in Kiryat Malachi last week, the only deaths in Israel.

Israel has amassed ground forces along its boundary with Gaza and has threatened to invade.

Israeli forces targeted buildings housing journalists both on Sunday and Monday; Islamic Jihad operative Ramiz Harb and 53-year-old civilian Salem Bulus Swelim were killed in today’s attack. Eight were injured yesterday when an Israeli missile hit another Gaza City building, including a cameraman whose leg was amputated; an Israeli spokesperson admitted that the military was aware that the building housed journalists.

On Sunday, 12 Palestinian civilians, including 10 members of the al-Dalu family, were killed in an Israeli strike that totally leveled a three-story home in Gaza City. The victims include four children; rescue crews searched for the remains of two eenagers from the al-Dalu family on Monday (“Israel ‘still investigation’ al-Dalou family killing,” Reuters).

Meanwhile in the West Bank, hundreds of injuries, several of them critical, have been reported as Israel violently represses protests against the Gaza attacks. Today 28-year-old Rushdi Tamimi died in a Ramallah hospital after he was shot by the Israeli army two days ago during a protest in the village of Nabi Saleh.

A Palestinian policeman bids farewell to 28-year-old Palestinian Rushdi Tamimi, a fellow officer, who died at a Ramallah hospital two days after Israeli forces shot him during a Gaza solidarity protest in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh, 19 November.

(Issam Rimawi / APA images)

Palestinians carry the bodies of Jumana and Tamer Eseifan, both under the age of four, who were killed when an Israeli warplane fired a missile at an agricultural plot near their home in the Tal al-Zatar area of Jabaliya town, 18 November.

(Majdi Fathi / APA images)

A Palestinian man sits next to the body of his one-year-old son Iyad Abu Khoussa during the baby’s funeral in Bureij refugee camp, central Gaza Strip, 18 November. The child was killed when an Israeli warplane fired a missile at the fence of his family’s home; two other small children were wounded in the strike.

(Ashraf Amra / APA images)

Smoke rises after an Israeli airstrike in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, 19 November.

(Eyad Al Baba / APA images)

Palestinians search through the debris of the destroyed home of the al-Dalu family following an Israeli air strike in Gaza City, 18 November.

(Yasser Qudih / APA images)

Palestinians rescuers carry out the body of Nawal Faraj Abdul Aal, 53, who was found under the ruins of her home which was destroyed when Israeli warplanes fired a missile at a nearby police station in the al-Tuffah neighborhood of Gaza City, 18 November.

(Anne Paq / ActiveStills)

The daughters and mother of Nawal Faraj Abdul Aal, 53, mourn after the woman was asphyxiated under the rubble of her home. The home was destroyed when Israeli warplanes fired a missile at a nearby police station in the al-Tuffah neighborhood of Gaza City, 18 November.

(Anne Paq / ActiveStills)

Al-Quds TV cameraman Khader al-Zahhar at the intensive care unit of al-Shifa hospital after he was seriously injured in an Israeli air strike on a media building.

(Anne Paq / ActiveStills)

Smoke rises as an Israeli air strike hits a media center in Gaza, 18 November.

(Majdi Fathi / APA images)

A Palestinian firefighter tries to extinguish a fire after an Israeli air strike on a Gaza City building that houses media offices, 19 November.

(Yasser Qudih / APA images)

Palestinians survey the remains of a destroyed a house after an Israeli air strike in al-Shojaiya neighborhood in the east of Gaza City, 18 November.

(Ashraf Amra / APA images)

Palestinians survey the remains of a destroyed a house after Israeli air strike in Beit Lahiya town in the northern Gaza Strip, 18 November.

(Majdi Fathi / APA images)

A Palestinian inspects the damage to a football stadium after an Israeli air strike in Gaza City, 19 November.

(Ahmed Zakot / Reuters)

Palestinian medics wheel a wounded boy on a stretcher to al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, 18 November.

(Ashraf Amra / APA images)

A Palestinian woman looks at her destroyed home following Israeli air strikes on the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah, 18 November.

(Eyad Al Baba / APA images)

Smoke rises after an Israeli air strike on a Palestinian house in al-Shojaya in the east of Gaza City, 18 November.

(Ashraf Amra / APA images)

Palestinians walk amongst the debris of destroyed homes following an Israeli air strike in Gaza City, 19 November.

(Ashraf Amra / APA images)

Palestinians gather around a destroyed house after an Israeli air strike in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, 19 November.

(Ibraheem Abu Mustafa / Reuters)

Israeli soldiers take part in a drill simulating a possible ground invasion into the Gaza Strip at a base south of the occupied West Bank city of Hebron, 17 November.

(Amir Cohen / Reuters)

An Israeli border policeman shoots a tear gas canister at Palestinian protesters during clashes outside Ofer prison near the West Bank city of Ramallah, 18 November. The clashes broke out following a protest against Israel’s military attacks on the Gaza Strip.

(Issam Rimawi / APA images)

A Palestinian protester throws stones at Israeli soldiers at Huwwara checkpoint near the occupied West Bank city of Nablus during clashes following a protest against Israel’s attacks on the Gaza Strip, 18 November.

(Nedal Eshtayah / APA images)

Israeli soldiers arrest a Palestinian protester at Huwwara checkpoint near the occupied West Bank city of Nablus during clashes following a protest against Israel’s attacks on the Gaza Strip, 18 November.

(Nedal Eshtayah / APA images)

Abdallah Abu Rahmeh lies in the road after he was purposefully hit by a car driven by an Israeli settler (pictured) during a peaceful protest against Israel’s attacks on Gaza on Route 60 outside Ofra settlement, 19 November.

(Issam Rimawi / APA images)

Bishop William Shomali leads a mass to pray for the children of Gaza in the Church of the Annunciation in the occupied West Bank city of Beit Jala, 18 November.

(Mamoun Wazwaz / APA images)

A girl holds a candle next to a photo of three-year-old Ranan Yousef Arafat, who was killed by Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, as Palestinians gathered in the West Bank city of Bethlehem’s Manger Square to mourn the victims of Israeli military strikes and to call for an end to the escalation of violence, 17 November.

(Ryan Rodrick Beiler / ActiveStills)

“Flatten” Gaza like Hiroshima and “mow” the population, Israeli public figures urge.

On 15 November, the second day of an Israeli assault, Ben-Ari addressed a hate rally in Tel Aviv, calling for more bloodshed in Gaza. New video of that rally, which this blog [Ali Abunimah’s EI blog] reported on previously, shows Ben-Ari in action.

“Flatten” Gaza like Hiroshima and “mow” the population, Israeli public figures urge

Palestinian doctors gather to pray around the bodies of four children from the al-Dallu family killed along with 7 other people when an Israeli missile struck a family home in Gaza City, on 18 November 2012.

(Majdi Fathi / APA images)

In the latest horrifying examples of incitement to mass murder by Israeli public figures, Gilad Sharon, the son of former prime minister and notorious war criminal Ariel Sharon, has called for the Israeli army to “flatten” Gaza as the US flattened the Japanese city of Hiroshima in 1945 with an atomic bomb.

“The residents of Gaza are not innocent, they elected Hamas. The Gazans aren’t hostages; they chose this freely, and must live with the consequences,” wrote Sharon in the extremist publication The Jerusalem Post. Sharon elaborated:

We need to flatten entire neighborhoods in Gaza. Flatten all of Gaza. The Americans didn’t stop with Hiroshima – the Japanese weren’t surrendering fast enough, so they hit Nagasaki, too.

There should be no electricity in Gaza, no gasoline or moving vehicles, nothing. Then they’d really call for a ceasefire.

Were this to happen, the images from Gaza might be unpleasant – but victory would be swift, and the lives of our soldiers and civilians spared.

Sharon added that “There is no middle path here – either the Gazans and their infrastructure are made to pay the price, or we reoccupy the entire Gaza Strip.”

Read more.