[rad-green] The Israeli Army Doesn't Have Snipers on the Gaza Border. It Has Hunters.

*https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-the-israeli-army-doesn-t-have-snipers-on-the-gaza-border-it-has-hunters-1.8637587
<https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-the-israeli-army-doesn-t-have-snipers-on-the-gaza-border-it-has-hunters-1.8637587>Haaretz
              March 7, 2020 The Israeli Army Doesn't Have Snipers on the
Gaza Border. It Has HuntersBy Gideon Levy*

   -

[image: Israeli forces seen patrolling near the Israel Gaza border Gaza on
Tuesday early morning January 20, 2009]
*Israeli forces seen patrolling near the Israel Gaza border Gaza on Tuesday
early morning January 20, 2009Daniel Bar On - JINI*

They’re the best of our boys. One is a “musician from a good high school,”
another a “boy scout” who majored in theater.” They’re the snipers who have
shot thousands of unarmed protesters along the Gaza border fence.

In the Gaza Strip <https://www.haaretz.com/misc/tags/TAG-gaza-1.5599001> there
are 8,000 permanently disabled young men as a result of the snipers’
actions. Some are leg amputees, and the shooters are very proud of that.
None of the snipers interviewed for Hilo Glazer’s frightening story in
Haaretz (March 6)
<https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.MAGAZINE-42-knees-in-one-day-israeli-snipers-open-up-about-shooting-gaza-protesters-1.8632555>
has
any regrets. If they are feeling at all apologetic it’s because they didn’t
spill more blood. One was mocked in his battalion with “here comes the
killer.” They all act like murderers.
<https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-gazan-girl-died-after-israel-denied-her-parents-visit-she-won-t-be-the-last-1.8631960>
If
their actions don’t show it – more than 200 dead as a result of them – then
their statements prove that these young men have lost their moral compass.
They are lost. They will go on to study, to have careers and to raise
families – and will never recover from their blindness. They disabled their
victims physically, but their own disabilities are more severe. Their souls
were completely twisted. They will never again be moral individuals. They
are a danger to society. They lost their humanity, if they ever had it, on
the shooting berms facing the Gaza Strip. They are the sons of our friends
and the friends of our sons, the young people from the apartment across the
hall. Look how they talk.

The soldiers’ <https://www.haaretz.com/misc/tags/TAG-idf-1.5598943> talk we
once knew – the collection of testimonies on the Six-Day War published in
English as “The Seventh Day” – turned into the talk of butchers. Perhaps
that’s for the best – we have spared ourselves some hypocrisy – but it’s
hard not to be shocked at the depths to which we have sunk. They recalled
the number of knees they shot. “I brought in seven-eight knees in one day.
Within a few hours, I almost broke his record.” “He got around 28 knees.”
They shot at unarmed young men and women who were trying in vain to
struggle for their freedom, an issue that couldn’t be more just. “The
regular scenario is supposed to be that you hit, break a bone – in the best
case, break the kneecap – within a minute an ambulance comes to evacuate
him, and after a week he gets a disability pension.”

Not enough for you? “The objective is to cause the inciter minimal damage,
so he will stop doing what he’s doing. So I, at least, would try to aim at
a fattier place, in the muscle region.” Still not enough? “If you
mistakenly hit the main artery of the thigh instead of the ankle, then
either you intended to make a mistake or you shouldn’t be a sniper. There
are snipers, not many, who ‘choose’ to make mistakes.”

They knew who they were facing. They don’t even refer to their victims as
“terrorists,” only “inciters.” One compared them to members of a youth
movement.

“Even if you don’t know their precise ‘ranks,’ you can tell by the charisma
who the group leader is.”

They chose their victims by their charisma, with a sniper’s precision.
Their “leadership aura” has destined young men to a life of disability in
the cage that is Gaza. But that was not enough. They become bloodthirsty as
only young incited people can be. They wanted more blood, not just blood, a
child’s blood. Not just a child’s blood, but in front of his family.

“Let me just once take down a kid of 16, even 14, but not with a bullet in
the leg – let me blow his head open in front of his whole family and his
whole village. Let him spurt blood. And then maybe for a month I won’t have
to take off another 20 knees.”

They wanted blood from a boy’s head only to spare themselves the need to
take down 20 more knees. They identified their victims’ age by their
shirts: Dress shirts for the older ones, T-shirts for the youngest.

None was court-martialed. Correction: One got seven days in military jail
for shooting a sheep. Soldiers in the world’s most moral army don’t shoot
sheep. With 200 dead and 8,000 wounded, they think “the restraints on us
are shameful.” That is their shame. They are our shame. They, and their
commanders. They and the army that orders them to shoot at protesters as if
they were “ducks who chose to cross the line.”People who shoot ducks aren’t
snipers. They’re hunters.

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