Stephen Boyle 🕊 💚 🌿

More than a dozen Israeli soldiers spoke to ITV for their new documentary Breaking Ranks: Inside Israel’s War, about how their army’s two-year campaign in Gaza involved shooting unarmed Palestinians en masse, using teenagers as human shields, and flattening entire neighborhoods without pretext of any threat. One soldier recalls a man on a roof hanging his washing. A tank brigade 700 meters away decided to label him a “spotter” with no evidence of threat, and blew up half the residential tower, killing and injuring many civilians. Another remembers two teenage boys quietly pushing a cart, and Israeli soldiers deciding to shoot one in the head, adding: “If they walk too fast, they’re suspicious. If they walk too slow, they’re suspicious. They’re plotting something… If you want to, you can always find a reason to incriminate someone. If I wanted to, I could incriminate the entire Strip.” “Eli,” another soldier, said his commander reported their unit killed 112 “terrorists” at the end of their deployment— before admitting only one was even suspected of being armed. Soldiers said they were ordered to “ignore international law” and told to “take revenge on them all.”