Word: palestinian
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...April conducted its own internal inquiry into allegations of abuse during the operation. While it said that mistakes led to civilian casualties in one or two isolated cases, the IDF concluded that there had been no instances of civilians deliberately killed by the defense force. Amnesty International and Palestinian sources say 1,400 Palestinians were killed during Operation Cast Lead, and that more than 900 of these were civilians, including 300 children and 115 women. The IDF in March put the Palestinian death toll at 1,166, of whom it said 295 were "uninvolved" civilians. Thirteen Israelis - three civilians...
...bias and hostility toward Israel are a more difficult response when similar claims are made by Israeli soldiers involved in the operation. In March, a group of soldiers who had fought in Gaza told a forum at an Israeli military college of a number of instances in which Palestinian civilians had been killed as a result of overly permissive rules of engagement for the operation that made such mistakes far more likely. Those claims prompted the IDF's internal inquiry, which contradicted the soldiers' allegations. (Read a story about allegations that Israel mistreats Palestinian child prisoners...
...testimonies published on Wednesday allege the use of Palestinian civilians as human shields; the improper use of white phosphorous; massive deliberate destruction of property; and numerous instances of civilians killed in mistakes allegedly resulting from overly permissive rules of engagement. There are no allegations of My Lai-type deliberate massacres; rather, the unnamed soldiers paint a picture of commanders so determined to avoid their own troops being harmed that they demanded that their men take an overly aggressive posture on the ground in Gaza, not hesitating to fire on any potential threat in an urban environment where, as one quoted...
Some also testified that officers from the Israeli military's rabbinate unit had addressed troops and distributed materials that defined the conflict as a religious war and spoke of the Palestinians as usurpers in the biblical land of Israel. That along with previous reports on brochures distributed by the military rabbinate warning that "exercising mercy towards a cruel enemy means being cruel towards innocent and honest soldiers," allegedly helped create an atmosphere in which there was insufficient concern for Palestinian civilians, say some of the soldiers who spoke to Breaking the Silence. (Watch TIME's video "Protesting Gaza, Carefully...
...testimonies reveal the discomfort and trauma of soldiers' reliving their involvement in a complicated combat setting. And their matter-of-fact recounting of the minutiae of the combat experience, along with moments of palpable pride in having struck a Hamas rocket crew or conducting themselves appropriately in relation to Palestinian civilians, certainly lends an air of authenticity to the report...