THE MAIN impression I got from reading the stories (there's also a DVD with videotaped testimonies of four soldiers) is that Operation Cast Lead wasn't a war, it was an onslaught. The IDF basically flattened whole neighborhoods and rural villages outside Gaza City and the refugee camps. (The city and camps were left mainly to the Air Force.)
One soldier, a reserve combat medic, told me his unit spent a week in an abandoned rural village where "about 50" houses had stood; by the time they left, most of the houses were rubble. "I saw every kind of destruction I could think of. Houses were blown up by airplanes, helicopters, artillery, D-9 bulldozers, machine guns, mortars," he said. The plan was to raze them all, he added, but the army had to leave Gaza early, what with Barack Obama getting inaugurated.
Why the deliberate destruction of abandoned homes? "The battalion commander told us there were two reasons: One, to make sure none of the houses could pose a threat to us, and two, for 'the day after.' We wanted to make sure the ground was flat so that after we left, Hamas would have no place to hide."
The combat medic, a young, kippa-wearing father who studies Jewish philosophy at university and whose living room wall is lined with holy books, also said an IDF rabbi told him and a few of his comrades that "this was a war between the children of light and the children of darkness," and that "we would not have to account for our sins." The last thing the rabbi told them, he recalls, was this: "Remember, guys, aim for the torso."
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