A report published by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz on the “moral injuries” that IDF soldiers are dealing with includes several accounts of atrocities committed against Palestinians in Gaza, including one story about an IDF commander spitting on the bodies of children.
The soldier, who went by the alias Yuval, said the incident occurred in southern Gaza near the Salah al-Din highway when a platoon identified “suspicious figures” nearby and he began firing on them.
“When we got to our destination, I realized that these weren’t terrorists. It was an old guy and three boys, maybe teenagers. Not one of them was armed. But their bodies were riddled with bullets; their organs were pouring out. I had never seen anything like that so close up,” he said.
“I remember there was silence; nobody uttered a word. Then the battalion commander came over with his people, and one spat on the bodies and yelled, ‘This is what happens to anybody who messes with Israel, you sons of bitches.’ I was in shock, but I kept quiet because I’m a loser, just a gutless coward,” the soldier added.
The report also included an account from an IDF sniper who killed Palestinians seeking aid. “When you shoot through a sniper’s scope, everything seems close, like in a computer game. You don’t forget the faces of the people you’ve killed. It stays with you,” the sniper said.
Haaretz published a similar report last year that included an account from a sniper who said that at the time, during the mass killing of Palestinians seeking aid, his unit would set up an arbitrary line near where aid trucks. If any Palestinians crossed the line, they would be shot, including children.
The new Haaretz report also included accounts of torture during interrogations, a detained Palestinian civilian being urinated on by an IDF soldier, and an IDF officer with an American name executing an unarmed Palestinian who had raised his hands.
