i know this is the TP politics forum so the below is either:

a. all lies even though its the israelis themselves reporting it

b. somehow justifiable because gazans are JUST SO EVIL or whatever

but i thought i'd at least try and share. super awesome parts in bold for the lazy

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7952603.stm

An Israeli military college has printed damning soldiers' accounts of the killing of civilians and vandalism during recent operations in Gaza.

One account tells of a sniper killing a mother and children at close range whom troops had told to leave their home.

Another speaker at the seminar described what he saw as the "cold blooded murder" of a Palestinian woman.

The army has defended its conduct during the Gaza offensive but said it would investigate the testimonies.

The Israeli army has said it will investigate the soldiers' accounts.

The testimonies were published by the military academy at Oranim College. Graduates of the academy, who had served in Gaza, were speaking to new recruits at a seminar.

"[The testimonies] conveyed an atmosphere in which one feels entitled to use unrestricted force against Palestinians," academy director Dany Zamir told public radio.

Heavy civilian casualties during the three-week operation which ended in the blockaded coastal strip on 18 January provoked an international outcry.

Correspondents say the testimonies undermine Israel's claims that troops took care to protect non-combatants and accusations that Hamas militants were responsible for putting civilians into harm's way.

'Less important'

The Palestinian woman and two of her children were allegedly shot after they misunderstood instructions about which way to walk having been ordered out of their home by troops.

"The climate in general... I don't know how to describe it.... the lives of Palestinians, let's say, are much, much less important than the lives of our soldiers," an infantry squad leader is quoted saying.

In another cited case, a commander ordered troops to kill an elderly woman walking on a road, even though she was easily identifiable and clearly not a threat.

Testimonies, which were given by combat pilots and infantry soldiers, also included allegations of unnecessary destruction of Palestinian property.

"We would throw everything out of the windows to make room and order. Everything... Refrigerators, plates, furniture. The order was to throw all of the house's contents outside," a soldier said.

One non-commissioned officer related at the seminar that an old woman crossing a main road was shot by soldiers.

"I don't know whether she was suspicious, not suspicious, I don't know her story… I do know that my officer sent people to the roof in order to take her out… It was cold-blooded murder," he said.

The transcript of the session for the college's Yitzhak Rabin pre-military course, which was held last month, appeared in a newsletter published by the academy.

Israeli human rights groups have criticised the military for failing to properly investigate violations of the laws of war in Gaza despite plenty of evidence of possible war crimes.

'Moral army'

The soldiers' testimonies also reportedly told of an unusually high intervention by military and non-military rabbis, who circulated pamphlets describing the war in religious terminology.

"All the articles had one clear message," one soldier said. "We are the people of Israel, we arrived in the country almost by miracle, now we need to fight to uproot the gentiles who interfere with re-conquering the Holy Land."

"Many soldiers' feelings were that this was a war of religion," he added.

Defence Minister Ehud Barak told Israel Radio that the findings would be examined seriously.

"I still say we have the most moral army in the world. Of course there may be exceptions but I have absolutely no doubt this will be inspected on a case-by-case basis," he said.

Medical authorities say more than 1,300 Palestinians were killed during Israel's 22-day operation, including some 440 children, 110 women, and dozens of elderly people.

The stated aim was to curb rocket and mortar fire by militants from Gaza. Thirteen Israelis, including three civilians were killed.

There's something about your obsession with Evil Israelis, Nefud, and I am uncertain why you are under its grip.  Sometimes this condition evolves from living too close to a university campus with their Ivory Tower blatherings choking out any pure breath of logic.  You left the subject line blank but I could've guessed what it would be.  Even your blithe "a. or b." is childlike in nature and frankly undeserving of all the energy I am about to expend.  But...  what I'm trying to ascertain here is:

a.  Are you throwing out raw bait for the comic relief of watching me take your questions seriously?

or

b.  Are you simply unidimensionally that naive?

Eh hem.  Okay.  The first thing you will note is that one, two or three Israelis do not equal "the Israeli themselves."

It's kinda like "the Americans themselves."  F'rinstance there are some "Americans themselves" who claim to have killed or tortured civilians during wartime.  One ran for POTUS not too long ago.  Few would dispute that atrocities have ever been committed by Americans ever.  Likewise, Israelis have more than one voice.  IDF members have more than one voice.  Israeli opinion is not a monolith, so it occurs to me you do not care to cross reference your stories with Israeli sources rather than isolated quotes from the BBC.  it's as basic a methodology as affording the accused a defense.  Maybe you'll find a defense from Israeli sources, or maybe you'll find all matter of opinion, but you should check it out.

If you'd like to have this story elaborated upon without the inherent BBC prejudice, read this opinion piece from the Jerusalem Post.  It's always a good idea to further investigate any BBC story on Israel with  some other Israeli or American source before going all wobbly in the knees over highlit portions of an anti-Israeli article.

Here's my POV without having YET reading either article -- yours from BBC or mine from the JPost:

Sometimes in the most honorable militaries, in the most honorable of nations (and I cite both the US and Israel), a handful of human beings acting as the representatives of their nation carry out unethical war time practices.  This comes as no surprise to me and in fact I can't imagine any knowledgeable individual at any point in human history expecting otherwise.  

But here's the diff between the nations who strive for the highest levels of wartime honor versus those who do not -- when such abuses become known, the nation itself investigates and prosecutes its own with grave consequences for bringing dishonor to the entire nation.  I'm not saying what is written (and I will read both articles) is false, lies, or anything else just that the emphasis on isolated incidents from a 60-year near constant warfare paints a partial picture of the whole, which is all any one article can do.  You, as the reader, owe it to yourself as a thinking individual to put this story into a greater context or we could do this all day long. 

So... if you want to continue to pore over anti-Israeli media and express your outrage, who am I to suggest its a colossal waste of energy and that your perspective is mightily skewed in a world of ugliness pressing all around the borders of tiny Israel that you can't seem to acknowledge?  Continue to have at it.  May you never be faced with a real life situation where your life is dependent upon one or the other of the peoples you respectively revile  versus those whose oppression you so pity. 

Susan

     
“Half a truth is often a great lie.”

Ben Franklin

someone sent it to me and i thought it was interesting, grab your torch and pitchfork!

i should've included a subject line, i guess

     
“Half a truth is often a great lie.”

Ben Franklin

For them what's too lazy to click on the fuller version of the story, here 'tis.  I've supplied some key bold and highlights of my own to make it even easier to scan.

Susan

Analysis: The crucial morality of the IDF's cause

Mar. 19, 2009
Herb Keinon , THE JERUSALEM POST

The whole world is against us, goes an old Jewish joke, and now we've joined in.

That witticism came to mind while reading headlines in the Hebrew press Thursday about the testimony that soldiers who took part in Operation Cast Lead in January gave at the Yitzhak Rabin pre-military preparatory course at Oranim Academic College in Kiryat Tivon in February. Dani Zamir, the head of the program, published the conversations in a newsletter sent to the course's graduates.

According to the testimony of a number of soldiers who took part in what appears to have been a group therapy session getting the war experiences off their chest, three soldiers told of cases in which civilians were killed by sniper fire, and of the wanton destruction of property.

The IDF military advocate general instructed the Criminal Investigation Division of the Military Police on Thursday to investigate the claims, and while some may dismiss the investigation as a fig leaf for the rest of the world, it isn't.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak's response to the story was telling. He said Israel is the most moral army in the world. While the country's detractors around the world would mock at that moniker, we Israelis believe it, and it is extremely important that we continue to do so.

The country fights not because it wants to, but because it has to. And since it has to, it is crucial that Israelis believe in the morality of their cause. The idea of a moral army is not important because of how we are perceived abroad, but rather for how we perceive ourselves.

This country demands a lot of sacrifice from its citizens, and people will only sacrifice if they feel that what they are sacrificing for is just and right. If the army would act in an immoral manner, it would pull the rug from under our feet, and would also deter good, decent people from either going into the army, or sending their children to fight there.

Thursday's headlines, picked up immediately by the wire services and getting wide play abroad, were "IDF killed civilians in Gaza under loose rules of engagement," and, "Testimony of soldiers who fought in Gaza: 'Cold blooded murder.'"

Obviously, everyone abroad [and I'm not naming annnny names but this rings a bell..] who wants to accuse Israel of war crimes in Gaza will jump at these stories; every anti-Israel NGO will disseminate them as further proof of our evil.

What is lacking is context.

First of all, this type of testimony is legendary in Israel - there is even a phrase to describe it: yorim ve'bochimSiach Lochamim, came out immediately after the Six Day War in 1967, and was translated into English a few years latter under the title The Seventh Day. (shoot and weep). The most famous book of this genre,

The testimonials from the Rabin preparatory course have a similar feel: soldiers talking about their war experiences - what they saw, what they heard, what they felt good about, what they didn't feel good about.

It is important to note that none of the testimony was about what the soldiers did themselves, [sort of like Winter Soldiers...] but rather of what they heard or saw other soldiers do. It is also important that what was reported seems to fall within the realm of aberrations by individuals during war against a cruel enemy hiding behind civilians, not a systematic loss by the army of its moral compass.

The second piece of context is Dani Zamir, the head of the program, who had the soldiers‚ words transcribed and published. A story in Haaretz on Thursday said that in 1990 Zamir, then a parachute company commander in the reserves, was tried and sentenced to prison for refusing to guard a ceremony where "right-wingers" brought Torah scrolls to Joseph's tomb in Nablus.

Zamir, in an interview on Israel Radio on Thursday, said that the soldiers from Operation Cast Lead who spoke at the meeting reflected an atmosphere inside the army of "contempt for, and forcefulness against, the Palestinians."

Zamir himself appears in a 2004 book titled Refusnik, Israel's Soldiers of Conscience, compiled and edited by Peretz Kidron, with a forward by Susan Sontag. The book, which earned commendation from no less a personage than Noam Chomsky, includes a section by Zamir, described as "an officer in the reserves from Kibbutz Ayelet Hashahar who was sentenced to 28 days for refusal to serve in Nablus and now heads the Kibbutz Movement's preparatory seminary for youngsters ahead of their induction in the army."

"With stupid resolve and the smugness of the all-knowing, primitive preachers and unbridled nationalists are leading and misleading us to calamity, while Pompeii is preoccupied with watching boxing matches and with banquets in advance of the disaster," he wrote.

"I see a volcano in the land where one-third of the inhabitants are banned, by dint of their national and ethnic origins and geographical location, from voting as equals, where they don't have basic civic rights and where thousands are detained under administrative decree - under a military justice system that is farcical.

"A land, a third of whose inhabitants have been subjected to extended military occupation for over 20 years - which means restrictions of rights and a different code of law for Jewish and Arab residents in the selfsame land - is not a democratic country.

"Accordingly, collaboration with a regime or government that forces or orders me to be part of an anti-democratic apparatus that leads to self-destruction, disintegration and national decay, along with the utter denial of its own foundations, is illegitimate, unjust and immoral, and will remain so as long as the state does not take one of only two feasible actions: annexation of all or most of the territories conquered in 1967 and granting full civil rights to those residing there; or withdrawal from densely populated areas and a settlement that will release us of responsibility for the residents of those areas, who will chose for themselves whatever regime they desire (of course with security arrangements included)."

That was what Zamir wrote in 1990, reprinted in 2004. The testimonies of the soldiers that he brought to the public's attention seem to corroborate - what a coincidence - his thesis.

 Does this not give a more nuanced view of the BBC article?  Or not???

     
“Half a truth is often a great lie.”

Ben Franklin

Is anyone interested in an update to this story ?  (from the left wing Israeli press) This.  (from the right wing Israeli press as a way of contrasting the variety of opinion)  A further fleshing out of the details.  Anyone interested in "No Subject" follow-up?  Or will it be like a BBC inflammatory story -- or a UN accusation -- that, once the full story is put into context, we are already onto the next subject and all that remains as the "truth" is an initial misleading, factually inaccurate, carefully calculated to have been just that, tale.

Susan

     
“Half a truth is often a great lie.”

Ben Franklin