Hi. Friendly local combat vet here. This was absolutely murder. Nobody is visibly carrying weapons and the kneeling guy isn’t doing anything from the kneeling position. If he had a Molotov he’d have to come up with it to throw it. Which gives any trained soldier with their gun up and ready an eternity to shoot him. Furthermore there’s no reason to shoot at the others. The volley of bullets is absolutely too much force for what might be one guy, away from the group. Operating procedures for infantry are pretty clear for this, the soldier that spots the possible threat stays on it until told otherwise and the squad leader either has confidence in him or calls for his best shooter to take over.
It’s impossible for us to know if this is a training problem, a command climate problem, or a straight up murder problem, but it takes a lot of de-humanization, hate, or fear to shoot at unarmed people. All of which are supposed to be tightly controlled by leaders. For example we drew the line at carrying weapons in 2003. If you had a weapon and weren’t actively surrendering, you were a “target” not a person. Until someone picked up a weapon though they were people deserving of our best efforts to protect them and speed them away from the combat area.
The IDF in no way meets these standards. For that alone they should be shamed and embargoed.
a careful cut or edit, could make all the difference.
given that the video is specifically presented as ‘unprovoked’ i’m going to guess it wasn’t.
Hi. Friendly local combat vet here. This was absolutely murder. Nobody is visibly carrying weapons and the kneeling guy isn’t doing anything from the kneeling position. If he had a Molotov he’d have to come up with it to throw it. Which gives any trained soldier with their gun up and ready an eternity to shoot him. Furthermore there’s no reason to shoot at the others. The volley of bullets is absolutely too much force for what might be one guy, away from the group. Operating procedures for infantry are pretty clear for this, the soldier that spots the possible threat stays on it until told otherwise and the squad leader either has confidence in him or calls for his best shooter to take over.
It’s impossible for us to know if this is a training problem, a command climate problem, or a straight up murder problem, but it takes a lot of de-humanization, hate, or fear to shoot at unarmed people. All of which are supposed to be tightly controlled by leaders. For example we drew the line at carrying weapons in 2003. If you had a weapon and weren’t actively surrendering, you were a “target” not a person. Until someone picked up a weapon though they were people deserving of our best efforts to protect them and speed them away from the combat area.
The IDF in no way meets these standards. For that alone they should be shamed and embargoed.