Source: Democracy Now!
On July 20, at least 90 Palestinians and 13 Israeli soldiers were
killed in the Gaza City neighborhood of Shejaiya. Days later, former
Israeli soldier Eran Efrati was arrested by Israel after he posted
details about the massacre based on interviews he conducted with Israeli
soldiers who were there. Today he speaks out about what he learned and
talks about the killing of 23-year-old Salem Khaleel Shamaly. Activists
with the International Solidarity Movement posted a video on YouTube
showing the fatal shooting of an unarmed Palestinian civilian during the
massacre. Family members later stumbled onto the video and identified
the man as Shamaly. In the video, Shamaly is seen lying on the ground,
apparently wounded by an unseen sniper. As Shamaly tries to get to his
feet, two more shots ring out, and he stops moving. Efrati interviewed
three of the Israeli soldiers who witnessed the killing of Salem Khaleel
Shamaly. His sources within the Israeli Defense Forces reportedly
informed him soldiers were deliberately targeting civilians as
"punishment" and "retribution" for the deaths of fellow soldiers in
their units. Efrati is a former Israeli combat soldier turned
anti-occupation activist and investigative researcher.
Click here to watch part 2 of the interview.
Click here to watch part 2 of the interview.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: The
Israeli military says it has opened criminal probes into two of its most
publicized killings of Palestinian civilians during the summer’s
assault on Gaza. Investigators will examine the killing of four
Palestinian children on a Gaza beach and a later attack that killed 14
people in a U.N. school, one of several that hit U.N. shelters. Over
2,100 Palestinians, more than 75 percent civilians, were killed in the
Israeli assault. Critics say Israel is seeking to deflect international
scrutiny, including a United Nations Human Rights Council probe and
potential cases before the International Criminal Court. However, the
Israeli army has not announced plans to investigate another notorious
episode that occurred during its recent assault on Gaza. That’s the
Shejaiya massacre in July, when nearly 90 Gazans and 13 Israeli soldiers
were killed.AMY GOODMAN: Shejaiya is one of Gaza’s poorest and most crowded neighborhoods. Activists with the International Solidarity Movement posted a video on YouTube showing the fatal shooting of an unarmed Palestinian civilian during the massacre. Family members later stumbled onto the video and identified the man as 23-year-old Salem Khaleel Shamaly. In the video, we see Shamaly lying on the ground, apparently wounded by an unseen sniper. As Shamaly tries to get to his feet, two more shots ring out. He stops moving.
Well, our next guest interviewed three of the Israeli soldiers who witnessed the killing of Salem Shamaly. His confidential sources within the IDF, the Israeli Defense Forces, reportedly informed him that the real reason for the recent IDF Shejaiya massacre was that IDF soldiers were deliberately targeting civilians as punishment and retribution for the deaths of fellow soldiers in their units. This former soldier is named Eran Efrati. He’s a former Israeli combat soldier turned anti-occupation activist and investigative researcher. Later this month, Efrati will testify at the Russell Tribunal on Palestine in Brussels.
Eran Efrati, we welcome you to Democracy Now!
ERAN EFRATI: Thank you. I’m happy to be here.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about why you went to the border to interview Israeli soldiers?
ERAN EFRATI:
Well, I’m doing this job for almost five years now, since Operation
Cast Lead. I’m collecting testimonies from soldiers. I started in
Breaking the Silence, the organization, and moved on independently to
take testimonies, collect testimonies from soldiers in the IDF,
because I was there as a soldier, and I know that what we get in the
mainstream media and what we get in the news is most of the time very
far from what’s really going on in the area. In this summer, I was
sitting in Jerusalem in my home, and the atmosphere in Israel, the
fascist atmosphere in the streets in Jerusalem, and the overall approval
of this terrible massacre that happened in Gaza was so overwhelming
that I decided to go on down to the border with Gaza and try to speak
directly with the soldiers, because I knew that I will get something
else from them.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ:
Well, I’d like to go to a—Channel 4 News’ Krishnan Guru-Murthy
questioned Israeli spokesman Mark Regev about the shooting death of
Salem Shamaly. He asked Regev if Israel plans to investigate the
shooting. This is how Regev responded.
MARK REGEV: I’d urge that if anyone has information that is relevant, that they come forward and speak to our judge advocate general, the highest military man who deals with these sort of investigations. Obviously, if there are allegations of misbehavior by Israeli soldiers, they must be investigated. We can’t rely on hearsay from political activists. I urge people to come forward. The Israeli army, like other Western armies, like NATO armies, holds itself to a very high professional standard.
KRISHNAN GURU-MURTHY: So you’re saying nobody is currently investigating one of the most notorious shootings of the military incursion, that was widely circulated around the world. Now, someone has come forward now and has spoken, he says, to some of the Israeli soldiers involved, and they make very clear allegations, that you just heard, about the conditions under which they could open fire. Now, you’ve heard those allegations. Are you concerned? Do you believe there should be an investigation?
MARK REGEV: Well, first of all, first of all, I don’t think a YouTube put out by activists is necessarily objective reality, as you yourself know. But once again, the person speaking had no direct knowledge. He was relying on testimony of others. And I would urge—
KRISHNAN GURU-MURTHY: He’s a former soldier, not just an activist. He served his country.
MARK REGEV: I would urge—you said he was an activist, didn’t you? Or your reporter said so. At least that’s what I heard. But if he has information, it’s his duty. It’s his obligation. We have a very independent judicial branch of the army, which is very strong and independent in Israel. And if people have information, they must come forward.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Your response to what Regev said?
ERAN EFRATI:
My response to the idea that if the Israeli army committed crimes
against humanity in Gaza, what they want is to investigate themself.
They actually want activists and other civilians to come to the army and
tell the army that he was doing something wrong, and they think it’s
independent. The Israeli army is independent in the way it’s controlling
all of Israeli society. The Israeli media, the Israeli court—everybody
is working underneath the army censorship. Nobody can publish anything
in Israel—of course, not researchers—and I’m not talking only on TV or
radio or newspaper; I’m talking on bloggers in the Internet. Nobody can
publish anything if it doesn’t go through the IDF censorship, the same IDF
censorship that censorship crimes for years under the occupation of the
Palestinians in Palestine. And now they want us to come to them, to be
silenced by them. It’s, of course, ridiculous.
AMY GOODMAN: What brings you to the United States?
ERAN EFRATI:
Well, I’m here because I’m doing my research from here. For the last
five years, I’m doing investigative research on the Israeli army and the
American army and the arm trades between them. The Shejaiya story that I
encountered this summer was the most recent incredible story that I
found, because not only did the war in Gaza—the massacre that was going
on in Gaza was, of course, terrible; the story of the Shejaiya
neighborhood was a particular story in this war that I think really
described the entirety of it.
AMY GOODMAN: Tell us more about it, because as you interviewed these soldiers on the border, who saw Shamaly killed—
ERAN EFRATI: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: —you were arrested by the Israeli military.
ERAN EFRATI:
Right, after publishing it. What happened is that I was in contact with
the soldiers. I knew the soldiers from before this operation, and of
course I am continuing to be in touch with them until today. I was
talking to them by phone from inside Gaza. What happened in Gaza in 2014
was very surprisingly for the Israeli soldiers in the Israeli army,
because we are not used to—the Israeli army, not used to getting
resistance from inside Gaza like we get from in Lebanon, for example.
So, in 2009 and 2012, we didn’t lose soldiers almost at all. We lost
something like 12 soldiers to Hamas killing, and most of them was from
our friendly fire. So we killed most of our soldiers. And the idea that
soldiers are being killed in Gaza, it’s something new for the Israeli
army.
And so, the Israeli army going in and losing
almost immediately 13 soldiers in one day, that day will become the
night of the Shejaiya massacre, the neighborhood massacre that killed
more than 90 people in one night. After a hard night of bombing in
Shejaiya, the infantry soldiers are going into the neighborhood and
catching houses as bases and waiting for other commands. And in that
time, they’re getting orders from their officers inside those houses to
get ready inside the house for an extended killing. When they ask why,
they’re explained to them that they understand they’re confused, they
understand that they’re hurting, the killing of their friends from their
unit—I’m talking about two specific unit, the Golani unit and the Nahal
Brigade. And they’re telling them that they understand their
frustration, and they will have a chance to get out to take out their
frustration on Palestinians. They’re waiting until the morning.
And in the morning, families are starting to
come back into their neighborhood, civilians looking for family members
they left behind and looking for them under the rubbles. We can see in
the video uploaded to YouTube and other videos that people going around
the neighborhood and screaming names of family members, looking for
them—obviously unarmed civilians. The soldiers are in the house, looking
ahead. At that time, they decide to do an imaginary red line in the
sand. Our officers tell them they had to do an imaginary red line to
determine if they’re in risk or not. And whoever will cross this red
line will be a risk for them, and so far, they can kill him. Of course,
that’s not something new. It happened in 2009 and in 2012. But this
time, this imaginary red line was drawn very, very far from the house.
Snipers were sitting on the windows waiting for orders.
And when Salem Shamaly came back with
international activists and other Palestinians looking for their family
member, he crossed one of these red lines. The sniper on the window is
asking his commander, is he have approve to shoot? His commander is
telling him, "Wait," two times, and then he’s giving him the first
approve. He’s shooting the first shot to the left side of his body and
his hand. Salem Shamaly is falling down. And then the sniper is asking
another approval to shoot again to finish him off. The officer is
telling him, "Wait, wait," and then he’s giving him approve to finish
Salem Shamaly out. This is not the only case we know of, but this is the
only case documented by international activists in Shejaiya.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ:
Well, I wanted to ask you—you say that there were soldiers who you knew
who talked to you. You, yourself, were a combat soldier in the Israeli
army. Talk about your—why you decided to do this, the transformation
that you went through.
ERAN EFRATI:
Right. Well, I grew up in a very Zionist, militaristic home. My father
was the head of investigation of the Israeli police. My mother was an
officer in the army. My brother was a special—an officer in a special
unit in the Israeli army. So I’m coming from a good background in
Israel. And I was waiting all of my youth to join the army. It was
obvious to me that this is the place I need to be. In the 11th grade, I
went to Poland into the trip to the camps with my classmates and saw
Auschwitz, the same camp that my grandma survived, and all of our family
were killed there. And there, I got the message that if I want to stop a
second Holocaust from happening, I have to go back home, join the best
unit I can in the military and stop a second Holocaust from happening.
I joined the IDF. I
went through seven months of boot camp, getting ready for a war, getting
ready to stop the second Holocaust from happening. But in the end of
these seven months, I’m not finding myself in a war; I’m finding myself
in al-Khalil, or Hebron, in the middle of the West Bank, a city counting
180,000 Palestinians, and in the middle of the city a Jewish settlement
of 800 settlers, Jewish settlers, that I need to protect. And very
fast, I will understand that my job here is to control the Palestinian
lives. My job here is to control their life for the arm trade that’s
going on, for testing weapons on the ground, for workers’ rights in
Israel, for Palestinian workers that we need for mines, for fuel. All of
this stuff, I’m doing daily, not for protection of anybody, but for
protection of the rich government in Israel.
AMY GOODMAN: And so, talk about what happened then. And what was the Israeli military’s response to your transformation?
ERAN EFRATI:
Well, I think, you know, very fast during my service, I understand
what’s going on. I started giving stories outside, from Hebron, into
Breaking the Silence. When I’m losing—I’m sorry, when I’m leaving the
army almost after four years, I was a sergeant in the Israeli army. When
I’m leaving the army, I’m joining Breaking the Silence and started
taking testimonies and trying to publish them out. Very soon I will find
out, after Operation Cast Lead, that we cannot publish everything that
we want, because even Breaking the Silence is going underneath the army
censorship.
AMY GOODMAN: Breaking the Silence is the organization, and Operation Cast Lead was the attack in 2008 on Gaza.
ERAN EFRATI:
Right. So it’s an organization that collect testimonies from soldiers
all across the West Bank and Gaza, and trying to publish them to the
Israeli public and to the world. The problem is that even Breaking the
Silence is under the military censorship, so Breaking the Silence is
actually only breaking the silence that the Israeli government let them.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: When you say that they’re under military censorship, that they clear their material with the Israeli army?
ERAN EFRATI:
Exactly. They’re giving every booklet they’re taking out, they have to
give to the Israeli—to the army censorship before it’s letting out to
the public.
AMY GOODMAN:
As we end on the young man, Shamaly, in Shejaiya—and we’re going to
show the video, and you’ll hear him—possibly, you’ll hear him as he is
laying there shot, and then shot again, and shot again, as we’re showing
this now. Let’s listen. He has been shot once now. He is reaching up.
He’s with other activists.
SALEM KHALEEL SHAMALY: [speaking in Arabic]
AMY GOODMAN: His family saw this on YouTube?
ERAN EFRATI:
Yes. His family—we need to understand that there was hundreds of
thousands refugees in Gaza during this operation running away, trying to
save their life, leaving family members behind. They didn’t know—until
today, not everybody’s sure who was killed and who was not. People are
still looking for their relatives. And then, his family is watching
YouTube and seeing their son being killed by a sniper in Shejaiya. And
this is how they found out he’s dead.
AMY GOODMAN:
Well, we will leave it there. And for our listeners, we are showing the
video on television, the horror that his parents discovered afterwards,
his family. Eran Efrati, we want to thank you for being with us, former
Israeli combat soldier turned anti-occupation activist and
investigative researcher, recently interviewed a number of Israeli
soldiers who participated in the Shejaiya massacre in Gaza. Later this
month, Eran Efrati will testify at the Russell Tribunal on Palestine in
Brussels.
No comments:
Post a Comment