More than 60 soldier testimonies collected by Israeli NGO Breaking the Silence about last summer’s war in Gaza raise questions about Israel’s efforts to protect civilians. Among other things, the soldiers say they were instructed to treat anyone looking at them as a “scout,” that rules about what they were allowed to do were overly permissive, and that they were ordered to treat everyone as a “threat” and to “not spare ammo.” A quarter of the soldiers interviewed had a rank higher than major in the Israeli army. More than 2,200 Palestinians were killed during the conflict.
