
'42 Knees in One Day': Israeli Snipers Open Up About Shooting Gaza Protesters - Udik
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.MAGAZINE-42-knees-in-one-day-israeli-snipers-open-up-about-shooting-gaza-protesters-1.8632555
======
ASalazarMX
> "On that day, our pair had the largest number of hits, 42 in all. My locator
> wasn’t supposed to shoot, but I gave him a break, because we were getting
> close to the end of our stint, and he didn’t have knees. In the end you want
> to leave with the feeling that you did something, that you weren’t a sniper
> during exercises only. So, after I had a few hits, I suggested to him that
> we switch. He got around 28 knees there, I’d say."

This is outright disgusting. I'm glad these kind of brutal policies are
exposed and talked about.

~~~
dogma1138
Snipers go through quite extensive “desensitization” training as they are
guaranteed to see the immediate outcome of their actions and they also tend to
operate in a conditions when its not a clear “them or me” scenario.

Shooting someone who’s shooting at you or your friends is easy, taking a shot
form 100’s of meters at an unsuspecting target isn’t.

Their entire training is based around you are the weapon and you must do your
job, Jarhead was quite a good movie about just how much emotional toll this
mindset takes even or even especially in cases when they are actually denied
fulfilling their role.

From day one when snipers appeared on the battlefield things like kill counts
and leader boards amongst snipers appeared as a coping mechanism.

~~~
Udik
The politicians who ordered them to shatter the knees of thousands of
protesters must have gone through the same desensitisation training.

~~~
dogma1138
What’s the alternative shooting them dead? Let’s not pretend that this is a
quiet civil rights protest, the throwing of grenades, Molotov cocktails and
the planting of IEDs at the border fence happens during it.

Injuries takes a less of a political toll both nationally and internationally
than fatalities.

While it’s easy to say don’t shoot at all you can’t avoid the fact that a
portion of those which get too close and are shot do have quite hostile
intentions.

The issue with conflicts like these is thinking that there is a simple
solution and that is for one side to stop.

The Israeli public will not tolerate casualties on their side which works both
ways as it grants political will for things like the withdrawal form Lebanon
and the disengagement from Gaza, however it also leads to policies like this
as well as the policies of Targeted Killings that were imposed initially by
the Rabin administration as a low intensity solution to the rabid wave of
suicide bombing across Israel.

As long as there won’t be a sufficient political will on both sides to halt
all hostilities for normalization to be possible there isn’t going to be a
resolution to this conflict.

~~~
BrandoElFollito
This is sadly a very realistic comment.

I do not have any stakes in that conflict (live in France and loosely know a
few people with Jewish and Palestinian origins) and this is how I see that
conflict with my untrained eye. People fighting for something hardly shareable
(land) with hartred on both sides.

One case of such a situation which tuurned fine and that I am incredibly proud
of is the relationship between France and Germany. 1914-18, 1939-45 and now
school exchanges where children meet other children (and to my dismay -
communicate in English...). Not French meeting Germans, just kids meeting
kids.

I already mentioned that earlier but one of the greatest moments during such
an exchange was a football match where they had spontaneously mixed teams, not
Germany vs France.

~~~
Udik
> This is sadly a very realistic comment. ... this is how I see that conflict
> with my untrained eye

If your eye is untrained, how do you know that the comment is realistic? The
data are the following: 183 Palestininans shot dead, 9200 shot in the knees
"often with life-changing injuries". [1] On the Israeli side, 0 or 1 dead, 4
to 11 wounded. (data from Wikipedia).

These are the facts: an army shooting on people without receiving any damage.
So, did you ask yourself where did you get the idea that the killed and
wounded constituted an actual threat? I can tell you: it comes from the people
who shot them. And do you think they would tell you they're shooting on
harmless people? Of course not.

> People fighting for something hardly shareable (land) with hartred on both
> sides.

Again: you don't realise it, but this is spin. The two sides are not equal.
One is illegally occupying the other's territory. The other one is not. When
you see two people fighting in the street over a handbag, you don't say
"they're fighting over something hardly shareable, with hatred on both sides".
You ask yourself who is the owner of the handbag, and who's the thief.

[1]
[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/18/world/middleeast/israeli-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/18/world/middleeast/israeli-
shootings-gaza-border.html)

~~~
BrandoElFollito
> If your eye is untrained, how do you know that the comment is realistic?

Because it ends with "As long as there won’t be a sufficient political will on
both sides to halt all hostilities for normalization to be possible there
isn’t going to be a resolution to this conflict."

The main problem is that both sides probably have a point - one side will say
they were there first, the other they were there longer etc. And, again, they
will have a point.

This is very much different from your example with the thief who has
__objectively __zero rights to the bag.

I honestly pity such never-ending wars dragged through generations where
everyone will claim they are completely right and the others are completely
wrong, with some selected numbers on hand.

In Europe, where I live, there were wars for 1000 years between countries who
thought that the others were illegally occupying "their" territory. Some of
these lands kept switching sides (Alsace/Lorraine/Moselle, Silesia, ...) and I
am glad they are more or less settled now and people can live there in peace.

> Again: you don't realise it, but this is spin. The two sides are not equal.
> One is illegally occupying the other's territory. The other one is not.

A Google search for "why jews can historically have their land" or similar
brings plenty of sources. I opened the first few and it looks clear that the
land belongs to Jews.

A Google search for "why palestinians can historically have their land" or
similar brings plenty of sources. I opened the first few and it looks clear
that the land belongs to the Palestinians.

See the problem? I do not have a particular interest in that conflict so I do
not have an opinion. I just see that people are killing each other for land
and that both sides have lots of documentation to back their positions. And
various political support worldwide (some for one side, some others for the
other).

~~~
Udik
Look, I'm not even talking about the legitimacy of the state of Israel. I
think it was a mistake to allow its creation but now, now entire generations
of Israelis have been born there and that's their country. Period. You cannot
roll back history, and especially you cannot expel millions of people to who
knows where. So everything you said in your comment is completely pointless.
I'll assume you said it in good faith and were not aware of advancing a straw
man argument.

The problem is that Israel occupies portions of territory that formally don't
belong to it- it drives away the indigenous population, subjects them to every
form of violence and harassment, controls their borders and every aspect of
their life, and builds settlements on their ground, where it installs its own
civilian population. This has been declared illegal many times by all
international authorities. It is in blatant contravention of international
law. It generates enormous amounts of suffering and hatred. And it is not a
state of things, it is a process. It is going on now, it inches a bit further
every day and every year.

You say you don't have an opinion, but in fact you repeat exactly the things
that those who don't want this process to stop would like to hear from you:
that the question has two sides, that it's impossible to say who's right or
wrong, that there are many opinions. It's a form of denialism (let's hear the
other side, some say this but some say that, etc.).

------
goldcd
Fuck - that was an article I wish I'd never read.

I almost hoped it would stop at the half-way mark, so I could just shake my
head at people I could despise, but it kept going.

My thoughts in no particular order:

Clearly the Palestinians are physically suffering most from this - but whether
they acknowledge it or not, it's destroying the Israelis involved. Similar to
the US involvement in VietNam - doesn't matter if you win/lose or even why -
people who come back are changed.

I don't "blame Israel" \- I work for an Israeli company. Not a choice, just a
happenstance of a takeover. Quite an eye-opener when somebody politely tells
you that we need to wrap up the conference call, as there are incoming
rockets.

Only firm feeling I take away is that I loathe "dehumanization" \- that
pernicious and onmi-present trope that is rolled out by all sides in pretty
much every country, under every circumstance - and has been forever.

~~~
LeifCarrotson
Even more tragically, it's destroying both the Israeli people doing the
shooting and the Palestinian people who are the victims, but it's not touching
those who are setting the policies which lead to that situation nearly as
viscerally.

------
anigbrowl
It's so disappointing to see a country and people founded in the ashes of a
holocaust committing war crimes, doubly so against a relatively
disenfranchised population (as opposed to some external antagonist in a more
traditional interstate conflict).

~~~
04091948
While the holocaust did give the Israeli project one last political boost, I
think the creation of Israel was not because of it but despite it. The tragic
loss of millions of potential citizens had a significant impact on the
demographic feasibility of the country. Ben-Gurion himself says: "For many of
us, anti-Semitic feeling had little to do with our dedication [to Zionism]. I
personally never suffered anti-Semitic persecution. Płońsk was remarkably free
of it ... Nevertheless, and I think this very significant, it was Płońsk that
sent the highest proportion of Jews to Eretz Israel from any town in Poland of
comparable size."

I mean the Balfour declaration was in 1917. Herzl's "a land without a people
for a people without a land" only makes sense if you read it through the eyes
of a colonial European.

in reaction to the united nations partition plan ben-Gurion says: "The total
population of the Jewish State at the time of its establishment will be about
one million, including almost 40% non-Jews. Such a [population] composition
does not provide a stable basis for a Jewish State. This [demographic] fact
must be viewed in all its clarity and acuteness. With such a [population]
composition, there cannot even be absolute certainty that control will remain
in the hands of the Jewish majority... There can be no stable and strong
Jewish state so long as it has a Jewish majority of only 60%"

a democratic and Jewish Israel was and still is impossible without the
expulsion (ethnic cleansing*) of a major part of its Arab population.
(regardless of the incompetence of the Arab leaders and their stupid war)

I would argue that this is not really unexpected from a country built on Deir
Yassine, king David's bombing and the assassination of a UN negotiator. Acts
committed by the Irgun, which was the political predecessor of Israel's right-
wing Herut (or "Freedom") party, which led to today's Likud the current ruling
party.

~~~
04091948
to clarify the asterisk near ethnic cleansing is because this is a highly
debated topic and there is no consensus whether it happened. Expulsion, on the
other hand, is undeniable.

for the first Ben-Gurion's quote check:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ben-
Gurion#Childhood_and...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ben-
Gurion#Childhood_and_education)

for the second one:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Partition_Plan_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Partition_Plan_for_Palestine#Jews)

Deir Yassine was in 1948 much closer than the holocaust
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deir_Yassin_massacre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deir_Yassin_massacre)

King David Hotel bombing (1946)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_David_Hotel_bombing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_David_Hotel_bombing)

The UN negotiator I'm speaking of is:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folke_Bernadotte](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folke_Bernadotte)

------
woodpanel
I think regardless of where you stand on the issue of the Gaza protests, you
would find this piece to be a good and rare, almost entirely neutral article.
Good Journalism.

~~~
refurb
Agreed. This is good journalism. It simply states the facts and let's the
reader decide what the implications are.

Could use a lot more journalism like this.

------
kaiku
Watch _Gaza Fights for Freedom_ , a documentary by Abby Martin and Mike
Prysner, for a horrifying look into what life is like in Gaza for the
Palestinian people. It was filmed inside Gaza and the footage smuggled out.

It is a humanitarian crisis to say the least. I personally think it's closer
to genocide.

------
tomjen3
If you are shooting someone in the knee, and it is not by accident, you are
the bad guy.

There may be times where you have to shoot someone to kill them, even if they
are not directly a threat to you.

There may be times where you have to disable someone who is running towards
you. In that case you shoot for the upper parts of the legs.

You shoot a knee and that will for ever cripple them, with no benefit to you,
other than the enemy will always be in pain -- i.e. a benefit only to a
psychopath.

I am not naive; I know that there are really bad people out there whom we
would all be better of without, but I also understand that there is a level,
which you must not cross unless you want to become just as evil yourself.
These snipers crossed it, and in doing so created yet another argument to show
that Israel is not mature enough to be a legitimate country.

------
knzhou
Why is this downweighted?

~~~
squarefoot
Any criticism of Israel must be dismissed, and authors labeled as antisemitic.

~~~
knzhou
Wow, and now it's been flagged to death. There's nothing wrong with the
article, either. It's evenhanded, and Haaretz is about as mainstream as the
New York Times.

Is this a normal HN thing that I just haven't noticed until now? Is this
subject just too radioactive to be discussed?

~~~
squarefoot
I wasn't referring to the article; I saw many times in different contexts,
critics of the Israel government actions against Palestine being labeled as
antisemitic just to make them appear as racists and dismiss their valid
points.

------
_sunshine_
I can only wish "imagine yourself in the shoes of the protester before making
a decision" would be added to the training.

~~~
reidjs
There was a part that mentioned how one of the soldiers identifies with the
child protestors, and how a high ranking officer mentioned if he were a
Palestinian he’d be a terrorist. I don’t think it matters, they are basically
just doing their job (or playing the game) they’ve been trained for. They
still have to ask for authorization from the chain of command, so it doesn’t
really matter what they think.

Pretty heavy article

~~~
woodpanel
"a high ranking officer mentioned if he were a Palestinian he’d be a
terrorist" \- That was Ehud Barak, former Israeli Prime Minister.

------
BasDirks
I clicked this link, came back to the front page to check comments, and it was
gone. Hm!

------
ngold
Humans dismembering other trapped humans for fun and bragging rights. Mine as
well go back to crucifixes that the Romans used 2000 years ago.

~~~
curiousgal
Interesting response. I don't mean to start an argument but I genuinely wonder
what the reaction would be if it were a response to a Holocaust incident.

~~~
happytoexplain
I've rarely seen a question implying such intriguing omitted context. You
might not be getting downvotes if you had included it, since the question is
kind of unclear without it anyway.

~~~
curiousgal
What context is that? You have a post describing a tragedy and a reply saying
that humans have done it before. I was asking whether the same reply to a
description of one of the tragedies during the Holocaust would have received
the same non-chalant reaction.

~~~
rhizome
Why drop into a thread in order to change the subject? Do your own research.

------
lostmsu
Paywall :/

------
ColanR
At least they aren't headshots.

~~~
lilSebastian
That's the spirit....

~~~
ColanR
I know, right? Maybe next we can talk the folks firing rockets into using
glitter bombs.

