Israelis Stunned When Death Squad Mistakenly Executes Israeli Soldier

By Frank Collins

Written Israeli army rules for crowd control or riot situations permit opening fire only in life-threatening situations. An Israeli soldier must shout a warning, and fire first into the air and then at the legs. Soldiers may fire at the central body only as a last resort.

In practice, however, these rules appear to have been set aside by the army authorities. They are being completely disregarded in the field, where soldiers open fire in situations where there is no conceivable threat to life.

Michal Sela in Davar (Feb. 22, 1993) reports: "The practices in the field would not meet the standards of Wild West movies. People are being shot running away or in the back. Masked people are being shot because they are masked, stone throwers are being shot at and gatherings of people are being sprayed with gunfire. It is hard not to smile, at first, upon receiving the news of a boy from Nablus who 'got shot in the bottom.' In the Wild West, the shooter would have been banned from the society of heroes. It turns out to be nothing to smile about when the hospital reports that the bullet is deeply lodged in the boy's stomach.

"There is no need to be a field researcher in order to understand the reality of the opening fire orders. It is sufficient to carefully read the announcements of Israeli army spokesman, based upon easily deciphered jargon and code.

"For example, on Thursday, Feb. 28, official sources announced that 'An Arab resident was killed this morning around 11:30 a.m. by shots fired by soldiers in Allar village in the Tulkarm district. The event took place when an army unit, which was on initiated activity in the village, met with several suspect Arab residents who were escaping. The soldiers called on them to halt and when they did not respond they were fired upon. As a result, a resident of the village, aged about 17, was severely wounded. He received medical treatment from a military physician present on the scene and died shortly afterward from his wounds. . .'

"Deciphering such announcements by the military is simple: An IDF force on 'initiated activity' means that the soldiers are disguised as Arabs and are on a limited and defined mission, not a routine patrol. The mission might be 'capturing wanted people,' a planned ambush for stone throwers on roads where such activity might be expected, or an ambush for graffiti writers. In the case of the Allar incident, the 'escaping suspects' were the target of the initiated action, which took an unexpected turn when residents detected the unit's presence in the village.

"The mission might be an ambush for graffiti writers."

"In another killing, that of Mahmoud Al-Atrash, aged 15, from Tulkarm, the soldiers fired without warning. Israeli soldiers on initiated activity in Tulkarin refugee camp had identified two masked persons whom they suspected of being armed. The soldiers fired at them. The dead youth was not a wanted person. Anyone suspected of carrying a weapon by a unit in the field, even if the suspect is not carrying the weapon in a manner that suggests danger, may be shot without warning. "

Flagrant disregard of human rights and of their own written regulations characterizes operations of the "special units" of Israeli soldiers who dress like Arabs in order to infiltrate Palestinian communities in search of targets. It was perhaps inevitable that the callous tactics of these units would finally lead to the killing of one of their own, an Israeli soldier dressed as an Arab and mistaken for a Palestinian by his comrades.

As the victim was an Israeli soldier, the circumstances of his death were detailed extensively in Israeli newspapers, in contrast with their matter-of-fact treatment of the killings of Palestinians by army 11 special units. " A story by Sima Kadmon in the Feb. 26 Maariv was headlined, "They Killed My Son Eli as They Kill Old Horses. "

"Seven bullets were fired at First Sergeant Eli Isha. Three in the chest, two in the back and two in the head. Seven bullets. Much less is needed to kill a person. Even if he is an Arab.

"That is what his comrades in the Duvdevan unit believed when they pulled the trigger. They thought that he was an Arab. And only after he lay on the ground, his head and body full of holes, did they turn him over. In mid-July the night sky above Jenin was clear of clouds. In the moonlight, the soldiers of the unit saw immediately that they had killed their comrade.

"'They killed him like they kill horses,' says Na'ama, Isha's sister. And Nissim, his father, says: 'Yes, like you would a horse. I remember from Western movies I used to see how they would kill a horse faltering in the desert. They would shoot and shoot until it would fall. And then they would fire a final shot into the head. And that, exactly like that, is how they killed my son. . . "'

'The next morning Lt. Col. A., the unit commander, sat down with Eli Isha's father. He said that the commander of the operation did not contact several of the fighters in order to inform them of the change in Eli's position in the course of the operation. He spoke in the third person and said that was the cause of the mistake in identification and that was the reason he was shot at. He also said that the commander who made the mistake would pay for it. 'Only he did not say,' says Na'ama, 'that he was the commander of the operation and he was speaking about himself. "'

The Details Become Clear

"The details became clear in the course of the seven-day mourning period. . .'It was an initiated action,' says Na'ama. 'Such an action is planned at least 24 hours prior to implementation.'

"The unit worked according to an aerial photo which was not updated. According to that photo, there was only one exit from the mosque, while in fact there were three exits. In the briefing before the operation, the fighters were told that they would work in teams. They were disguised as Arabs and needed some code for identification. Then one of the teams was delayed. Eli was separated from his team and was sent alone instead.

"'But the minute he was alone," Na'ama says, "he as an individual became a wanted person. And besides, when the unit commander decided to send him as an individual, he knew that he might not be able to report the change to the other fighters. So how did he make a life-endangering decision?"

"After a seven-and-one-half month delay, the army decided not to bring the unit commander to trial for his actions. The chief military attorney claimed that it was a case of 'borderline neglect by a commander. "'

The failure of the army to bring charges in this case involving the death of an Israeli soldier gives some indication of the hopelessness of pursuing charges against a death squad for the summary execution of a Palestinian.

According to Dr. Israel Shahak, the Israeli journalist and Holocaust survivor who supplied the translations quoted above: "Further inquiries by the Hebrew press (not denied by any authority) have established that the killing of Isha was carried out according to the normal procedure now used by combat units of the Israeli army, called a 'certification of death' ('veedoo hamavet' in Hebrew), according to which wounded enemies are routinely shot in the head."

In response to an inquiry by the Washington Report, a spokesman for the U.S. Army said that there is no American Army regulation that allows such a finishing off of a wounded enemy soldier. He added, "It would be against the International War Crimes Convention."

Frank Collins is a free-lance journalist specializing in the Middle East.