05/11/15 – Avner Gvaryahu – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, you guys.
Welcome back to the show.
Oops.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is my show, The Scott Horton Show.
All right.
There we go.
Do we have you?
Abner, welcome to the show.
Hi, Scott.
How are you?
I'm doing good.
I'm sorry.
Please pronounce your last name for me so I don't get it wrong here.
Yeah.
It's Gavaryahu.
Gavaryahu.
Okay, great.
So, okay.
I got it.
Gavaryahu.
All right.
So, welcome.
Thank you very much for joining us on the show today.
The website is breakingthesilence.org.il.
And the project is about Protective Edge, the war last summer against Gaza.
And you guys have testimonies from how many 60-something soldiers.
And it's sort of, it's like the winter soldier testimonies from Vietnam and from the Iraq War, everybody, where these members of the IDF talk about the real war as they witnessed it and in a way that, you know, might tend to cast a little bit of doubt on all those slogans about the IDF being the most moral army in the world.
But, so, how many was it?
60?
How many soldiers here that you got?
Yeah.
So, it was actually 70.
A little bit less than 70 soldiers.
About a third of them were officers, which is, you know, a little bit less than 70 soldiers.
So, it was actually 70.
A little bit less than 70 soldiers.
About a third of them were officers, which is something which is pretty unique for these kinds of reports.
We've been around as an organization for over a decade now.
So, we really started working around the end of the Second Intifada, which was around the year 2000.
And the organization started in 2004.
So, really, this June will be our 11th year.
And we've been documenting the Israeli occupation from the perspective of the occupier, if you'd like, for all this time.
All our work is done by former soldiers.
So, I myself was actually a paratrooper.
And alongside with me in the organization, there's people that served in different infantry units and different battalions.
And we all came together in order to, you know, break our silence around this too-long military occupation.
And that's what we're basically here to do.
All right.
So, now, how difficult was it for you to find soldiers who were willing to talk about what happened last summer?
Well, it definitely wasn't an easy task.
And right after the operation was over, we realized that it's part of our duty.
And we understood as an organization it's part of our duty to get, you know, a different perspective from the soldiers who were there, out there.
And we, you know, I would say it sort of happened in the same time that we started reaching out to people and people started contacting us.
As I said, because we've been around for a while now, we actually met throughout the 11 years we've been around.
We met close to 1,000 soldiers.
So, when we, you know, put our heads together and said, okay, how are we going to get the soldiers who were serving, who just finished serving?
So, of course, the natural thing was to turn to soldiers that have already given testimonies.
And that was really the beginning of the process.
But there were also soldiers that turned to us.
A big part of our work is educational work.
So, maybe this is throughout the year, you know, the heart of our work is really gathering testimonies.
But we also spend a lot of our efforts educating whoever's really interested to hear about what we heard.
So, a lot of the people that we met throughout the years that later on joined the military after serving in Gaza turned to us.
So, it's sort of a combination of us reaching out and people and many soldiers actually felt that there was an urgency to contact us.
And I think that explains the high numbers and that explains the large number of officers as well.
All right.
Now, this is just an assumption, but I guess your critics must say that, well, you're cherry-picking.
You're finding a couple of guys who are willing to say what you want to hear, but what about the rest of the soldiers?
Wouldn't they discredit this and say, no way, we only ever kill bad guys, et cetera?
Well, I would say that, I mean, I don't think that claim is, you know, really credible.
But, I mean, I would say that what we really managed to show is the tip of the iceberg.
And I definitely think that, you know, I can't say everyone agrees with us, but there's definitely many people that understand that we're really only showing the tip of the iceberg.
But, I mean, what we're really trying to do, and this is a big part of, and it's not an easy task, but we really find it important to express the fact that we're not an organization that's trying to show, you know, the IDF horror picture show.
You know, we're not about showing the rotten apples, we're about showing the norms.
And this has been our mantra, you know, constantly.
You know, we're always about talking about a system and not about individuals.
But I think this time around, this operation, it was so clear that the soldiers that chose to speak with us were really just, you know, sharing with us their orders.
And I think that in that matter, the soldiers that we met were really doing exactly what they were asked to be told.
And I think this time around, more than others, the claims that we maybe found a few, if you'd like, rotten apples, you know, just doesn't compute with the testimonies, which constantly go back up to the chain of command and talk about rules of engagement and talk about massive usage of artillery and talk about, you know, massive areas of activity.
Massive areas of killing zones.
And these are things that can only come from the top.
So there are specific incidences that really shout out, but those incidences only talk about the system.
And I think that's really where we're trying to put our focus.
Okay.
Well, now, so do us a favor then.
Go through, I guess, if you could, please start with those rules of engagement.
Some of this sounds like the Vietnam War, where this is an area where no one is supposed to be.
So if they're here, they must be guilty of something.
They count as Viet Cong, basically.
Go ahead and get them.
Yeah.
I mean, I would just say, I mean, I don't know enough about Vietnam.
I mean, I do know a lot about the various operations and wars that Israel took part in.
So I'll leave you with the comparison, which is fine.
I would say that when I think and when I compare this operation in Gaza to other operations in Gaza or in the West Bank, we see that we have definitely dramatically changed the way that we're fighting the Palestinians in Gaza or Palestinian guerrilla or terrorist groups in Gaza.
You're saying there's an official change in the rules of engagement.
Yeah, there's definitely a change that we can really start dating it back to the end of the Second Intifada, which, as I mentioned, was around the year 2000.
And definitely something that we see very dramatically is the change after the second Lebanese war, which was around 2006.
And I'll give you just a small example.
And I think this will really relate to the areas that I mentioned or that you mentioned, the areas where basically anyone in them was seen as an enemy.
And this is maybe one of the biggest changes we see in the past 10 years, which is artillery for many years.
And this is and this has really been the reality in the West Bank and in Gaza.
And and we definitely don't have enough time to go back into the whole history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or the Israeli occupation.
But we really saw both the West Bank and Gaza as areas that are populated with civilians and that we have to deal with resistance from within these environments.
In 2005, when Israel disengages from Gaza, we see a very, very dramatic change.
And one of the interesting quotations is really around that time, a parliament member from Meretz, which is one of the Israeli parties, which is one of the more liberal left wing parties.
But the parliament member himself was actually a very high ranking officer in the artillery brigade in his military service.
And after 2005, for the first time, does Israel actually point artillery towards the Gaza Strip?
Now, for our listeners who aren't aware of what artillery means, I actually I was a an infantry soldier or a paratrooper.
So I had to learn a little bit about artillery.
Artillery is a very inaccurate weapon.
It's basically a weapon that you're only supposed to use in a full on war, army against army.
And even then, it's very problematic.
It becomes extremely problematic when you use this kind of weaponry inside one of the most populated areas in the world, which is the Gaza Strip.
And this parliament member, once these artillery cannons were pointed on Gaza around 2005, he says, you're basically forcing our soldiers to act in an immoral way because basically using artillery means that, you know for a fact that you're not going to have any accurate hits.
And a shell, an explosive shell of artillery, every point it hits, kills everyone in the radius of 50 meters around it and injures everyone in the radius of 150 meters around it.
Right.
When we talk about artillery shells that were shot in this last operation, we're talking about close to 20,000 that were these kinds of shells.
Just in comparison, the last time around in Protective Edge, which was a similar operation, Israel shoots much less, only 3,000 of these kinds of weapons.
So we definitely see a massive change.
And the only way we allow ourselves to actually shoot this kind of weapon is because we declare very big areas inside the Gaza Strip as war zones.
We take populated neighborhoods and we declare these areas as war zones.
We throw pamphlets from the air and a few hours afterwards, we start bombarding the area with artillery.
And the soldiers basically enter an area that in their mindset, because there was the pamphlets and it's already after artillery.
And in Hebrew, when we talk about artillery, we basically, the military term is to soften, to soften the area before the troops come in.
So we basically soften this area with thousands of artillery shells and soldiers enter these neighborhoods in the pretense that they're entering an area that have no civilians.
And when you read the testimonies of the soldiers, and I recommend everyone to find, it's very easy to find on our website, the soldiers over and over again talk about the fact that there are no civilians in these areas.
Or that they're told, sorry, that they're told that there are no civilians in these areas.
And that because there are no civilians there, any person they see, they can basically shoot to kill.
Now, contrary to what, I'll just finish, contrary to what they were told, right?
And this was basically a point which we feel soldiers were basically lied to.
So I don't think the soldiers were victims here, but definitely they were lied to because they were told that they're entering areas that there are no civilians there.
And when soldiers talk to us over and over and over again, we hear stories of soldiers entering houses in these areas that were already bombarded, right?
Where soldiers are shooting in every direction, where you have tanks shooting to every place that seems suspicious.
And inside these neighborhoods, soldiers enter houses, sometimes 30, 40 people are there.
Women are walking back to their homes to get medicine.
Old men, we have a story, an incident of an old man that was shot and killed.
Because in these areas, the pretense was you have no civilians, which factually was just not true.
Yeah, that's the same premise from Vietnam, that free fire zone or Fallujah in 2004 is another good example of that same policy.
Where we just insist there couldn't possibly be civilians.
Anyone that you see is a combatant, so treat them as such, even if you can tell with your own lying eyes that it's clearly not a combatant.
You go ahead and kill them anyway.
That's the policy.
And now, you mentioned how there was a big change after Lebanon in 2006.
Did these guys talk about the Da'iya doctrine, which was named after a neighborhood in Lebanon, where supposedly the IDF learned the lesson that it's a good thing sometimes to just raise a whole neighborhood to the ground, and we'll call it the Da'iya doctrine now.
Yeah, I mean, that's a very good point, which we definitely put an emphasis on in our analysis as an organization.
So we really see the Da'iya, as we call it, the Da'iya doctrine, as one of those changes that really has brought us to this point.
And as you mentioned, really, this neighborhood in Beirut, which was basically destroyed to the ground, and this actually became – maybe Beirut was one of those points where we really implemented it, but it was a doctrine that officers were taught in officer school for a while.
But actually, our current chief of staff, Gadi Eisenkot, is sort of like the poster boy of the Da'iya doctrine.
And he was quoted saying, you know, if there'll be a house that shoots at us from a village, the entire village will be destroyed, or something along those lines, where the idea is a non-proportionate or a disproportionate response to any aggression.
And I think that the mindset of this doctrine is because we're in this sort of reality where it's not tank against tank or plane against plane, but it's a very strong military, in this case Israel, versus smaller guerrilla groups.
We're never going to have a clear victory.
So the only thing we can do is make sure that the next round will be in the latest time as possible.
So the stronger blow we give our enemy, the longer it will take him to actually, you know, reboot and then retaliate.
Now, when you understand that this is the mindset, I think you understand Gaza.
Because, you know, there was definitely, and I'm saying this, and this is, I think, an important point.
There was definitely a real threat on villages in the southern border of Israel.
There was definitely, sorry, there was definitely a threat, of course, by the missiles or by attack tunnels.
And there was a real feeling of fear.
And as an Israeli, this is something I can relate to.
But I think that we also have the responsibility to talk about, you know, the tools that we are using in order to deal with these threats.
And I feel that was totally lacking from the discourse around this last Gaza war, where we definitely, without any doubt, used a disproportionate amount of power.
You know, I mentioned artillery before.
I think artillery is definitely one of the best examples of this massive use of power.
I mean, alongside almost 35,000 artillery shells, 19,000 of them were the explosive shells, but 35,000 altogether of artillery shells.
We have close to 20,000 tank shells which were shot.
We have close to 5,000 Air Force missions.
And, you know, this is part of the reason that we see this massive, massive destruction.
And when you listen to the testimonies of the soldiers, you realize that in many cases the fire was not shot in order to protect soldiers or to protect civilians, but actually to create massive damage.
And it's not only with artillery, but it's also with the tank shells.
One of the testimonies we got is from a soldier during his second day in the Gaza Strip.
He's sort of the northern part of, center north of the Gaza Strip, where he's, they're actually, wake up in the morning, their commander asked them, all the tanks to go up in a, to form a row, seven tanks, and to aim into a neighborhood called El Burej.
And without any reason, they weren't shot at.
They didn't see anyone in the distance.
They do what he calls good morning El Burej.
And they basically, all the seven tanks shoot into random houses into El Burej.
Now El Burej was three kilometers away of where these tanks were, right?
But this story is actually not unique when you hear the other tankers, when you hear the other soldiers on the ground.
There was constant fire, and this constant fire was a part of the mindset of the, definitely part of the mindset of the Dakhia Doctrine.
All right, now let me ask you this, Abner.
What can you tell me, what have you learned about the attacks on the safe zones?
Because as you said, you know, the safe zones basically are what's left when you have to flee from what's now become a free fire zone.
They say when they drop the flyers, you're not safe here, go there, and you'll be safe there.
And so all the civilians flee there, and then as they were complaining at the time, they get bombed when they went to the safe zone just as well as in the free fire zone.
And then I guess as a corollary to that same question would be, what about the attacks on the UN schools?
And they kept claiming, well, it's just an accident, but they kept bombing UN schools full of refugees.
Do you have testimony that sheds any light on what was going on there?
Yeah, I do.
I actually have to say that I think that, and this we heard over and over again from soldiers, there were points and there were places outside of, if you like, the fire zones or these combat zones, where soldiers were ordered, do not shoot schools, do not shoot UN buildings and so on and so forth.
And I think, I can't say this for a fact, because we really don't have accounts of each and every one of the missions, but I think it would be fair to say that every time a school or a UN building was hit, it actually was by accident.
But I'm saying that with a grain of salt, because one of the interesting testimonies that we got, and this is actually also in the booklet, was from a soldier that was in charge of, was an officer in one of the artillery corps.
And he actually describes one of the debriefings that he got.
And in the debriefing, they, you know, the artillery, which is always a little bit in the leg, a little bit in the back of the infantry and the tanks or a little bit deeper inside the area or specifically here in the strip, the artillery are always in the back and they don't have a good picture of what's happening in the front.
And they always feel that they're not giving enough protection to the soldiers.
And in this briefing, a few of the officers talk about the fact that they feel that they're not really giving the soldiers on the ground enough protection.
And one of the most high ranking officers in that room actually calls a bunch of them up.
And when the debriefing ends, he tells them something along the lines of, listen, guys, there's a trick.
And he explains to them, this is what we did in Lebanon.
And he describes a reality where you have a target that you want to shoot on.
Right.
It could be.
And this is, again, depends on the time of the operation.
And we hear different things from different soldiers, but it could be, you know, a Hamas gunman.
And it could be someone just looking on the roof.
It depends.
Both scenarios could be seen as a threat.
But even if you see, let's say, a gunman and he's shooting the troops, a Hamas gunman shooting the IDF troops.
And in his perimeter, right, let's say 200 meters from him, there is a U.N. school.
The rules of the artillery are you're not allowed to shoot the gunman if he's too close to a school.
And if you'll actually point put into the GPS at a specific point that you want to shoot in, you won't get permission.
So this high ranking officer says, I have a trick for you guys.
The point that you ask for shouldn't be 200 meters away from the school.
It should actually be 400 meters from the school.
So you double the distance.
Now, artillery is a very inaccurate weapon.
So this officer says, after you ask for 400 meters, the only thing you have to do is turn your barrel 200 meters to the right.
So to make a long story short, I really don't think, and this is, again, from our testimonies, that there wasn't a deliberate attempt to hit schools.
But and this is a very important, but there definitely was also there were definitely also cases that we know of or that we know that potentially happened, that we did not do whatever we can to make sure we wouldn't hit schools.
And this is contrary to what we said.
Another I'm sorry, but what about the contradiction between, hey, run here to the safe zone and then people getting bombed in the safe zones?
Was that overblown or was there a reason for that?
Do you know?
Yeah.
So I think one of the things we hear and this is also something that was a lot in the media is what was called the knock on the roof.
Maybe you maybe you heard of this practice, knock on the roof basically was was was at least this is what we were we were told in the Israeli media.
This is sort of a way to protect Palestinians living in who are in houses.
Right.
We'll have this small missile that will knock, you know, that will hit the roof.
And then people inside the house will know that there'll be a few moments later.
Right.
There'll be a bigger bomb that will come and destroy the house.
And this was sort of sold to the Israeli public.
I don't know how it was seen around the world, but definitely sold to the Israeli public as sort of a humanitarian action, because this way we save lives.
And I think one of the examples to show how this is absurd, this idea is that we hear from we meet soldiers that were actually not on the ground, but were in what are called attack cells.
You know, the soldiers are sitting inside the war rooms and giving the OK for the air force.
And these attack cells get multiple perspectives.
It could be intelligence, it could be information from the ground, could be information from the air.
And they eventually have to make up their mind and say, is it OK to attack this house or this individual?
And one of the things that we hear, for example, is that most of the air force attacks or strikes were actually deeper into the into the strip.
So not inside the areas that the soldiers were at, but actually inside the place that we told Palestinians that they should be evicted to.
Right.
So, for example, we know that Palestinians were evicted from the neighborhood of Beit Lahiya or Beit Hanon and were told to go into the refugee camp of Jabalia or to the city of Jabalia.
But we also know that there were airstrikes inside Jabalia.
So one of the things we hear from these attack cells about this knock on the roof is that in many cases there were these knock on the roof.
But sometimes there was half a minute or a minute from the knock on the roof to the actual bomb.
And the testifier, the soldier, tells us maybe, you know, a Hamas member or Islamic Jihad member is fast enough to run in this split second and to go into a tunnel.
But the grandmother on the fifth floor, the fourth floor, she won't make it.
Right.
So this is one what one understanding why there were these civilian civilian casualties.
Another understanding that we get is that the IDF actually does have the capacity to know in accuracy how many people are in each house.
We don't know how.
We're not exactly sure what the methods are, but we hear this from soldiers.
And we also know that this that this method was not always carried out.
So, for example, if you have an airstrike that you want to carry out in Jabalia, which is a neighbor that you evicted Palestinians into.
Right.
And you now have this knock on the roof.
Right.
And you only have an idea of how many people are in the house because your intelligence is pretty old.
It could be a month or two months old, sometimes a year old.
So you it says on your in your information, it says in this house you have 20 people living.
But now you just had entire neighborhoods flee into Jabalia.
So maybe each house has double the number.
This is information the Air Force doesn't have.
So I think it's much more about the fact that we are now in the way we conduct our wars with in Gaza is that we will.
It's not it's not.
And I really think this is true.
I don't think that soldiers and this is from meeting many soldiers and reading the testimonies.
Soldiers did not wake up in the morning with the urge to kill as many Palestinians as possible.
I think this was not the case.
But I think that there definitely was in many cases indiscriminate fire.
And I think that there were in many cases realities where we did not do whatever we can in order to save innocent lives.
And I think in the end of the day, when we look at the numbers, if we look at the numbers of, you know, the innocent civilians who were killed, we look at the numbers of the children that were killed.
I really don't think that there was, you know, like like we hear in various wars or specifically like Vietnam, you know, let's the death toll.
And I don't think that was the case.
But I do think that there was a disproportionate use of power.
And and definitely this idea that we will do whatever we need, many times not asking ourselves or not asking ourselves more questions in order to protect the soldiers.
Also, the expense of.
Of innocent Palestinians.
Yeah, I mean, it seems again like you're talking about with the free fire zones and this kind of thing.
And we see this, you know, from a lot of different wars where enemy gets defined down and rationalizations, you know, get stretched in order to include people who are killed.
We see this with the drone strike, too, where if they kill the fighting aged male with a drone, well, he must have had it coming.
Unless you can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt, he was innocent after he's dead anyway.
And it doesn't matter.
And that's, you know, and they call that the just laws of war, too.
But, yeah, there's actually one of the testimonies, which I think is really along those lines, is a is a story in the south part of the Gaza Strip of two women that they're walking, you know, between 500 meters, 700 meters from from the troops.
So they're definitely not at risk.
And our testifier tells us this whole story where it's noon and they see these two women.
And there's some sort of fear, maybe their lookouts or maybe, you know, they're in this zone.
So they go up to their commander on the radio and the commander orders an airstrike.
And the airstrike kills these two women.
Now, the guy who talks to us, he says, I felt this is bullshit.
So he actually makes a point to to to to to know what what they found on these two women.
So they know there's two tanks that go up and and check what these two women have on them.
And they don't find anything on these women, not a weapon or or even a walkie talkie.
And they don't they find two cell phones on them.
And the testifier says, you know, it's a joke.
Who doesn't walk around today with a cell phone?
So he goes eventually to the to the what is called like the war room where they write down all the information about people who were killed.
And and, you know, an enemy that that was successfully stopped or destroyed or whatnot.
And he he he realizes that these two women are actually written down as terrorists, even though nothing was found on them.
And this is something that we hear more and more of this idea of how we took this what used to be this idea of targeted assassination.
You have a specific individual and you build a whole profile on him.
And, you know, he's this this this this this this, you know, the biggest bad guy that you can find.
And and then you assassinate him.
And we hear this from other soldiers as well.
So we basically took this idea and turned it on the head.
We turned it on the head.
We kill someone.
And like you said, later on, we build the entire file.
Right now.
So for Americans, we live in a big old country here.
I live in Texas and it's a big old country all by itself.
But could you explain to people in a way where you think they might be able to really get their head around just what the Gaza Strip even is, how big it is, how many people are crammed in there and just what a canned hunt this entire exercise is in terms of who versus who?
Yeah.
So when we're talking about the Gaza Strip, we're talking about a one of the most dense, densely populated areas in the world in an area which is extremely, extremely small.
I can't.
Sadly, I don't know what the best comparison in the U.S. would be, but we are talking about a very narrow strip.
Again, we use the metric system.
I should have thought about that.
But we're talking about the length of a little bit more than 30 kilometers, which is pretty short.
You know, it's sort of you can pass all the strip from north to south and in about more or less half an hour, 40 minutes.
And that's the that's north to south, east to west.
It's a very, very narrow, but we're talking about in some areas, five kilometers, you know, which is a which is a five minute, five minute car ride.
And in some areas, which a little bit wider, 12 kilometers.
So we're talking about a very, very small area with about 1.8 million Palestinians, more or less.
There's different numbers from, you know, it depends who you ask.
And demographics is always a very politicized point.
1.2, 1.8.
It really depends.
But there are a variety of very important organizations, both Israeli and Palestinians and international to deal with these issues.
And I think Gaza is a very important point.
I have to say that it's one of those topics which is that there's definitely not an easy solution on the table.
It's definitely one of those things that I feel that as Israelis, even Israelis who tend to support some sort of resolution or tend to support some sort of positive change are very confused about.
And but but and for obvious reasons, I mean, it's I think that Hamas controlling the strip are not not making the lives easier for for for Palestinians living there.
Definitely not making it easier for the for the Palestinian Authority.
But I think that, you know, without diving into that whole issue, it's it's an it's it's something we can't ignore.
And I think that the way we we Israel and that, you know, when I talk about Israel, I talk about myself, even with the criticism I have to my military and the actions of my government.
I talk about, you know, the change I want to see in my country.
We can't ignore Gaza.
We have to think of a different way that we're going to be moving forward, because the only thing that I can promise you without any doubt, and this is something that Israeli politicians from across the board will all agree upon, is that there is going to be another operation.
There's going to be another war.
And the former chief of staff who just spoke in the convention last week, he said the next round is going to be much worse.
So everyone knows this is about to come.
And the only way we know how to converse with our with our neighbors, if we'd like it or not, is through the barrel of our gun or or, you know, or or with bigger numbers of artillery.
And I think one of the things that we're trying to do as an organization, and this is, you know, us as former Israelis, this is us, sorry, former soldiers and and current Israelis that want to continue to live in this place, is that we have to, you know, think of a different route.
You know, we have to think of a different way that we can have some sort of relationship and move forward from these terrible, terrible operations where, you know, dozens of Israelis were killed, dozens of Israeli soldiers were killed and thousands of Palestinians lost their lives.
And this is just something that we find to be devastating.
All right, everybody, that is Abner Gevaria.
Thank you so much for coming on the show.
I sure appreciate it.
Thank you so much.
It's very important work that you're doing there.
That's BreakingTheSilence.org.il.
BreakingTheSilence.org.il.
And just go and read dozens and dozens and dozens of firsthand winter soldier type testimonies from IDF soldiers and officers who participated in the last war.
We'll be right back.
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It's always safe to say that one should keep at least some of your savings in precious metals as a hedge against inflation.
If this economy ever does heat back up and the banks start expanding credit, rising prices could make metals a very profitable bet.
Since 1977, Roberts & Roberts Brokerage Inc. has been helping people buy and sell gold, silver, platinum, and palladium, and they do it well.
They're fast, reliable, and trusted for more than 35 years.
And they take bitcoin.
Call Roberts & Roberts at 1-800-874-9760 or stop by rrbi.co.
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