ISRAELI PILOTS ‘DELIBERATELY MISS’ TARGETS
Inigo Gilmore at Hatzor Air Base, Israel
Sunday August 6, 2006
The Observer
Fliers admit aborting raids on civilian targets as concern grows over
the reliability of intelligence
At least two Israeli fighter pilots have deliberately missed civilian
targets in Lebanon as disquiet grows in the military about flawed
intelligence, The Observer has learnt. Sources say the pilots
were worried that targets had been wrongly identified as Hizbollah
facilities.
Voices expressing concern over the armed forces’ failures are getting
louder. One Israeli cabinet minister said last week: ‘We gave the
army so much money. Why are we getting these results?’ Last week
saw Hizbollah’s guerrilla force, dismissed by senior Israeli military
officials as ‘ragtag’, inflict further casualties on one of the world’s
most powerful armies in southern Lebanon. At least 12 elite troops,
the equivalent of Britain’s SAS, have already been killed, and by
yesterday afternoon Israel’s military death toll had climbed to 45.
As the bodies pile up, so the Israeli media has begun to turn,
accusing the military of lacking the proper equipment, training and
intelligence to fight a guerrilla war in Lebanon. Israel’s Defence
Minister, Amir Peretz, on a tour of the front lines, was confronted
by troubled reserve soldiers who told him they lacked proper equipment
and training.
Israel’s chief of staff, Major-General Dan Halutz, had vowed to wipe
out Hizbollah’s missile threat within 10 days. These claims are now
being mocked as rockets rain down on Israel’s north with ever greater
intensity, despite an intense and highly destructive air bombardment.
As one well-connected Israeli expert put it: ‘If we have such good
information in Lebanon, how come we still don’t know the hideout of
missiles and launchers?… If we don’t know the location of their
weapons, why should we know which house is a Hizbollah house?’
As international outrage over civilian deaths grows, the spotlight
is increasingly turning on Israeli air operations. The Observer has
learnt that one senior commander who has been involved in the air
attacks in Lebanon has already raised concerns that some of the air
force’s actions might be considered ‘war crimes’.
Yonatan Shapiro, a former Blackhawk helicopter pilot dismissed from
reserve duty after signing a ‘refusenik’ letter in 2004, said he had
spoken with Israeli F-16 pilots in recent days and learnt that some
had aborted missions because of concerns about the reliability of
intelligence information. According to Shapiro, some pilots justified
aborting missions out of ‘common sense’ and in the context of the
Israeli Defence Force’s moral code of conduct, which says every effort
should be made to avoiding harming civilians.
Shapiro said: ‘Some pilots told me they have shot at the side of
targets because they’re afraid people will be there, and they don’t
trust any more those who give them the coordinates and targets.’
He added: ‘One pilot told me he was asked to hit a house on a hill,
which was supposed to be a place from where Hizbollah was launching
Katyusha missiles. But he was afraid civilians were in the house,
so he shot next to the house …
‘Pilots are always being told they will be judged on results, but if
the results are hundreds of dead civilians while Hizbollah is still
able to fire all these rockets, then something is very wrong.’
So far none of the pilots has publicly refused to fly missions but
some are wobbling, according to Shapiro. He said: ‘Their target could
be a house firing a cannon at Israel and it could be a house full of
children, so it’s a real dilemma; it’s not black and white. But …
I’m calling on them to refuse, in order save our country from
self-destruction.’
Meron Rappoport, a former editor at the Israeli daily Haaretz and
military analyst, criticised the air force’s methods for selecting
targets: ‘The impression is that information is sometimes lacking.
One squadron leader admitted the evidence used to determine attacks
on cars is sometimes circumstantial – meaning that if people are in
an area after Israeli forces warned them to leave, the assumption
is that those left behind must be linked to Hizbollah … This is
problematic, as aid agencies have said many people did not leave …
because they could not, or it was unsafe to travel on the roads thanks
to Israel’s aerial bombardment.’
These revelations raise further serious questions about the airstrike
in Qana last Sunday that left dozens dead, which continues to arouse
international outrage. From the outset, the Israeli military’s version
of events has been shrouded in ambiguity, with the army releasing a
video it claims shows Katyusha rockets being fired from Qana, even
though the video was dated two days earlier, and claiming that more
than 150 rockets had been fired from the location.
Some IDF officials have continued to refer vaguely to Katyushas being
launched ‘near houses’ in the village and to non-specific ‘terrorist
activity’ inside the targeted building. In a statement on Thursday,
the IDF said it the air force did not know there were civilians in
what they believed was an empty building, yet paradoxically blamed
Hizbollah for using those killed as ‘human shields’.
Human rights groups have attacked the findings as illogical. Amnesty
International described the investigation as a ‘whitewash’, saying
Israeli intelligence must have been aware of the civilians’.
One Israeli commander from a different squadron called the Qana bombing
a ‘mistake’ and was unable to explain the apparent contradiction in
the IDF’s position, although he insisted there would have been no
deliberate targeting of civilians. He said he had seen the video of
the attack, and admitted: ‘Generally they [Hizbollah] are using human
shields … That specific building – I don’t know the reason it was
chosen as a target.’