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Breaking the Silence participants offered their testimonies as "an urgent call to Israeli society and its leaders to sober up and investigate anew the results of our actions....(a disturbing) slide together down the moral slippery slope" that affects them and all Jews globally.
Testimony 1 - Human Shield
People are called "Johnnie. They're Palestinian civilians" in Gaza neighborhoods. In checking out houses, "we send the neighbor in, the 'Johnnie,' and if there are armed men inside, we (use) 'pressure cooker' procedures....to get them out alive....to catch the armed men." When necessary, combat helicopters are called in to fire anti-tank missiles at civilian homes. Then send a "Johnnie" in to check for dead and wounded.
In one home, two were dead and another alive, so supersized Caterpillar D-9 bulldozers start "demolishing the house over him until the neighbor went in" and got him out.
Human shields were also used to check for booby-traps and perform other services. "Sometimes the force would enter while placing rifle barrels on a civilian's shoulder, advancing into the house and using him as a human shield. Commanders said these were the instructions and we had to do it."
Testimony 2 - House Demolitions
Residential buildings at strategic points were taken over by force. Neighborhoods were described with "lots of destroyed houses....ruins....more and more ruins, and even the houses still standing, most of them kept getting shelled...." Other houses were blasted....blown "up in the air" with explosives.
"Operational necessity" sometimes meant a whole neighborhood was destroyed so as "not to jeopardize Israeli soldiers (and with) the day after" in mind, meaning to disrupt Gaza life to the maximum and leave it that way after forces pulled out.
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