Israel disputes abuse of civilians during Gaza war

JERUSALEM — Israel is pushing back against accusations of civilian abuse in its Gaza war, saying that the overwhelming majority of its soldiers acted honorably and that the account of a killing of a woman and her two children appears to be an urban myth spread by troops who did not witness it.

Officers are stepping forward offering numerous accounts of having held their fire out of concern for civilians, helping Palestinians in need and punishing improper soldier behavior.

"I'm not saying that nothing bad happened," said Bentzi Gruber, a colonel in the reserves and deputy commander of the armored division. "But the proportion and effort and directions we gave to our soldiers were entirely in the opposite direction."

The accusations caused a furor because they came on top of others that the civilian death toll was high and that soldiers took an unusually aggressive approach in Gaza.

The accounts that have received the most attention came from a taped conversation of Gaza veterans at a pre-military course where soldiers told of a sniper killing a woman and her two children walking in a no-go zone and another of an elderly woman shot dead for approaching a commandeered house.

The army's advocate general has opened an investigation and has not issued a report. But officers familiar with the investigation said that those who spoke of the killing of the mother and children did not witness it and that it almost certainly did not occur. Warning shots were fired near the family but not at them, the officers said, and rumor spread of an improper shooting.

The second killing also may not have occurred, they said, although a similar event was recounted by Col. Herzl Halévy in January in Yediot Aharonot newspaper.

"We saw a woman coming toward us," he said then. "We shouted at her. We warned her a number of times not to get closer. We made hand motions. She did not stop. We shot her. When we examined her body, we did not find a bomb belt."

Israeli commanders defend such actions because they say they confronted armed women in Gaza and Hamas gunmen dressed as women and in other guises, such as doctors.

"We had a woman run at us with a grenade in one hand and the Quran in the other," Brig. Gen. Eli Shermeister, head of the military's education corps, said.

Col. Roi Elkabets, commander of an armored brigade told of occasions where fire was held. His troops saw "a woman, about 60 years old, walking with a white flag and six to eight children behind her and behind them was a Hamas fighter with his gun. We did not shoot him."

Almost everything about the Gaza operation has caused controversy: how many Palestinians were killed and what percentage were civilians whether the use of enormous military force was a legitimate response to years of Hamas rocket fire on Israeli civilians.

The military issued its first official casualty count Thursday, saying 1,166 people were killed, of them 295 noncombatants, 709 that it called Hamas terror operatives and 162 men whose affiliations remained unidentified.

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza says the number of dead is 1,417, of whom 926 were civilians and 236 combatants. It did not characterize the status of the others.

The Gaza operation was launched in response to rocket fire into Israel by Hamas and other armed Palestinian groups. Thirteen Israelis died during the operation, including three civilians.

Material from The Seattle Times archive is included in this report.