Several Israeli news sites have published a recording of deputy IDF chief Yair Golan giving a speech in 2006 where he tells newly inducted soldiers that they should risk their own lives rather than imperil the lives of civilians in their midst and says soldiers who kill civilians could be criminals in some cases.
The recordings are pushed out into the limelight over a week after Golan kicked up a firestorm during a Holocaust Remembrance Day event when he seemingly compared some segments of Israeli society to pre-war Germany.
Deputy IDF Chief of Staff Yair Golan lays a wreath at a memorial during a ceremony at the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum as Israel marks the annual Holocaust Remembrance Day, May 5, 2016. (Olivier Fitoussi/Pool)
“In the presence of civilians we take on ourselves risks and rightly so,” he says in the recording. “It’s unacceptable that in the name of preventing risk we would decide that now we are going to mow down an apartment building. You would kill women, children, those involved. It’s intolerable.”
Later in the recording he warns soldiers that not every suspect person is a terrorist and tells them they can’t just kill people.
“Not in every combat situation are we all right-wing, are we all about to be slaughtered, and not every woman is hiding a terrorist behind her,” he says. “I expect commanders to understand situations and take reasonable steps.”
He also goes on to give an example where a group of soldiers shot an unarmed Palestinian to death, saying the platoon commander was guilty of criminality for “taking the life of a Palestinian just for nothing.”
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Sunday, May 15, 2016
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