US senior officer calls Shejaiya battles indefensible

In an interview with Al-Jazeera, an unnamed senior US military officer likens the IDF’s ground offensive tactics in Shejaiya on July 21 to a “walking barrage” and dismisses the IDF’s assertions that the high casualty rate in the Gaza neighborhood was due to Hamas’s use of “human shields.”

The officer tells the news outlet that at the start of the battle, the Israeli troops were “suppressing fire to protect their forward units, but then poured in everything they had — in a kind of walking barrage. Suppressing fire is perfectly defensible — a walking barrage isn’t.”

On the subject of the IDF’s tactics, Al Jazeera reports, citing the US sources, that the IDF was “cratering” the area to collapse the tunnels below.

It reports:

Senior US officers who are familiar with the battle and Israeli artillery operations, which are modeled on US doctrine, assessed that, based on the rate of artillery fire into Shejaiya overnight Sunday, IDF commanders weren’t precisely targeting Palestinian military formations, as much as laying down an indiscriminate barrage aimed at “cratering” the neighborhood.The cratering operation was designed to collapse the Hamas tunnels discovered when IDF ground units came under fire in the neighborhood.

With regard to the civilian casualties, the US military officer says:

Listen, we know what it’s like to kill civilians in war. Hell, we even put it on the front pages. We call it collateral damage. We absolutely try to minimize it, because we know it turns people against you. Killing civilians is a sure prescription for defeat. But that’s not what the IDF did in Shejaiya on July 21. Human shields? C’mon, just own up to it.

Shejaiya was the scene of some of the heaviest fighting between Hamas and the IDF during the operation. In the deadly battle in late July, seven Golani Brigade soldiers were killed when an anti-tank missile hit their APC. The remains of one of the seven, Sgt. Oron Shaul, are believed to be held by Hamas operatives.