I am so shocked. The IDF’s behaviour in this is especially appalling and immoral.
It is interesting to see how, after that old man with a stick had finished 8 days not only of being used as a shield to enter bombed buildings, but having to do so with an explosive cord around his neck,
on being released, another battalion took aim at him and his wife and shot them.
Some of the soldiers have evidently sunk very low.
Haaretz 15 February writes that even an incoming IDF general has noticed the depths they have been sinking to. Excerpt from Haaretz
( without links):
Maj. Gen. (res.) Yair Golan,
who heads the Democrats, the left-leaning political party he formed, was for a short time Zamir's commander. He told me that another task awaits the new chief of staff: to ensure that the IDF behaves in the territories "like the Israel Defense Forces, and not God's Revenge Forces."
He mentions a flagrant failure at the top throughout the war: the inability to ensure that soldiers don't stray from the IDF's declared norms.
and,
Col. (res.) Hanoch Daube, who headed an armored battalion in the war, described the situation well this week in Amir Oren's podcast. "There has been a severe moral erosion to the IDF's 'purity of arms,'"Daube said.
Harsh things are happening. If Zamir hears this podcast, this is the most significant crisis we have to address: to condemn, to investigate and to punish with great severity. There have been many cases of people [Palestinians] who crossed a red line marked by our forces, entered a kill zone and took a bullet to the head without the forces carrying out the procedures for arresting a suspect.
"If a child or an old man enters a forbidden area and isn't directly endangering you, morally, you're not allowed to shoot them. In this respect the IDF needs a very large correction, and this goes for everything we've done: demolishing, killing, using firepower."
Personally I think Israel has been very badly let down by a proportion of its own. Propping up Netanyahu has been contaminating.
The fact though that this general can point out that they’ve strayed so far from what is right is commendable imo.
(edited for typos)