Does this count ...
Israeli pilots 'deliberately miss' targets
Fliers admit aborting raids on civilian targets as concern grows
over the reliability of intelligence
Inigo Gilmore at Hatzor Air Base, Israel
Sunday August 6, 2006
The Observer
At least two Israeli fighter pilots have deliberately missed
civilian targets in Lebanon as disquiet grows in the military about
flawed intelligence, The Observer has learnt. Sources say the
pilots were worried that targets had been wrongly identified as
Hizbollah facilities.
Voices expressing concern over the armed forces' failures are
getting louder. One Israeli cabinet minister said last week: 'We
gave the army so much money. Why are we getting these results?'
Last week saw Hizbollah's guerrilla force, dismissed by senior
Israeli military officials as 'ragtag', inflict further casualties
on one of the world's most powerful armies in southern Lebanon. At
least 12 elite troops, the equivalent of Britain's SAS, have
already been killed, and by yesterday afternoon Israel's military
death toll had climbed to 45.
As the bodies pile up, so the Israeli media has begun to turn,
accusing the military of lacking the proper equipment, training and
intelligence to fight a guerrilla war in Lebanon. Israel's Defence
Minister, Amir Peretz, on a tour of the front lines, was confronted
by troubled reserve soldiers who told him they lacked proper
equipment and training.
Israel's chief of staff, Major-General Dan Halutz, had vowed to
wipe out Hizbollah's missile threat within 10 days. These claims
are now being mocked as rockets rain down on Israel's north with
ever greater intensity, despite an intense and highly destructive
air bombardment.
As one well-connected Israeli expert put it: 'If we have such good
information in Lebanon, how come we still don't know the hideout of
missiles and launchers?... If we don't know the location of their
weapons, why should we know which house is a Hizbollah
house?'
As international outrage over civilian deaths grows, the spotlight
is increasingly turning on Israeli air operations. The Observer has
learnt that one senior commander who has been involved in the air
attacks in Lebanon has already raised concerns that some of the air
force's actions might be considered 'war crimes'.
Yonatan Shapiro, a former Blackhawk helicopter pilot dismissed from
reserve duty after signing a 'refusenik' letter in 2004, said he
had spoken with Israeli F-16 pilots in recent days and learnt that
some had aborted missions because of concerns about the reliability
of intelligence information. According to Shapiro, some pilots
justified aborting missions out of 'common sense' and in the
context of the Israeli Defence Force's moral code of conduct, which
says every effort should be made to avoiding harming
civilians.
Shapiro said: 'Some pilots told me they have shot at the side of
targets because they're afraid people will be there, and they don't
trust any more those who give them the coordinates and
targets.'
He added: 'One pilot told me he was asked to hit a house on a hill,
which was supposed to be a place from where Hizbollah was launching
Katyusha missiles. But he was afraid civilians were in the house,
so he shot next to the house ...
'Pilots are always being told they will be judged on results, but
if the results are hundreds of dead civilians while Hizbollah is
still able to fire all these rockets, then something is very
wrong.'
So far none of the pilots has publicly refused to fly missions but
some are wobbling, according to Shapiro. He said: 'Their target
could be a house firing a cannon at Israel and it could be a house
full of children, so it's a real dilemma; it's not black and white.
But ... I'm calling on them to refuse, in order save our country
from self-destruction.'
Meron Rappoport, a former editor at the Israeli daily Haaretz and
military analyst, criticised the air force's methods for selecting
targets: 'The impression is that information is sometimes lacking.
One squadron leader admitted the evidence used to determine attacks
on cars is sometimes circumstantial - meaning that if people are in
an area after Israeli forces warned them to leave, the assumption
is that those left behind must be linked to Hizbollah ... This is
problematic, as aid agencies have said many people did not leave
... because they could not, or it was unsafe to travel on the roads
thanks to Israel's aerial bombardment.'
These revelations raise further serious questions about the
airstrike in Qana last Sunday that left dozens dead, which
continues to arouse international outrage. From the outset, the
Israeli military's version of events has been shrouded in
ambiguity, with the army releasing a video it claims shows Katyusha
rockets being fired from Qana, even though the video was dated two
days earlier, and claiming that more than 150 rockets had been
fired from the location.
Some IDF officials have continued to refer vaguely to Katyushas
being launched 'near houses' in the village and to non-specific
'terrorist activity' inside the targeted building. In a statement
on Thursday, the IDF said it the air force did not know there were
civilians in what they believed was an empty building, yet
paradoxically blamed Hizbollah for using those killed as 'human
shields'.
Human rights groups have attacked the findings as illogical.
Amnesty International described the investigation as a 'whitewash',
saying Israeli intelligence must have been aware of the
civilians'.
One Israeli commander from a different squadron called the Qana
bombing a 'mistake' and was unable to explain the apparent
contradiction in the IDF's position, although he insisted there
would have been no deliberate targeting of civilians. He said he
had seen the video of the attack, and admitted: 'Generally they
[Hizbollah] are using human shields ... That specific building - I
don't know the reason it was chosen as a target.'
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,1838437,00.html
