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IDF Commander: The Gaza War "A Necessary Operation"

[Jerusalem Post] Yaakov Katz - The day after the Gaza war ended in mid-January, Col. Ilan Malka, commander of the Givati Brigade, who had spent two weeks deep inside Gaza commanding dozens of daily operations against Hamas, told a press conference: "We did not exaggerate in our use of firepower....I will not send ten soldiers into a house that is suspected of being booby trapped so they can all [be blown] up inside. If Hamas wants to protect the family inside, it shouldn't have booby trapped the home." Seven months later, numerous international NGO reports accusing Israel of perpetrating war crimes in Gaza have not changed Malka's mind about the war, which he called a "necessary operation." In an interview, Malka said in a vast majority of engagements his troops held their fire, at their own risk, to avoid harming innocent civilians. Hamas knows that Israel's weak point is when fighting in urban centers amidst innocent women and children, he says, referring to cases when mothers were sent to blow themselves up next to troops or children were sent to retrieve a dead terrorist's weapon.
2009-08-07 06:00:00
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