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The Briton Who Joined the IDF in Gaza

(Telegraph-UK) Anonymous - My Dutch mother and English father met and fell in love on a kibbutz in Israel. I was brought up in northwest London, but joined the IDF in 2014 and after two years joined the reserves. I was at home in Tel Aviv with my girlfriend on Oct. 7 and was called up. Because I am a British citizen I have never been compelled to serve, but after Oct. 7 it was something I was proud to do. "What choice do I have?" I asked my girlfriend. My job is reconnaissance - I am the eyes and the ears of my unit, watching out for danger. Going into Gaza we saw the scale of what we were fighting. I would say that 75%, if not more, of the homes we went into had some sort of affiliation with Hamas. Lots of weapons; we'd find RPGs and grenades on the floor. You'd go into a pink bedroom and think about the young girl who lived there, and then go next door and see guns or detailed maps of Israel - knowing that that stuff was there because they wanted to kill us. I know how strict the protocols are in terms of attacking buildings as one of my jobs was directing fire from helicopters or planes. We never fired indiscriminately and the idea that we deliberately killed civilians is rubbish. There would always have to be a specific danger to our troops and we were always aware not only of the civilians but also of the fact that any of the buildings could contain one of our hostages. In the British media, the picture of us as this monstrous war-mongering, child-killing machine couldn't be more wrong.
2024-02-01 00:00:00
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