Can I get your opinion of this? Israeli soldiers admit war crimes?

• Ok, so a few days ago I read this article, and it made my view of Israel worse. So was everything I saw on the news real? Well, what do you think of these witnesses? Here are a few passages from the article: Israeli soldiers admit war crimes "JERUSALEM — Israeli combat soldiers have acknowledged that they forced Palestinian civilians to serve as human shields, needlessly killed unarmed Gazans and improperly used white phosphorus shells to burn down buildings as part of Israel's three-week military offensive in the Gaza Strip last winter. In filmed testimony and written statements released Wednesday, more than two dozen soldiers told an Israeli army veterans' group that military commanders led the fighters into what one described as a "moral Twilight Zone" where almost every Palestinian was seen as a threat. Soldiers described incidents in which Israeli forces killed an unarmed Palestinian carrying a white cloth, an elderly woman carrying a sack, a Gazan riding a motorcycle, and an elderly man with a flashlight, said Breaking the Silence, a group formed by army reservists in 2004. "In urban warfare, everyone is your enemy," said one soldier. "No innocents." "Two soldiers from the Givati brigade who served in Zeitoun told the story of shooting an unarmed civilian without warning him. The elderly man was walking with a flashlight toward a building where Israeli forces were taking cover. The Israeli officer in the house repeatedly ignored requests from other soldiers to fire warning shots as the man approached, the soldiers said. Instead, when he got within 20 yards of the soldiers, the commander ordered snipers to kill the man. The soldiers later confirmed that the man was unarmed." "Breaking the Silence identified other specific instances in which Israeli forces carried out highly questionable practices. According to the soldiers, the Israeli military fired white phosphorus mortars and artillery shells to set suspicious buildings ablaze and destroyed scores of Palestinian homes for questionable reasons. The white phosphorus supplied by the U.S. is supposed to be used to illuminate targets or provide smoke cover for advancing troops. "Phosphorus was used as an igniter, simply making it all go up in flames," one soldier said." "A second soldier-....told Breaking the Silence that at least one officer fired unauthorized white phosphorus mortars because it was "cool."" ""In practical terms, this meant taking a house that is not implicated in any way, that its single sin is the fact that it is situated on top of a hill in the Gaza Strip ," said one soldier." "In the Ezbt Abd Rabbo neighborhood, Israeli combatants said they forced Palestinians to search homes for militants and enter buildings ahead of soldiers in direct violation of an Israeli Supreme Court ruling that bars fighters from using civilians as human shields." "One Palestinian, Castro Abed Rabbo, said Israeli soldiers ordered him to enter buildings to search for militants and booby traps before they sent in a specially trained dog with high-tech detection gear. Two other Palestinian men told McClatchy that Israeli soldiers used them as human shields by forcing them to kneel in a field during a firefight as they exchanged fire with Gaza fighters. "I was down on my knees and they fanned out in a 'V' behind me," Sami Rashid Mohammed, a Fatah-leaning former Palestinian Authority police officer, said in an unpublished interview in February. "It wasn't more than 10 or 15 minutes of shooting, but it was so scary." One of the Israeli soldiers interviewed described the offensive was necessary. "We did what we had to do," he said. "The actual doing was a bit thoughtless. We were allowed to do anything we wanted. Who's to tell us not to?"" ""He said something along the line of 'Don't let morality become an issue; that will come later,'" the soldier said. "He had this strange language: 'Leave the nightmares and horrors that will come up for later — now just shoot.'" "You felt like a child playing around with a magnifying glass, burning up ants," another Israeli soldier said. "A 20-year-old kid should not be doing such things to people. . . . the guys were running a 'Wild West' scene: draw, cock, kill."" This is the article: http://www.arabamericannews.com/news/index.php?mod=article&cat=Palestine&article=2354 Here, I copied and pasted parts of the whole article, please read it and tell me what you think? If this is how the IDF soldiers act, then by all means, the Palestinians have the right to resist this oppression. Or if you'd like a more reliable source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7952603.stm

• Answer:

  My opinion is this is a senseless rant from someone that knows nothing of soldiers or war. Watching on tv doesn't count.