The Guardian
An Israeli army officer who fired the entire magazine of his automatic rifle into a 13-year-old Palestinian girl and then said he would have done the same even if she had been three years old was acquitted on all charges by a military court yesterday.
The soldier, who has only been identified as ‘Captain R’, was charged with relatively minor offenses for the killing of Iman al-Hams who was shot 17 times as she ventured near an Israeli army post near Rafah refugee camp in Gaza a year ago.
The manner of Iman’s killing, and the revelation of a tape recording in which the captain is warned that she was just a child who was ‘scared to death’, made the shooting one of the most controversial since the Palestinian intifada erupted five years ago even though hundreds of other children have also died.
After the verdict, Iman’s father, Samir al-Hams, said the army never intended to hold the soldier accountable.
‘They did not charge him with Iman’s murder, only with small offences, and now they say he is innocent of those even though he shot my daughter so many times,’ he said.
‘This was the cold-blooded murder of a little girl. The soldier murdered her once and the court has murdered her again. What is the message? They are telling their soldiers to kill Palestinian children.’
The military court cleared the soldier of illegal use of his weapon, conduct unbecoming an officer and perverting the course of justice by asking soldiers under his command to alter their accounts of the incident.
Capt R’s lawyers argued that the ‘confirmation of the kill’ after a suspect is shot is standard Israeli military practice to eliminate terrorist threats.
Following the verdict, Capt R burst into tears, turned to the public benches and said: ‘I told you I was innocent.’
The army’s official account said that Iman was shot for crossing into a security zone carrying her schoolbag which soldiers feared might contain a bomb. It is still not known why the girl ventured into the area but witnesses described her as at least 100 yards from the military post which was in any case well protected.
A recording of radio exchanges between Capt R and his troops obtained by Israeli television revealed that from the beginning soldiers identified Iman as a child.
In the recording, a soldier in a watchtower radioed a colleague in the army post’s operations room and describes Iman as ‘a little girl’ who was ‘scared to death’. After soldiers first opened fire, she dropped her schoolbag which was then hit by several bullets establishing that it did not contain explosives. At that point she was no longer carrying the bag and, the tape revealed, was running away from the army post when she was shot.
Although the military speculated that Iman might have been trying to ‘lure’ the soldiers out of their base so they could be attacked by accomplices, Capt R made the decision to lead some of his troops into the open. Shortly afterwards he can be heard on the recording saying that he has shot the girl and, believing her dead, then ‘confirmed the kill’.
‘I and another soldier … are going in a little nearer, forward, to confirm the kill … Receive a situation report. We fired and killed her … I also confirmed the kill. Over,’ he said.
Palestinian witnesses said they saw the captain shoot Iman twice in the head, walk away, turn back and fire a stream of bullets into her body.
On the tape, Capt R then ‘clarifies’ to the soldiers under his command why he killed Iman: ‘This is commander. Anything that’s mobile, that moves in the security zone, even if it’s a three-year-old, needs to be killed.’
At no point did the Israeli troops come under attack.
The prosecution case was damaged when a soldier who initially said he had seen Capt R point his weapon at the girl’s body and open fire later told the court he had fabricated the story.
Capt R claimed that he had not fired the shots at the girl but near her. However, Dr. Mohammed al-Hams, who inspected the child’s body at Rafah hospital, counted numerous wounds.
‘She has at least 17 bullets in several parts of the body, all along the chest, hands, arms, legs,’ he told the Guardian shortly afterwards. ‘The bullets were large and shot from a close distance. The most serious injuries were to her head. She had three bullets in the head. One bullet was shot from the right side of the face beside the ear. It had a big impact on the whole face.’
The army’s initial investigation concluded that the captain had ‘not acted unethically’. But after some of the soldiers under his command went to the Israeli press to give a different version, the military police launched a separate investigation after which he was charged.
To the Chosen Terrorists reading this comment: BEWARE-!
Soon the day will come when you will be hunted down like the Feral Animals that you are and you will find no shelter anywhere and there will be no one there to come to your rescue as you will be left alone to live in the Land of Rubble you have created.
And when you will try to escape the desolate Prison Camp of your own making, there will be well-trained guards, armed to their teeth, to make sure you remain relegated to the only place fit for the Chosen Creatures of Hell, away from the civilized societies of mankind.
That day is fast approaching and you are accelerating its coming with your escalation of genocide and destruction.
You should have heeded the Gentiles’ advice to leave the Land you have stolen, but you are not able to resist the call of your dark DNA, which is that of a Parasite and a Serial Killer of people who cannot defend themselves.
This is what people all over the world see right now as they are watching you closely while you go on your killing spree/feeding frenzy in Gaza.
They see these brutal bullies that are ‘Israel’s Finest’ clad in their dark, frightening war uniforms, shooting at close range, willfully killing children and babies and mothers and fathers.
WOW, you train your Finest to be the most frightening warriors on earth and you equip them with the most vicious combat weapons ever conceived, and you give them the status of heroes… – TO DO WHAT..!!!??? to take it out on little girls who pose no danger to you whatsoever, shooting them in the head at close range and emptying the full round of bullets into their fragile little bodies.
FAT HEROES INDEED
SO MUCH FOR ISRAEL’S FINEST – THE MOST MORAL ARMY IN THE WORLD…!!!