Capt. Dmitri (Dima) Levitas was killed in battle in the third week of Operation Protective Edge last summer. The sniper who shot him at close range fired from a medical clinic in the heart of the Gaza neighborhood of Shujaiyya. Hamas was publicly and openly using civilians and civilian facilities as human shields. Part of Hamas war doctrine was that clinics and hospitals serve as near-perfect cover for fighters. Hamas assumed (for the most part correctly) that the Israel Defense Forces would not target these structures. It operated on the assumption that the IDF would not bomb clinics or hospitals. A week after Levitas was killed in his tank, three other soldiers were killed in a building that housed both a medical clinic and the opening of an assault tunnel in east Khan Younis. The terrorists detonated 12 explosives planted in the clinic's walls, and brought the entire building down on the Israeli soldiers. The longer the operation continued, and the more information the IDF gathered, the more it became clear just how wide this practice of using civilian structures and homes, particularly clinics and hospitals, really was. The information came both from the field and from interrogations of captured terrorists. The Shin Bet security agency learned, from interrogating Mohammed Abu Draz, that he had dug a tunnel next to a medical clinic and an adjacent kindergarten. "My Hamas commanders instructed me to kidnap soldiers and take them into the kindergarten," Abu Draz recounted, In Shujaiyya, where Levitas was killed on the morning of July 22, there were bitter battles. Almost all the civilian population fled the embattled neighborhood. There were dozens of confrontations between IDF soldiers and terrorists there during the course of the operation. The neighborhood was reduced to ruins. The IDF operated in Shujaiyya both to destroy tunnels and to prevent rocket fire into Israel. The comprehensive report issued by the Foreign Ministry this week, a year after the end of the operation, included many aerial photos of residential Gaza neighborhoods where rockets and mortar shells were habitually fired into Israel. The sources of the fire were marked in red. Very few neighborhoods were not covered in red markings. One of those neighborhoods was Shujaiyya. *** Just after the publication of the Foreign Ministry report on Israel's conduct during the operation, and just ahead of the publication of the U.N. Human Rights Council's report, a lot of attention was given to the death of Levitas, and to the response by battalion commander Lt. Col. Nerya Yeshurun. This chain of events is not just a story of a complicated war, fought against a non-state actor that challenged all the accepted standards of war. It also reflects some of the processes that Israel has undergone since the end of Operation Protective Edge. After Levitas was shot, his troops extracted him and retreated to a safe area. Later that morning, they returned to their posts. That afternoon Levitas was laid to rest on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem. Yeshurun and the many comrades who had fought alongside him wanted to attend the funeral, but there was a war to fight. So instead of eulogizing him at his funeral, Yeshurun recited a eulogy in the field over the military radio. His soldiers were moved, and parts of his eulogy were quoted extensively in the media the following day. Yeshurun spoke about Levitas' role in the "operation to save the residents of the Negev and of Israel as a whole." He spoke about the "justified fighting in the Gaza Strip, but mainly about the difference between us and them." "While we came here to risk our lives to defend the residents of the south from rockets, they hide in mosques, in clinics, in hospitals and in schools and fire at us from there. That is precisely the profound difference between us and them," Yeshurun said. "Dima understood this difference so well, and he sacrificed his life in a way that is awe-inspiring and deserving of the utmost respect and admiration. "At this very moment, while Dima is being laid to rest on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem, our hearts want to be there with him, but our heads tell us that we need to stay here and keep on. We didn't come here to have fun. We have an important mission at hand, and I am extremely proud to see you taking a part in it." After that, the commander shifted gears to operation-speak: "I want us, here, in the middle of the Gaza neighborhood of Shujaiyya, to join all those people accompanying Dima to his final resting place, and fire a barrage of honor in his memory at the clinic where the bastards who took his life took their shots at his tank. I trust you and I am proud of you. Prepare for contact in honor of Dima, may his soul be bound up in the bonds of eternal life." 'If a crime was committed, let them investigate' The "barrage of honor" that was fired at that clinic was made out of respect, even though it was ostensibly a departure from protocol. It was seen as a justified, symbolic act. As far as we know, the barrage was made at an empty building that no longer served as an active clinic, in a neighborhood whose inhabitants had almost all fled. The IDF spokesperson permitted the media to use a recording of Yeshurun's eulogy. Bayabasha, the GOC army command's magazine, also printed the eulogy. The paper also quoted Yeshurun as saying there was return fire immediately after the barrage. Capt. Gilad, who took over the command of Levitas' unit, told the paper he could not hold back his tears during the "barrage of honor." He felt a sense of closure, he said. Even the Armored Corps Museum noted the "barrage of honor eulogy." Several weeks ago, American journalist and blogger Charlotte Silver posted a hostile blog post about the barrage on the pro-Palestinian online news publication "The Electronic Intifada." She presented the barrage as senseless fire. Israel's Channel 10 quickly followed suit. Shortly afterward, the military advocate general ordered the army's internal investigations unit to investigate allegations of the unlawful shelling of a Gaza clinic. The news of an investigation against the highly respected commander surprised and outraged many. Yeshurun's friends set up a Facebook page to defend him, and thousands of people have already "liked" it. Sgt. Maj. Benny Shakir, Levitas' driver, called the investigation outrageous. Yeshurun's deputy said that the symbolic act needs to be examined in the context of the time and the place rather than under the fluorescent lights of legal code. The IDF has said that the incident is currently under investigation and that no decision has been made yet. Yeshurun, who has served in the IDF for 18 years, has been prohibited from giving interviews. But his wife, Naama, has not. Naama Yeshurun lives in Givat Hayovel in the community of Eli north of Jerusalem. She lives across the street from Sarah Klein, the widow of Roi Klein who was killed in the 2006 Second Lebanon War, and Shlomit Peretz, the widow of Eliraz Peretz who was killed in Gaza five years ago. The three are close friends. "Someone here is confused," she says, convinced. "The moment terrorists fired from a clinic it ceased being a clinic and became a military post. If a war crime was committed, let them investigate. I don't have a problem with it. But to take Nerya's unifying, uplifting act and turn it into a crime? Is that really the thing that needs investigating- "Shujaiyya was a hornets' nest. It was a war zone. The building from which Dima was murdered was apparently abandoned. A year has gone by and no one has complained. No one even claimed that anyone, let alone a civilian, was hurt in that barrage of honor. My impression is that this is a mistake that needs to be rectified as soon as possible." Monitored by legal advisers in the battlefield Perhaps no one is actually confused, but rather playing an intentional game. Israel has taken three approaches to fend off allegations against Israeli soldiers' conduct during Operation Protective Edge. The first is personal, thorough documentation of the IDF's conduct; the second is extensive documentation of war crimes committed by Hamas, overtly or covertly, during the war (documented by experts in the military and legal fields); the third is based on legal advice, backed by the government, that the best way to avoid investigation panels and international criminal tribunals is to conduct a credible, serious and independent investigation into all the allegations ourselves. Yeshurun has apparently entered this legal realm -- what has come to be known in the IDF as a "legal iron dome." The fundamental assumption held by Israeli legal experts is that when a state seriously investigates its own citizens, and puts them on trial when needed, it serves as a defense against foreign legal efforts and international legal bodies refrain from interfering. The story of a barrage fired at a presumably empty clinic that Hamas had turned into a military post, from which terrorists had fired and killed a soldier, would never have made it to the headlines, and certainly have not been investigated, if it weren't for the general worldwide trend of attacking the IDF and the State of Israel. This trend is being actively cultivated by the boycott movement and the Palestinian propaganda organizations. Among the Israeli public, Yeshurun's actions were seen as acceptable battle etiquette, not to mention inspirational, for nearly a year. It is valid to wonder what changed between the time when the IDF, its publications and the memorial organizations saw the act as worthy, and now, that a foreign blog post has prompted an investigation. Israel is fighting off campaigns of lies not just with internal investigations but also by disseminating valuable information. This information has to do with the disciplined conduct of the IDF during the fighting, which in large part was monitored by legal advisers in the battlefield. It also has to do with the war crimes and the crimes against humanity committed by Hamas. The comprehensive report issued by the Foreign Ministry describes the unprecedented coordination, to the point of absurdity sometimes, between military legal experts, intelligence operatives and fighters in the field. Thousands of ostensibly civilian targets were included in the IDF's target bank. They were marked in orange. Intelligence units provided information about these targets to the legal experts, who then had to convince the legal system that these "civilian" targets were actually "military-terrorist" targets. The military attorneys were often involved in preparing the plans for military strikes. They determined whether the target in question was legal or not. They also determined if and how advance warnings would be provided to civilians within those targets. In Shujaiyya, the IDF uncovered a Hamas manual on fighting in residential areas. The manual instructed Hamas fighters to draw the IDF as deeply into densely populated areas as possible. Hamas encouraged civilians to gather on rooftops to prevent the Israeli Air Force from bombing the homes of wanted terrorists. Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri even explicitly called on Gaza residents to serve as "human shields" to protect against IAF strikes. Hamas issued instructions for the residents of the neighborhoods not to evacuate their homes and not to heed IDF warnings of imminent strikes. When the U.N. Relief and Works Agency opened its schools' gates to welcome the fleeing civilian population, Hamas protested strongly. At one point, UNRWA discovered that some of its schools had been turned into rocket depots. Hamas also threatened the civilian population of Gaza against going anywhere near a field hospital set up by Israel at the edge of the Gaza Strip to treat the Palestinian wounded. Throughout the operation, Hamas aggrandized the glory of "shahada" -- martyrdom for Allah -- and displayed open contempt toward the "defeated" Palestinians who criticized the high number of civilian deaths. Hamas went back 69 years to the Algerian war of independence, and explained that "in 1945, in a single day in Algeria, 45,000 Algerians died. In a single day. It wasn't described in Algeria's history as forsaking the blood of the Algerians, as some defeatists are describing today." Terrorists in ambulances Several weeks before Operation Protective Edge, thousands of Gazan children enjoyed a week of unique childhood experiences, Hamas style. They were dressed in Hamas uniforms and practiced a range of military skills such as crawling, roll calls, firing range practice, handling small guns, firing rockets into Israel, abducting Israeli soldiers and civilians and beating Israeli soldiers. A few weeks later, these same children were used by Hamas as human shields along with their parents. IAF pilots reported hundreds of children being taken up to rooftops of homes harboring terrorists or hiding weapons. Hamas also made creative use of hospitals and other medical facilities across the Gaza Strip, knowing that the IDF would not strike. The most prominent of these medical institutions was Al-Shifa Hospital, which Hamas turned into its command center. A rocket was launched from there but it malfunctioned and exploded near the hospital, killing 10 civilians. A tunnel led from Shifa Hospital to a nearby mosque and from there to what has become known as the "underground Gaza" -- an intricate system of underground tunnels. Ambulances were also used in Hamas' civilian-military war efforts. IDF footage shows terrorists embarking on ambulances and using them to transport their men. During the fighting, the IDF bombed several mosques that Hamas had turned into military bases and weapons storage facilities. Hamas was able to make such use of mosques on the basis of a religious ruling made by Sheikh Yusuf al-Qardawi, considered the most important Sunni Muslim scholar in the world. He ruled that it is permissible to use mosques for political, social, cultural and religious purposes, including jihad. After the operation, the question arose of how many of the 2,125 Palestinians that had been killed had engaged in terrorism and how many had been innocent civilians. In an effort to make Israel look bad, Hamas ordered the removal of all telltale military details from the bodies of terrorists to make it appear they were innocent civilians. It was for that reason that Hamas avoided making the names of its fallen commanders public. The IDF established a designated team to decipher the identity of dead Palestinians. So far, the IDF has confirmed that at least 44% of the Palestinians killed were armed, while 36% were confirmed as civilians. Many of them were killed in residential buildings that were used by Hamas for terrorist purposes. One of the Hamas documents seized in Shujaiyya included detailed instructions on how to smuggle and conceal weapons in residential buildings, and how to cover your tracks while doing so. Thus terrorists were instructed to put military radio communications equipment and Hamas antennas together with civilian television antennas. During the course of the operation, Hamas fired more than 4,500 rockets and mortar shells at civilian Israeli populations. The organization did not try to hide the fact that its express aim was to kill Israeli civilians. Most of the Hamas fire was aimed at Israeli population centers. The range of their rockets covered more than 70% of the Israeli population. Even Amnesty International, an organization that does not tend to side with Israel, wrote in one of its most recent reports that the rockets that reached as far north as Haifa were "indiscriminate by nature" and that they were unlawful under international law. Amnesty also pointed out that rocket fire was often launched from "within civilian facilities or compounds, including schools, at least one hospital, and a Greek Orthodox church in Gaza City," adding that the same organizations hid rockets and ammunition in residential buildings, including U.N. schools. The U.N. Human Rights Council will officially issue its own report on June 29, but both sides will receive advance copies in the coming days. The Palestinians are expected to release it to the media almost immediately. Israel is preparing for this eventuality. The fact that Prof. William Schabas, whose anti-Israel remarks have been widely reported, resigned from his post as the head of the UNHRC investigative panel last winter guarantees nothing, apparently. In Jerusalem, officials have pointed out that Schabas was fully involved in the gathering of information for the report, and that his resignation was meant only as a means of legitimizing the panel. The UNHRC has traditionally been extremely hostile toward Israel. We have already had a taste of some of the land mines ahead of us. Several months ago, The Associated Press published a study of 250 Israeli strikes on "civilian" structures in Gaza. The death toll in those strikes reached 844. According to the study, more than 60% of the dead, 508 people, were women, children or elderly. The youngest casualty was a four-month-old baby girl and the oldest a 93-year-old man. The study did mention that private homes were considered protected civilian areas unless they were used for military purposes, but it was in no hurry to adopt the Israeli assertion, which was supported by a wealth of documented evidence this week, that those "protected civilian areas" did in fact serve as obvious military and terrorist facilities. Nor did the study uphold Israel's assertion that its actions were proportionate. Global positive reinforcement Coming to Israel's aid this week were a group of retired generals and political leaders from the U.S., the Netherlands, Italy and Spain, who, together with several U.N. staffers, compiled a report of their own on the fighting. This group's chief findings made their way to U.N. Watch and were even submitted to former New York Supreme Court judge Mary McGowan Davis, who replaced Schabas as the head of the UNHRC investigative panel. To Israelis, the group's findings may sound obvious, but coming from an external, international investigative committee, they take on a new meaning. The committee was headed by retired German general Klaus Naumann, former chief of staff of the Bundeswehr and the former chairman of the NATO military committee. The report compiled by Naumann and his colleagues suggests that Israel not only adhered to international laws of warfare but "significantly exceeded that standard." "We examined the circumstances that led to the tragic conflict last summer and are in no doubt that this was not a war that Israel wanted," the group wrote in its conclusion. "In reality, Israel sought to avoid the conflict and exercised great restraint over a period of months before the war when its citizens were targeted by sporadic rocket attacks from Gaza. "Once the war had begun, Israel made repeated efforts to terminate the fighting. The war that Israel was eventually compelled to fight against Hamas and other Gaza extremists was a legitimate war, necessary to defend its citizens and its territory against sustained attack from beyond its borders. "Hamas' rocket attacks deliberately and indiscriminately targeted Israeli civilian population centers in the south of the country. ... Many attacks were also launched against major cities further north including Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Hamas deliberately fired missiles at Ben-Gurion International Airport, disrupting and threatening international civil air traffic. There is no doubt that all of these attacks constitute war crimes. "Hamas also constructed an array of tunnels, using materials diverted from humanitarian supplies, which penetrated the border between Gaza and Israel, in many cases emerging close to civilian communities." They added that they had visited one of these tunnels, and "we can only conclude that these tunnels were designed, at least in part, to attack, kill and abduct Israeli civilians. This again constitutes a war crime."
