I saw this posted on another message board. I’m having some trouble accepting that it’s completely accurate.
On the one hand, it’s published on the Harper’s website, which I would assume is a credible source of information. On the other hand, some things about it seem fishy. Would soldiers really use phrases like “she’s dying of fear” and “our troops are storming towards her” in this situation? What about the company commander’s final remark? It seems just a bit . . .cartoonish to me. Or to put it another way, if I wanted to write anti-Israeli propaganda I would probably come up with something like this.
I couldn’t vouch for its accuracy, but your question ‘Would soldiers really use phrases like “she’s dying of fear” and “our troops are storming towards her” in this situation?’ is partially answered by the following statement in the intro:
Basically, on October 5, 2004, this 13 year old girl named Iman al-Hams was shot and killed near Rafah. She had had a schoolbag that the army thought may have had a bomb, and then when they challenged her, she ran toward the troops, so they shot her. The initial investigation cleared the commander, and then he was arrested after his soldiers testified he lied about what went on. Specifically, they said that after she had been shot and was wounded on the ground, the commander went over and shot her twice. Then he emptied his magazine into her body. The IDF then dismissed the charges against him after the main witness against him, the one who said he shot her when she was on the ground and emptied his magazine in her, admitted he lied about the commander’s actions.
I like Harper’s, I’ve been a subscriber going on 8 years now, but you need to know that they have no problem taking things out of context or using the translation/interpretation that best advances the lefty viewpoint. A bit more subtle than, say, The Nation, which is why it’s even more effective.
Anyone who speaks two languages - or a good enough piece of software - can translate words; an actual translator has to know how to translate phrases. I haven’t found an online Hebrew transcript of the event in question (Google isn’t that great with Hebrew) but I think I can retro-translate well enough to get a grasp on the original language .
Whoever translated the transcript either has a poor grasp of Hebrew colloquialisms and military terminology, or was intentionally obfuscating the language in service of whatever agenda she may have. Considering the publication I tend to lean towards the latter, although I wouldn’t rule out plain old laziness.
For example, “dying of fear” is a piss-poor translation. As someone who done some professional work in the field I can’t see how a competant translator could have come up with that, especially when a very similar English phrase - “scared to death” - is in common usage. It’s as if Harpers wanted to make the soldiers sound as “foreign” and as menacing as possible. The use of the word “storm” is also deceptive - a closer term would be “charge”, a technical infantry term that means “advance at full speed until contact.” In other words, they ran in her direction.
As to the captain’s last words… yep, they’re pretty indefensable. The man was obviously both overagressive and incompetant, a dangerous combination in a officer. From what I’ve read, even though he was acquitted he was also removed from combat service, which will almost certainly put an end to his military career.
After thinking about it for a while I’m not entirely certain the Commander’s final words were indefensible. If he said this to justify what had just happened, he’s despicable. But it’s possible that he meant it as an order to tighten security based on what he thought was a situation of imminent attack, which would have been entirely reasonable.