Richard Silverstein has led the coverage of the Kamm-Blau story. He translates the Hebrew press and says:
Now, they are claiming that Uri Blau sought to publish an article exposing IDF battle plans the week before Operation Cast Lead. They bray about this as if Blau was whispering the words into ear of Hamas’ military wing. In fact, Haaretz’s Amos Harel later reported that these very same battle plans were tantamount to war crimes in the blatant disregard with which they treated Palestinian civilian life. The Israeli shreying for Uri Blau’s head have a fatal inability to understand what Israel is supposed to be: not a State of cold blooded killers virtually executing old men, women and children as happened all too often in Gaza in 2008 and Lebanon in 2006. Is that language too sharp for you? Well, what else do you call free fire zones in which IDF soldiers are told to kill ANYTHING that moves as happened during Cast Lead? This is testimony straight from soldiers given such orders. I didn’t make it up.
And if those battle plans called for Israel invading and occupying Gaza and expelling Hamas as I believe likely–is that not information which any well-informed citizen should wish to be informed of? And if the battle plans called for mass expulsion of Gazans as I understand it did from an informed source: is this not information the public has a right to know in order to determine whether Cast Lead was justly conceived and executed?
