Israel trains US troops for assault on Bagdad

Monday March 31, 2003 13:55

by kokomero

US buys nine D9 bulldozers from Israelis

The American military has been asking the Israeli army for advice on fighting inside cities, and studying fighting in the West Bank city of Jenin last April, unnamed United States and Israeli sources have confirmed. Martin van Creveld, a professor of military history and strategy at Jerusalem's internationally respected Hebrew University, has told reporters that, following his advice to US Marines, the American military bought nine of the converted bulldozers used in the Jenin demolitions from Israel.

Hopefully the Iraqis have plenty of RPGs to deal wsith these monsters with which the Anglo-American usurpers will attempt to bulldoze paths to the centre of Bagdad for their tanks.

Published on Saturday, March 29, 2003 by the lndependent/UK
Israelis Trained US Troops in Jenin-style Urban Warfare
by Justin Huggler in Amman

The American military has been asking the Israeli army for advice on fighting inside cities, and studying fighting in the West Bank city of Jenin last April, unnamed United States and Israeli sources have confirmed. Reports that US troops trained with Israeli forces for street-to-street fighting have been denied.

If the US army believes the road to Baghdad lies through Jenin, there is reason for Iraqi civilians to be concerned. During fighting in the Jenin refugee camp last April, more than half the Palestinian dead were civilians. There was compelling evidence that Israeli soldiers targeted civilians, including Fadwa Jamma, a Palestinian nurse shot dead as she tried to treat a wounded man. A 14-year-old boy was killed by Israeli tank-fire in a crowded street after the curfew was lifted. A Palestinian in a wheelchair was shot dead, and his body was crushed by an Israeli tank.

Israeli soldiers prevented ambulances from reaching the wounded and refused the Red Cross access. Using bulldozers, the Israeli army demolished an entire neighborhood– home to 800 Palestinian families – reducing it to dust and rubble.

Martin van Creveld, a professor of military history and strategy at Jerusalem's internationally respected Hebrew University, has told reporters that, following his advice to US Marines, the American military bought nine of the converted bulldozers used in the Jenin demolitions from Israel.

Professor van Creveld said he gave advice to marines last year in Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. He said he was questioned about Israeli tactics in Jenin, and told them the giant D9 bulldozers, manufactured for civilian use in the US but fitted with armour-plating in Israel, were among the most useful weapons.

Israeli troops at first found they could not get their tanks and armored vehicles into the narrow alleys of the refugee camp, so they bulldozed wide swaths through houses to get them in.

If the US military intends to use converted D9 bulldozers in Iraqi cities, there is cause for concern. When reporters got into the Jenin refugee camp, we found the fronts of houses neatly scythed off so the insides of the houses were visible from the street, with personal belongings, sofas, beds, children's toys, hanging precariously from half-collapsed floors.

Israeli use of the bulldozers has not been limited to clearing the way for tanks. They have also been used in collective punishment, such as the destruction of an entire neighborhood in Jenin after the fighting ended.

In Nablus last April, eight members of the al-Shubi family were killed when an Israeli soldier bulldozed their home, burying them alive, despite shouted warnings from neighbors that they were still inside. The Israeli military has supplied US forces with video of incursions by Israeli soldiers into Palestinian cities, said unnamed "security sources". They added that Israeli officers have given their American counterparts extensive briefings on Israeli tactics.

One of the tactics identified was the Israeli army's practice of moving from house to house by knocking holes in connecting walls to avoid being exposed in the streets, a practice that has wrecked the homes of thousands of Palestinians.

The Israeli army has also routinely used Palestinian civilians as human shields to protect them as they advance, a practice that has continued despite Israeli court rulings forbidding it. There was no word on whether Israeli officers had briefed American troops on this tactic.

There were reports in the US and Israel media last November that American troops had been trained by Israeli instructors in a mock-up of a Palestinian city inside an army base in Israel. Those reports have been denied, but an unnamed Israeli source told the Associated Press that US officers did visit the mocked-up Palestinian city and attended a briefing on Israeli training methods.

There have also been reports that Palestinians who have fought against Israeli forces in Jenin and other Palestinian cities during Israeli offensives last year have telephoned friends and acquaintances in Iraq to advise them on tactics to use against American and British forces if street-to-street fighting begins.

There is another lesson to drawn from Jenin. The Palestinians who defended the city were armed only with assault rifles and crude, home-made booby-traps and pipe-bombs, against the massively better-equipped Israeli army.

But they held out for 11 days, and managed to kill 23 Israeli soldiers, 13 of them in a single ambush. When the Palestinians ran out of ammunition, they kept fighting and started throwing stones at the Israeli soldiers. If the much better-equipped Iraqi forces take the same attitude to defending Baghdad and other cities the battles could be bloody.

save preference

Comments (6 of 6)

Link to Independent article

Mon Mar 31, 2003 14:05

This is Biased

by Avi H.

Mon Mar 31, 2003 21:34

Here is the question: how do you fight against an enemy that doesn't care about putting his own troops among his civilian population? It is inevitable, however hard you try, that civilians will be injured, whereupon the enemy will use that for propaganda purposes.

This is the situation in Palestinian built-up areas and is directly analogous to that of Iraq. I happen to know from personal experience that the Israeli Army takes great care in its operations not to hurt civilians, but that in urban warfare it is impossible not to. Remember that if the IDF wanted to, it could flatten any given Palestinian town. It doesn't for that reason.

Soldiers that used Palestinians to knock on doors etc. have been court-martialed, and the practice is not allowed.

Re. Biased ?

by schlomi

Mon Mar 31, 2003 22:17

"Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I don't blame you because geography books no longer exist, not only do the books not exist, .The Arab villages are not there either. Nahal arose in the place of Mahlul; Kibbutz Gvat in the place of Jibat; Kibbutz Sarid in the place of Huneifis; and Kfar Yehushu'a in the place of Tal al Shuman. There is not one single place that did not have a former Arab population." Moshe Dayan's address to the Technion, Haifa (as Quoted in Ha'aretz, April 4, 1969).

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/palestinians.html

Crossfire

by tar paulin

Mon Mar 31, 2003 23:03

That is why Tom Paulin wrote the poem Crossfire:

We're fed this inert
this lying phrase
like comfort food
as another little Palestinian boy
in trainers jeans and a white teeshirt
is gunned down by the Zionist SS
whose initials we should
- but we don't - dumb goys -
clock in that weasel word crossfire

http://www.inminds.co.uk/boycott-news-0301.html

He got into a lot of trouble over that interview ...

AMERIKA: FROM HITLER TO THE MX BULLDOZER

by T Dillon

Mon Mar 31, 2003 23:20

Sandstorm shifts to Baghdad and the scene quickly turns to Stalingrad with the New Nazis at the gates; is Stalin still at home? Street to street, house to house through the living room walls and hand to hand with human shields of one kind or another down the cut throat alleys and sewers. If it gets out of hand then I expect the diabolic Pentagon ones already have the IOF's Jenin scam down to a T, IOF professional exterminators liaisoning "in theater". And comrade Putin can teach Bush a thing or two from his Grozny deal not to mention gassing hostages and terrorists in confined theatres etc..

Bring in the 'dozers, guys and and we'll pile a mound of ruins in that biblical tradition, a monument to our great Judaeo-Christian Zionist paradise in Washington, here where Satan fell. Proudly raise the standard on a modern Iwo Jima of re-bar, cement-dust, rubble and human flesh. Sound the bugle and frame the photo, a pledge fulfilled to Freeiraq, the latest proctectorate of the US oil industry.

Afterall it's no coincidence that Israel's Bulldozers are Amerikan as well as all the other weapons of mass destruction that the Israelis have been test driving for the last 30 years.

It smacks of the Nazi pact with Franco Spain. Shame on you Amerika and your consortium of evil!

Tom Paulin

Tue Apr 01, 2003 08:18

Why doesn't he write an equally poignant poem about an Israeli baby blown up by a suicide bomber?

Here's why: This is the guy who said that all Jews living over the green line, men, women and children should be shot dead. Sounds like a Nazi to me.

Number of comments per page

Upcoming Events

New Events

Other Press

User Preferences

Feeds

Blog Feeds

The Saker

Public Inquiry

Human Rights in Ireland

Lockdown Skeptics

Israel trains US troops for assault on Bagdad

Comments (6 of 6)