SATISH SHARMA - not just Rotigraphy.: Soldier testimony from Gaza:“[...] I was involved in approving a target with 300 collateral damage.

https://x.com/BtSIsrael/status/2110000272973938753

Soldier testimony from Gaza:“[...] I was involved in approving a target with 300 collateral damage. [It was when] IDF forces entered for maneuvering inside the [Gaza] Strip and encountered a very very prepared [Hamas] battalion, good soldiers, strong soldiers. 

There were many clashes. And then there was a total amok, like to take down the commander of this battalion [but] we couldn’t precisely say where this person was. The strikes on Gaza — they’re in a very very very dense [area.] [...] So even if you get to a relatively precise polygon (a defined area in which the designated subject of a strike is expected to be), you can get very very high collateral damage.

So we got to a relatively narrow polygon, and there we kind of stopped. We didn’t manage to get more intelligence that would narrow us down more than this polygon. They said: He is killing soldiers now, he needs to be hit [...] 

They really wanted to kill this person. And it was the kind of target where it was like exception, exception, exception and in the end it was approved. I know that it went up, I think at least to the chief of staff. The very least a brigadier general, but I believe that further [up,]”

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This soldier describes the strike on Ibrahim Biari, commander of the Central Jabalia Battalion, in which 126 people, including 68 children, were killed. Such an enormous death toll was not a violation of IDF procedures. In fact, even twice as many civilian deaths would not have exceeded the collateral damage the IDF had permitted.

This was not the only instance in which the IDF authorised hundreds of civilian deaths as collateral damage, but the threshold approved for Biari was not the standard one. The standard, and for that reason, much deadlier collateral-damage threshold was much lower. For the period between October 2023 and at least until December 2024, the IDF allowed up to 20 civilians to be killed as collateral damage for every person deemed a Hamas operative, whether a low-ranking militant or a truck driver.

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Full testimony: https://breakingthesilence.org.il/testimonies/database/390435