Independent Jewish Voices

When soldiers see their comrade being dragged away, they must shoot and kill – even if it is almost certain that their comrade will also be hit. The order does not say explicitly “better a dead soldier than a captured soldier” – but this is implied and widely understood that way.

If the captors and their captive disappear, the whole neighborhood has to be flattened indiscriminately, in the hope that the captors are hiding in one of the buildings.

At the height of the Gaza war, that is exactly what happened. An Israeli squad fell into a Hamas ambush. All the soldiers were killed, except one – Hadar Goldin – who was seen being dragged into a tunnel. Assuming that he was captured, the army went berserk, razing scores of buildings in Rafah to the ground without warning, shooting at everything that moved.