JERUSALEM—Describing the terrifying yet valiant experience to his fellow battalion members, Israel Defense Forces soldier Yossi Saadon recounted Tuesday his harrowing, heroic war story of killing an 8-month-old Palestinian child during a violent attack against protesters. “It was a heart-pounding ex...
From 2018 lmao. This entire article is a gold mine
said Saadon to the group of awed soldiers, describing the chills that went up and down his spine as he realized that all he had was his M16 assault rifle and some tear gas to defend himself against the unarmed Palestinian family standing only dozens of yards away. “I could see the whites of the baby’s eyes and hear her terrifying cries, and I knew it was either her or me. And this wasn’t some newborn infant, you know? This was a baby who could probably sit up independently. I was scared, but I acted quickly to throw that tear gas at her and her older sister. And who knows how many lives I saved
I get that this comment is hyperbole, but it's not entirely true. The trauma experienced by U.S. military personnel, and processed through movies, is primarily moral injury, knowing that they went to war and did terrible things unjustly, unnecessarily, based on lies. (Contrast this with the trauma experienced by the protagonists in The Best Years of Our LIves, veterans of what is seen as a just, necessary war. They struggle with life after war, not guilt about what they did in it.) There are movies from other countries which process the same sort of trauma, such as the Israeli film Waltz with Bashir, made by a former IDF soldier processing his role in the 1982 Lebanon War.
Point is, 'merica doesn't have mentally-weak, or entitled, soldiers compared to other nations, it just gets into a lot of morally-indefensible wars. (And Israel causes moral injury to many of its people with its morally-indefensible wars, too.)
James Jones' Whistle (the third book in his sort-of trilogy which includes From Here to Eternity and The Thin Red Line) is also about the post-battle trauma experienced by WWII combat veterans. It is remarkably like all the Vietnam books and movies - perhaps the moral aspect of whether the war was just or not is less important than the fact that war is a very fucked up experience.
The TTDF(Time Traveling Defense Forces) have high confidence that that baby was the next Hitler. That or the kid born in the hospital bed next door. It's not an exact science.
Adam Samer al-Ghoul, 8, was shot in the head and Basil Suleiman Abu al-Wafa, 15, died after he was shot in the chest.
And this is in refugee camps in the West Bank, not the main action in Gaza.
At least 242 Palestinians, including more than 50 children, have been killed in the occupied West Bank since October 7. More than 2,750 have been injured.