Yesterday our school was visited by an Israeli soldier, who imparted a story upon me that I couldn't help but chuckle at:
One anecdote he imparted to us is that the soldiers were all instructed to never fire on a white flag. if someone was carrying a white flag, the soldiers should invite them to come with them and eat. Some soldiers went out and soon found some people with white flags. Then they arn back to the shelter, beacuse eth people with teh white-falgs were shooting at the soldiers.
Later, sfter calculating the launch point of the a lot of the missiles being fired from Gaza, his squad was requested to enter investigate the school, as it happened to be the point that the launches pointed to. They entered to find that it wasn't a school at all. It was actually an abandoned building with, and I'm serious here, the word "SCHOOL" spray-painted onto the top of teh front entrance. Alla round the building there were room filled with explosives. they got most of them out, but had to leave because of the danger. They retreated to a zoo. Their first thought upon entering was to evacuate the animals, but found that their were explosives attached to every lock on the cages, and opening them would have caused the cages to explode, so they had to leave.
Later they came upon a starving family, and many of the soldiers gave the family their food rations, and they starved for the day. Later on, the soldier I was talking to had to go on sick-leave because he was shot, and saw the family he had given his food rations to one the news. Instead of saying hwo they were being fed, they were saying they were starving.
Oh yeah, and I finally got some numbers. Over teh past 8 years, Gaza has fired around 10,000 missiles into Israel.