1967: “We received orders to shoot to kill, without prior warning.”
JVL Introduction
Important, disturbing testimony from Israeli soldiers who fought in the 1967 Six Day War that led to the occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem that continues 59 years later. The stories of heroism and bravery, of overcoming insurmountable odds have long been used to portray that short war. Much of this testimony remained hidden for decades but veteran after veteran has shared what they saw and what they did. “In retrospect it looks like murder” said one soldier who had fought in Gaza. But the stories of brutality and murder come from all areas affected by the war.
“We turned the Sinai Peninsula into a killing field,” a soldier wrote to his girlfriend, recounting that people were executed even if they were unarmed, and that this happened both to captured soldiers and civilians. “I saw too many murders to cry.”#
For those who fled, eg crossing the severely damaged Allenby Bridge, returning was not possible. In this way at least 300,000 more Palestinians were added to the 750,000 who had been forced out in 1948.
Most of these Israeli troops’ testimonies, never saw the light of day. They came from a kibbutzim based discussion series, some of which made it into a book, “The Seventh Day: Soldiers’ Talk about the Six-DayWar,” However many of the testimonies were left out as they were from a 2015 film “Censored Voices,” indeed exposed some of the crimes committed in 1967, but the vast majority remained on the cutting room floor.
“Out of 200 hours of recordings, a significant number of hours deal with war crimes,” (Film Director) Loushy said…”The story came up in almost every kibbutz and repeated itself again and again.”
This article was originally published by Ha'aretz on Thu 4 Jun 2026. Read the original here.
'We Were Ordered to Kill': The 1967 Nakba That Israelis Don't Know About
Unpublished testimonies from soldiers who fought in the Six-Day War expose a stark gap between Israel’s collective memory and what actually happened in 1967. Newly uncovered documents indicate that 300,000 Arabs were expelled or displaced from the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan Heights amid violence, looting and destruction | An investigation
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The utter depravity described here far exceeds the typical depravity of settler populations when exploiting and dispossessing the “natives”. Even Apartheid South Africa wasn’t QUITE as brutal.
Judging by these foul deeds and mindset in 1967 (only 19 years after Israel became a state), Israel was from the outset a deeply criminal enterprise … and has continued on that trajectory ever since. Israel’s 2023 and 2026 “wars” against the defenceless Palestinians and Lebanese are “par for the course”, not aberrations.
So where do we go from here, when the culture and history of the majority of the Jewish settler population are as toxic as they are? There ARE wholly decent Jewish Israelis but unfortunately they’re a small minority. The more typical Jewish Israelis have comfortably ignored / participated in the state-supported racism, savagery and deep injustices meted out to non-Jews.
Appallingly toxic societies CAN change for the better when the forces driving their toxicity are junked as too damaging and costly. Given Israel’s awful history, it’ll take unrelenting pressure from outside, the support of the Diaspora and completely different Israeli leaders (political, military and civil) to build a decent future for the state now known as “Israel”.
The 1967 Nakba That Israelis Don’t Know About
don’t know about? or don’t want to know about?
Blue Box – UK Jewish Film
“He saw what it did. That’s why he claimed this wound would be passed on from generation to generation, giving it no chance ever to heal”
interesting choice of vocabulary, appropriating and repurposing somebody else’s Angst to internalise it as a wound which would never heal. oi veh. woe is me? it wasn’t enough to disposess the ‘existing non-Jewish – indigenous – communities – of their homes, land, livestock, standing crops goods and chattels… and if all else fails their lives – taking their lives from them in cold blood, not in the heat of battle, the fog of war… no, we’ll claim their Angst for good measure. I think that quote comes from Josef Weitz. He might have added – as many did – ‘but it’s for the best’
It was painful to witness the nuclear family of the young lady who made the film ‘other’ her when she had the temerity to question the morality of the actions of her grandfather.
Israeli Jews have two crosses to bear:
1. a 3,000 year history punctuated with suffering, crowned by the Holocaust which must have left open wounds in every one of them, marked them indelibly. As a goy I count my blessings, and cannot possibly empathise
2. a post- independence guilt arising from the way that independence was ‘won’, and the knowledge gnawing away at them that they have been and are now in denial about the disconnect between what they profess and what they do since then. A wound that will not heal
It’s an unenviable predicament. They can do nothing about 1. And to address 2. would take a superhuman effort, which is beyond them.
“… it’ll take unrelenting pressure from outside, the support of the Diaspora and completely different Israeli leaders (political, military and civil) to build a decent future for the state now known as “Israel”.
What will it take to build a state called Palestine? There are rumours that Tony Blair is to be given even more power than he currently has to mould the future of Palestine. Just when the Palestinians thought things could not conceivably get worse. Netanyahu is not going to be satisfied with 70% of Gaza. He is the maximalists’ Maximalist the opportunists’ Opportunist. He’s poised to bomb Beirut just to torpedo any prospect of an agreement with Teheran. He wants the war to continue right up to – and way beyond – polling day in the upcoming elections. I cannot envisage how a Palestinian State is going to emerge from these circumstances. This outcome was entirely predictable from the day that the British bombarded Akka:
“Corpses of men, women and children, blackened by the explosion of the magazine, and mutilated, in the most horrid manner, by the cannon shot, lay everywhere about, half buried by the ruins of the homes and fortifications: women were searching for the bodies of their husbands, children for their fathers” [Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine for 1841, ‘political Register’ 1841, VIII 65″. This was never going to end well.
Hi Martin. There are very few chinks of light but I still believe there are some. Perhaps the one with the greatest potential to restrain and change Israel and to facilitate the new State of Palestine is Iran’s victory over the USA and Israel.
Iran’s victory, the likely continuing control by Iran and Oman over the Strait of Hormuz traffic and the $billions worth destruction of US bases in the Gulf states mean the USA has lost much of its influencing ability and military capacity in the Middle East. Iran’s made a fair start on getting oil traders to replace the currency they use for payment from US dollars to Chinese yuan – the net results being to make the massive US budget deficit an even worse strain on US solvency.
The pain of the US super-power losing to the supposed weakling Iran, the multiple blows to US finance ensuing and the Americans’ and Trump’s fury with Israel for “conning” them into this disaster mean the USA will be reluctant to embark on any more Israel-prompted “excursions” into the Middle East.
A Middle East in which America’s influence is small and Iran one of the dominant players and allied with China will be a region where Israel can no longer attack Lebanon (defended by Hezbollah, Iran’s ally). Israel’s weakness will provide the launch pad for Palestine statehood. The longstanding popular support for the Palestinians regionally and globally will extend to Arab and Iranian leaders with the clout to make it happen.