US adopted IDF tactics in places such as Fallujah. Blowback is what we got!
Published on Saturday, March 29, 2003 by the lndependent/UK
Israelis Trained US Troops in Jenin-style Urban Warfare
by Justin Huggler in Amman The American military has been asking the Israeli army for advice on fighting inside cities, and studying fighting in the West Bank city of Jenin last April, unnamed United States and Israeli sources have confirmed. Reports that US troops trained with Israeli forces for street-to-street fighting have been denied.
If the US army believes the road to Baghdad lies through Jenin, there is reason for Iraqi civilians to be concerned. During fighting in the Jenin refugee camp last April, more than half the Palestinian dead were civilians. There was compelling evidence that Israeli soldiers targeted civilians, including Fadwa Jamma, a Palestinian nurse shot dead as she tried to treat a wounded man. A 14-year-old boy was killed by Israeli tank-fire in a crowded street after the curfew was lifted. A Palestinian in a wheelchair was shot dead, and his body was crushed by an Israeli tank.
Israeli soldiers prevented ambulances from reaching the wounded and refused the Red Cross access. Using bulldozers, the Israeli army demolished an entire neighborhood– home to 800 Palestinian families – reducing it to dust and rubble.
Martin van Creveld, a professor of military history and strategy at Jerusalem's internationally respected Hebrew University, has told reporters that, following his advice to US Marines, the American military bought nine of the converted bulldozers used in the Jenin demolitions from Israel.
Professor van Creveld said he gave advice to marines last year in Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. He said he was questioned about Israeli tactics in Jenin, and told them the giant D9 bulldozers, manufactured for civilian use in the US but fitted with armour-plating in Israel, were among the most useful weapons.
Israeli troops at first found they could not get their tanks and armored vehicles into the narrow alleys of the refugee camp, so they bulldozed wide swaths through houses to get them in.
If the US military intends to use converted D9 bulldozers in Iraqi cities, there is cause for concern. When reporters got into the Jenin refugee camp, we found the fronts of houses neatly scythed off so the insides of the houses were visible from the street, with personal belongings, sofas, beds, children's toys, hanging precariously from half-collapsed floors.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0329-07.htm