Mourners praise dead occupation soldier who ‘wanted to kill’ Palestinians and lost count of his victims

Last weekend, Israeli armoured platoon commander Avraham Ben Pinchas was killed when the tank he was in during an Israeli operation in the southern Gaza Strip was hit by an anti-tank missile. Those mourning him at his funeral have praised the settler for his lust for killing Palestinians and listed some of the war crimes Pinchas was involved in.⁠
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One settler neighbour spoke of Pinchas’s religious fervour for Israel’s war on unarmed Palestinians:

One of the last times you were at home you were bothered a lot because in your opinion we should look at the issue of war like a passage in the Talmud.⁠

You demanded that we go into the depth of the issue and see things as you see them – this is the order of the war – to conquer the Land of Israel and save the people of Israel.

Another eulogy, in a WhatsApp group for colonial settlers, spoke of his ‘happiness’ at going to Gaza to kill and to ‘destroy as much as possible’:

Avraham went to this war out of a tremendous desire to elevate the people of Israel. He was so happy to enter Gaza and lead attacks, he wanted to kill, take revenge and destroy as much as possible, so that the whole world would understand what is happening to those who deal with the people of Israel.

Friends related how Pinchas would keep count of those he had killed, but later decided he shouldn’t count people he had killed by shelling them or crushing them under his tank tracks, but only those he had shot with the tank’s machine gun – and eventually stopped counting because he ‘had no strength’ to do so:

At first, he also counted those who he killed by shooting, shells and running over, but later he decided that what he kills with shells does not count within the count…and informed his crew that they were stopping running over and only killing with the MAG because he was tired of cleaning his arms and legs from the tank’s tracked treads. After a relatively short period of time, he reached to about 30 that he killed and decided that he had no strength to keep counting..

The eulogies and the frank admission of atrocities echo the funeral of another occupation soldier killed in October, who ‘wanted to take revenge on women and children’ and burned down Palestinian homes to raise his troop’s spirits if they were feeling down. The deranged eulogies at that funeral were filmed and published, but ignored – as is usually the case – by western media and politicians eager to collude in Israel’s war crimes.

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