An Israeli soldier who fought in Gaza has given a rare and damning first-person account of a war he now describes as illegal, immoral and driven by a system — not rogue individuals. Speaking to The Economist's 1843 magazine under the pseudonym Jonathan, the former infantry soldier described a conflict in which Palestinian men were shot without confirmation of combatant status, unarmed civilians were used as human shields, and entire neighbourhoods were razed without clear military justification.
Among the most disturbing details in his account is what soldiers called the 'dog line' — an invisible boundary drawn around IDF positions in Gaza. Any Palestinian who crossed it was shot on sight. The corpses were left where they fell, and dogs gathered along the line to feed on them. Jonathan recounted how soldiers on guard duty would open fire without knowing who they were killing. 'Someone on guard duty sees someone, shoots him, kills him — we wouldn't know what his story was or what he did,' he said.
