Surrender!

This is coolbert:

About ten years or so ago, the military of Israel admitted that during the Six Day War in 1967, contingents of surrendering Egyptian soldiers had been shot dead by the Israelis during the rapid Israeli advance through the Gaza Strip.

Massacred after surrendering! About seven hundred were said to have been machinegunned by Israeli troops.

And this created quite a stir in both Israel and Egypt, as could well be expected! Israel has always like to consider itself to be a paragon of virtue when it comes to waging war. Clean fighters that are virtuous. This admission of shooting surrendered prisoners certainly besmirched the reputation of the Israeli military!

I can tell you with almost absolute certainty as to happened here!

There are something you don't want to do if you are a soldier surrendering to the enemy. One is that you do not want to surrender in a large group. The second is that you do not want to surrender to an armored vehicle. If you expect to surrender to the enemy and not be shot dead, you MUST NOT violate either of these unwritten rules.

In the case of not surrendering in a large group, the fear of your captors will be that there are too many of you to safely handle. YOU pose a threat to the enemy you are surrendering to just by being in a large number. To bring the number of prisoners down to a more manageable number, the enemy will just shoot some of you dead on the spot. Create a smaller number of prisoners that can be more easily handled.

In the case of not surrendering to an armored vehicle, the commander of the armored vehicle cannot afford to release a crew member to guard you, and the commander on the other hand just cannot let you go. You will just be machinegunned dead on the spot by the crew of the armored vehicle!! This is their only recourse.

This is something that is known to all militaries of the world, but is just never be talked about, for obvious reasons. This is something that JUST HAPPENS!

In all likelihood, the surrendering Egyptians that were subsequently machinegunned tried to surrender both in a large group and attempted to surrender to a column of armored vehicles. During the Israeli advance into El Arish/Gaza, an advance spearheaded by tanks, the Egyptian infantry was abandoned by their officers and left to their fate. Large numbers did surrender! And surrendered to tanks! Probably presented a situation for the Israeli that would have inhibited their armor advance. A situation solved by machinegunning the captives! I can almost guarantee this is what happened!

coolbert.