Troubling footage: IDF artillery deliberately fired over soldier's head

[Kennah]

Source: Israel National News

The IDF Spokesperson Unit on Tuesday addressed a video that was published on social media on Monday, which shows a soldier standing on a sand dune while an artillery gun is fired over her head.

After the gun is fired, the soldier falls and does not return to the frame.

The IDF Spokesperson stated that "the incident seen in the video is severe and completely deviates from the IDF's safety regulations. An in-depth investigation into the matter will be held as soon as possible, and punishments will be in order. No one was hurt in the incident."

The IDF then again emphasized that no one was hurt in the incident.

Read more: https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/382195

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Dafuq? This some sort of hazing ritual?

[moniss]

1. Most likely the heaviest repercussions will

be against whoever got this video out.

[Probatim]

8. Donald Rumsfeld agrees with this statement...

[TeamProg]

2. Who needs enemies? nt

[Gymbo]

3. This could actually be a much worse than reported incident.

Heavy artillery like 8"guns and 175mm howitzers are powerful enough to literally scramble your brains if you are too close to the end of a barrel when firing. Traumatic brain injury has been a problem since artillery was invented.

[Red Mountain]

4. Stupid

but it did look like she had hearing protection on. Proper PPE saves the day.

(sarcasm)

[Grokenstein]

5. IDF pin down paramedics with sniper fire and crush protestors with bulldozers

and then laugh about it. Why would something like this surprise anyone?

https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/palestinians-engaged-in-nonviolent-protest-israel-responded-with-a-massacre/

2018: For years, Israel has imposed a buffer zone hundreds of yards wide along Gaza’s borders, regularly shooting at farmers and residents in the area and eating into the Strip’s already cramped territory. Thus the presence of the camps inside the buffer zone, in addition to being a protest, was also a reclamation of land.

Closer to the front lines, men and women approached the border fence, some armed with slingshots and rocks, some with Molotov cocktails, some with nothing more than displays of defiance. There were no guns, no grenades, no rockets.

(...)

The response was bullets. Slow and steady, yet incessant.

Israeli snipers positioned on sand dunes several yards away from the fence picked people off at will. Dozens were shot, then hundreds, then thousands—nearly 6,500 since March 30.

People were shot everywhere. I saw a woman hit as she walked up close to the barbed wire. I saw a teenager struck in the knee as he whirred a rock-filled sling. I saw a man shot in the foot while standing far back—some 200 yards—from the fence, away from the smoke and the chaos. People who did cross the fence were often shot at point-blank range. Methodical, patient, precise.

(...)

In the first intifada, which lasted from December 1987 to the early 1990s, soldiers broke the arms of stone-throwing youth. Three decades later, they are taking out the legs of Palestinians walking toward the border.

“You’re basically creating a new generation of cripples,” said Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sitta, of the UK-based charity Medical Aid for Palestinians.

[Prairie Gates]

6. Confidence level: High; Competence level: Low

[AverageOldGuy]

7. Speaking as an old artilleryman . . .

. . . and as a proud graduate of Comanche County Cannon Cockers' College, Fort Sill, OK, I can tell you the ONLY safe place when an artillery piece is firing is BEHIND the piece, with your fingers or your earplugs or both in your ears.

I just watched the video. That is stupid and dangerous. The weapon is a 155mm self-propelled howitzer. Notice that not only was the soldier knocked off the berm, a couple of pieces of stuff lying on the ground were thrown around from the muzzle blast.

[jmowreader]

9. It wasn't fired over her head

Look at the video again. She was standing beside the barrel, somewhat to the rear of the muzzle.

What happened is she was in the blast area of the howitzer's muzzle brake. The muzzle brake is there to reduce the gun's recoil - a very necessary thing; with the amount of recoil these weapons have if you didn't compensate for it somehow you'd wind up tearing the cannon off its mounts. It works by blowing massive amounts of gunpowder smoke toward the rear of the gun at an angle. If you happen to be standing in the blast area...it's not going to be a good day for you.

When they start handing out punishments, they'll probably give one to her for being where she wasn't supposed to be in the first place as well as to the battery officers for not checking for people in the blast area before firing.

[XorXor]

10. I saw the video and assumed someone was doing it for social media views

As in, they wanted a crazy "cool" video of them doing Jackass-style idiocy

[Historic NY]

11. Yikes....

blast concussion. The soldier had ear protection and that about it.