On the first day of the ground invasion his battalion of 600 were involved in heavy fighting against the Hamas terrorists. "On a battlefield," he explained, "there is something called a dead zone. It's the territory that is controlled by your enemy and open to their fire. It's difficult to move from one point to another in a dead zone. But in this war," he continued, "we saw Hamas fighters moving through dead zones holding 5-year-old children in front of them as human shields. I am a father. I cannot even begin to understand the mentality of a fighter who would use a child to protect himself. Are these even men?"

He then recounted holding a machine gun. His soldiers had spotted a Hamas rocket about to be launched. He was about to order the soldiers to open fire when suddenly children started walking toward the soldiers right in front of the rocket. "My soldiers are eighteen and they're making life and death decisions, trying to decide, 'Should I allow children in Sderot to be bombed today by not firing on the rocket? But if I fire I may hurt a Palestinian child.'" He told his soldiers to stand down. The rocket was fired.

Read more: Battling dark emotion at the Gaza border | Shmuley Boteach | The Blogs | The Times of Israel http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/battling-dark-emotion-at-the-gaza-border/#ixzz3AK0e07jA