Israeli army T-shirts mock Gaza killings

The Israeli army is at the center of a second controversy over the moral conduct of its soldiers in as many days. The revelations centre on t-shirt designs made for soldiers that make light of shooting pregnant Palestinian mothers and children and include images of dead babies and destroyed mosques. The t-shirts were printed for Israeli soldiers at the end of periods of deployment or training courses and were discovered by Israeli newspaper Haaretz. One, printed for a platoon of Israeli snipers depicts an armed Palestinian pregnant women caught in the crosshairs of a rifle, with the disturbing caption in English: "1 shot 2 kills". Another depicts a child carrying a gun also in the centre of a target. "The smaller, the harder," read the words on the t-shirt. According to a soldier interviewed by the newspaper, the message has a double meaning: "It's a kid, so you've got a little more of a problem, morally and also the target is smaller." Another shows an Israeli soldier blowing up a mosque and reads "Only God forgives". Haaretz showed pictures of five shirts and said they were made at the unit level - indicating that they were made for small numbers of troops, perhaps several dozen, at a time. It said they were worn by an unknown number of enlisted men in different units.