Col. Shai Malka, who headed the IDF's Pillar of Fire artillery group, is leaving the unit to become Commander of Artillery in the Northern Command.
Malka is unfazed by international condemnation of the IDF's attack on Gaza in the Cast Lead counter-terror operation. He says the IDF's artillery did not bring even half of its firepower to bear.
“The group's power in Cast Lead was just a few percentage points of what it is capable of giving,” Malka told IDF journal Bamachaneh. “We used one tenth of the force used in the Second Lebanon War, over a time span that was almost identical. There were many limitations on our use of firepower,” he said.
"I do not feel like a person who carried out war crimes, despite the accusations in the Goldstone report,” he added. “When someone uses a civilian population as a human shield, the only way to avoid hitting them is to get them out of where they are. We gave many warnings to civilians, through the media and fliers. We carried out deterrent fire before firing and whoever wished to get out could have done so.”
Malka also believes the use of artillery saved soldiers' lives. "Employing accurate artillery fire gets results that the infantry, for example, can only achieve at a high cost. In Cast Lead, the casualties Hamas sustained from accurate fire, from ground and air, were 60 to 75 percent [of its total casualties].”