Israeli Troops Recount Indiscriminate Murder of Civilians in Gaza 'Kill Zone'
"We're killing civilians there who are then counted as terrorists," said one Israeli veteran, who added that random slayings have become "a competition between units" to see who can kill more people.
Israeli invaders patrol in Khan Younis, Gaza, Palestine on January 27, 2024.
(Photo: Nicolas Garcia/AFP via Getty Images)
Brett Wilkins
Dec 20, 2024
COMMON DREAMS
Israel Defense Forces commanders, soldiers, and veterans described a "kill zone" in the heart of the Gaza Strip where troops are ordered to shoot "anyone who enters," adding to the copious body of evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by IDF troops during their 441-day obliteration of the Palestinian enclave.
Haaretz, Israel's oldest newspaper, this week published the accounts of anonymous IDF troops who received orders to kill unarmed men, women, children, and elders in the Netzarim Corridor, a strip of land several miles wide that bisects Gaza from the Israeli border to the Mediterranean Sea just south of Gaza City.
"The forces in the field call it 'the line of dead bodies,'" a commander in Division 252 told Haaretz. "After shootings, bodies are not collected, attracting packs of dogs who come to eat them. In Gaza, people know that wherever you see these dogs, that's where you must not go."
Another senior officer in that unit told the paper that "the division commander designated this area as a 'kill zone.' Anyone who enters is shot."
One Division 252 veteran said: "For the division, the kill zone extends as far as a sniper can see. We're killing civilians there who are then counted as terrorists. The IDF spokesperson's announcements about casualty numbers have turned this into a competition between units. If Division 99 kills 150, the next unit aims for 200."
A commander in Division 252 said that out of 200 "militants" the IDF said one unit had killed, "only 10 were confirmed as known Hamas operatives. Yet no one questioned the public announcement about killing hundreds of militants."
A senior reserve commander asserted, "Calling ourselves the world's most moral army absolves soldiers who know exactly what we're doing."
"It means ignoring that for over a year, we've operated in a lawless space where human life holds no value," he added. "Yes, we commanders and combatants are participating in the atrocity unfolding in Gaza. Now everyone must face this reality."
"Calling ourselves the world's most moral army absolves soldiers who know exactly what we're doing."
Another Division 252 veteran recounted the time when "guards spotted someone approaching" and "we responded as if it was a large militant raid."
"We took positions and just opened fire. I'm talking about dozens of bullets, maybe more," he continued. "For about a minute or two, we just kept shooting at the body. People around me were shooting and laughing."
The soldier continued:
We approached the blood-covered body, photographed it, and took the phone. He was just a boy, maybe 16. That evening, our battalion commander congratulated us for killing a terrorist, saying he hoped we'd kill 10 more tomorrow. When someone pointed out he was unarmed and looked like a civilian, everyone shouted him down. The commander said: 'Anyone crossing the line is a terrorist, no exceptions, no civilians. Everyone's a terrorist.' This deeply troubled me—did I leave my home to sleep in a mouse-infested building for this? To shoot unarmed people?
One Division 99 reservist recalled watching a video feed from a drone showing "an adult with two children crossing the forbidden line."
"We had them under complete surveillance with the drone and weapons aimed at them—they couldn't do anything," he said. "Suddenly we heard a massive explosion. A combat helicopter had fired a missile at them. Who thinks it's legitimate to fire a missile at children? And with a helicopter? This is pure evil."
Soldiers who served in Division 252 described the first speech delivered by Brig. Gen. Yehuda Vach, who took command of the unit last summer and, according to one veteran in attendance, told its troops that "there are no innocents in Gaza."
"In the Middle East, victory comes through conquering territory," Vach said, according to the witness. "We must keep conquering until we win."
"Who thinks it's legitimate to fire a missile at children? And with a helicopter? This is pure evil."
One officer said Vach obsessed over carrying out the so-called Generals' Plan—a blueprint for the starvation and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from northern Gaza—and sought to forcibly expel 250,000 people from the area.
The IDF responded to the Haaretz story in a statement claiming "strikes are targeted solely at military objectives, and before the strikes are carried out, many steps are taken to minimize harm to noncombatants."
However, the testimonies published by Haaretz are consistent with numerous other accounts provided by IDF soldiers and veterans, as well as Palestinian survivors and witnesses, and international medical personnel who worked in Gaza.
Earlier this year, South Africa—which is leading a genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice—filed an emergency request with the tribunal citing "testimony from Israeli soldiers who have served in Gaza that Israeli soldiers treat evacuation zones as 'zones of extermination' in which all remaining Palestinians are considered to be legitimate targets."
American trauma surgeons who volunteered at the European Hosptial in Khan Younis described "horrifying violence deliberately directed at civilians," including "a 3-year-old boy shot in the head, a 12-year-old girl shot through the chest, an ICU nurse shot through the abdomen, all by some of the best-trained marksmen in the world."
Palestinian survivors have recounted IDF troops or drones killing young children and people holding white flags. Rescue workers and journalists attempting to document the incidents have also been killed.
These are some of the more than 45,000 Palestinians who, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, have been killed, and over 107,000 others who've been wounded, since Israel launched the war on Gaza in retaliation for the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack.
On Thursday, the international medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières and Human Rights Watch joined United Nations experts, rights groups including Amnesty International, more than a dozen national governments, and thousands of academics, jurists, and others who accuse Israel of genocidal acts or outright genocide in Gaza.
"We're killing civilians there who are then counted as terrorists," said one Israeli veteran, who added that random slayings have become "a competition between units" to see who can kill more people.
Israeli invaders patrol in Khan Younis, Gaza, Palestine on January 27, 2024.
(Photo: Nicolas Garcia/AFP via Getty Images)
Brett Wilkins
Dec 20, 2024
COMMON DREAMS
Israel Defense Forces commanders, soldiers, and veterans described a "kill zone" in the heart of the Gaza Strip where troops are ordered to shoot "anyone who enters," adding to the copious body of evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by IDF troops during their 441-day obliteration of the Palestinian enclave.
Haaretz, Israel's oldest newspaper, this week published the accounts of anonymous IDF troops who received orders to kill unarmed men, women, children, and elders in the Netzarim Corridor, a strip of land several miles wide that bisects Gaza from the Israeli border to the Mediterranean Sea just south of Gaza City.
"The forces in the field call it 'the line of dead bodies,'" a commander in Division 252 told Haaretz. "After shootings, bodies are not collected, attracting packs of dogs who come to eat them. In Gaza, people know that wherever you see these dogs, that's where you must not go."
Another senior officer in that unit told the paper that "the division commander designated this area as a 'kill zone.' Anyone who enters is shot."
One Division 252 veteran said: "For the division, the kill zone extends as far as a sniper can see. We're killing civilians there who are then counted as terrorists. The IDF spokesperson's announcements about casualty numbers have turned this into a competition between units. If Division 99 kills 150, the next unit aims for 200."
A commander in Division 252 said that out of 200 "militants" the IDF said one unit had killed, "only 10 were confirmed as known Hamas operatives. Yet no one questioned the public announcement about killing hundreds of militants."
A senior reserve commander asserted, "Calling ourselves the world's most moral army absolves soldiers who know exactly what we're doing."
"It means ignoring that for over a year, we've operated in a lawless space where human life holds no value," he added. "Yes, we commanders and combatants are participating in the atrocity unfolding in Gaza. Now everyone must face this reality."
"Calling ourselves the world's most moral army absolves soldiers who know exactly what we're doing."
Another Division 252 veteran recounted the time when "guards spotted someone approaching" and "we responded as if it was a large militant raid."
"We took positions and just opened fire. I'm talking about dozens of bullets, maybe more," he continued. "For about a minute or two, we just kept shooting at the body. People around me were shooting and laughing."
The soldier continued:
We approached the blood-covered body, photographed it, and took the phone. He was just a boy, maybe 16. That evening, our battalion commander congratulated us for killing a terrorist, saying he hoped we'd kill 10 more tomorrow. When someone pointed out he was unarmed and looked like a civilian, everyone shouted him down. The commander said: 'Anyone crossing the line is a terrorist, no exceptions, no civilians. Everyone's a terrorist.' This deeply troubled me—did I leave my home to sleep in a mouse-infested building for this? To shoot unarmed people?
One Division 99 reservist recalled watching a video feed from a drone showing "an adult with two children crossing the forbidden line."
"We had them under complete surveillance with the drone and weapons aimed at them—they couldn't do anything," he said. "Suddenly we heard a massive explosion. A combat helicopter had fired a missile at them. Who thinks it's legitimate to fire a missile at children? And with a helicopter? This is pure evil."
Soldiers who served in Division 252 described the first speech delivered by Brig. Gen. Yehuda Vach, who took command of the unit last summer and, according to one veteran in attendance, told its troops that "there are no innocents in Gaza."
"In the Middle East, victory comes through conquering territory," Vach said, according to the witness. "We must keep conquering until we win."
"Who thinks it's legitimate to fire a missile at children? And with a helicopter? This is pure evil."
One officer said Vach obsessed over carrying out the so-called Generals' Plan—a blueprint for the starvation and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from northern Gaza—and sought to forcibly expel 250,000 people from the area.
The IDF responded to the Haaretz story in a statement claiming "strikes are targeted solely at military objectives, and before the strikes are carried out, many steps are taken to minimize harm to noncombatants."
However, the testimonies published by Haaretz are consistent with numerous other accounts provided by IDF soldiers and veterans, as well as Palestinian survivors and witnesses, and international medical personnel who worked in Gaza.
Earlier this year, South Africa—which is leading a genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice—filed an emergency request with the tribunal citing "testimony from Israeli soldiers who have served in Gaza that Israeli soldiers treat evacuation zones as 'zones of extermination' in which all remaining Palestinians are considered to be legitimate targets."
American trauma surgeons who volunteered at the European Hosptial in Khan Younis described "horrifying violence deliberately directed at civilians," including "a 3-year-old boy shot in the head, a 12-year-old girl shot through the chest, an ICU nurse shot through the abdomen, all by some of the best-trained marksmen in the world."
Palestinian survivors have recounted IDF troops or drones killing young children and people holding white flags. Rescue workers and journalists attempting to document the incidents have also been killed.
These are some of the more than 45,000 Palestinians who, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, have been killed, and over 107,000 others who've been wounded, since Israel launched the war on Gaza in retaliation for the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack.
On Thursday, the international medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières and Human Rights Watch joined United Nations experts, rights groups including Amnesty International, more than a dozen national governments, and thousands of academics, jurists, and others who accuse Israel of genocidal acts or outright genocide in Gaza.
Israel has killed over 17,500 children in Gaza since October 2023, officials say, with the true toll likely far higher.
By Sharon Zhang ,
December 19, 2024
A photograph, taken during an embed with the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and reviewed by the IDF censorship office prior to publication, shows Israeli soldiers guarding the entrance of a tunnel.Ilia Yefimovich / picture alliance via Getty Images
Israeli forces carried out an “unprecedented assault” on Palestinian children in Gaza and the occupied West Bank in 2024, a children’s rights group has said, including repeatedly using children as human shields amid Israel’s genocide.
Israeli forces have killed over 17,500 children in Gaza since October 2023, according to Gaza health officials, with the true death toll likely far higher as children dying due to disease, starvation, or being trapped under the rubble are going uncounted by officials who have lost access. An estimated 35,000 children have lost one or both parents.
Meanwhile, thousands of Palestinian children have sustained critical injuries or have been left with permanent disabilities as a result of Israeli massacres, as Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCIP) wrote in its end-of-year report.
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Gaza’s health system was already weakened before the genocide due to decades of Israeli occupation, and is now almost completely inaccessible for children needing emergency or long term care — much less services like preventative care.
This year, the risk of polio spreading among children in Gaza emerged due to Israel’s disease campaign, with one 10-month-old paralyzed from the disease and Israel preventing humanitarian groups from finishing their vaccination campaign in north Gaza. Other diseases, like chickenpox and scabies, raged through displacement camps that were overcrowded due to Israel’s mass expulsion campaign.
Israeli forces carried out an “unprecedented assault” on Palestinian children in Gaza and the occupied West Bank in 2024, a children’s rights group has said, including repeatedly using children as human shields amid Israel’s genocide.
Israeli forces have killed over 17,500 children in Gaza since October 2023, according to Gaza health officials, with the true death toll likely far higher as children dying due to disease, starvation, or being trapped under the rubble are going uncounted by officials who have lost access. An estimated 35,000 children have lost one or both parents.
Meanwhile, thousands of Palestinian children have sustained critical injuries or have been left with permanent disabilities as a result of Israeli massacres, as Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCIP) wrote in its end-of-year report.
Get our free emails
Email*
Gaza’s health system was already weakened before the genocide due to decades of Israeli occupation, and is now almost completely inaccessible for children needing emergency or long term care — much less services like preventative care.
This year, the risk of polio spreading among children in Gaza emerged due to Israel’s disease campaign, with one 10-month-old paralyzed from the disease and Israel preventing humanitarian groups from finishing their vaccination campaign in north Gaza. Other diseases, like chickenpox and scabies, raged through displacement camps that were overcrowded due to Israel’s mass expulsion campaign.
Many children are undergoing amputation procedures without anesthesia, UNRWA said.
“In 2024, Israel’s genocidal campaign against Palestinians in Gaza reached catastrophic proportions. Relentless aerial bombardments, ground invasions, and siege tactics deliberately targeted Palestinian civilians, leaving children to suffer the most,” DCIP’s report says.
The number of Palestinian children detained in Israeli prisons also reached a record high in 2024, the group said.
In the occupied West Bank, Israeli soldiers and settlers killed one Palestinian child every four days this year, “an escalation made possible by decades of impunity,” the group said.
Israel’s violence included using children as human shields “systematically” this year, as DCIP has documented throughout the genocide.
This includes an incident in March in which Israeli tanks surrounded a group of Palestinian children waiting in line for aid in Gaza City. Soldiers stripped the children and tied them up, depriving them of food and water and forcing them for an entire day to walk in front of tanks and in front of buildings that the military wanted to enter, as DCIP found.
Israeli forces’ weaponization of starvation, meanwhile, has put children, especially newborns and children with disabilities, at heightened risk, with babies as young as two months old starving to death, the group said; in August, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor found that Israel killed 210 newborn babies a month on average in Gaza since the beginning of the genocide.
Palestinian Americans File Lawsuit Against US for “Abandoning” Them in Gaza
The US arranges evacuations for others, but is leaving Palestinian Americans to die in Gaza, the lawsuit says.
By Sharon Zhang ,
December 20, 2024
Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks during a Council on Foreign Relations event on December 18, 2024, in New York City.Michael M. Santiago / Getty Images
Agroup of Palestinian Americans is suing the U.S. government for failing to evacuate American citizens and legal residents stranded in Gaza amid Israel’s genocide, saying that the U.S. is violating constitutional protections afforded to all Americans by discriminating against Palestinians and leaving them stranded.
The group of nine Palestinian Americans, either themselves stuck in Gaza or whose family are stranded there, accuse the government of violating the Fifth Amendment, promising equal protection, “by depriving Plaintiffs of the normal and typical evacuation efforts the federal government extends to Americans who are not Palestinians,” the lawsuit says.
The plaintiffs were in Gaza before the U.S. issued a travel advisory against going to Gaza on October 11, 2023, the lawsuit says, and were thus trapped as the White House said that the government had no plans for Palestinian Americans trapped in Gaza — despite having arranged charter flights for Israeli Americans to flee Israel shortly after the October 7, 2023, attack.
The U.S.’s evacuation of people from other countries or of other nationalities from war zones but not of Palestinians is evidence of a “discriminatory two-tier system” employed by the government against people of Palestinian origin, the lawsuit says.
All of the plaintiffs are people who are eligible for evacuation but whose requests to leave have been swept under the rug by the Biden administration, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which is supporting the lawsuit. Each of them have “tried for months to exhaust non-legal means to escape Gaza,” including with other previous legal actions.
The groups are the latest to join the large number of prominent voices accusing Israel of genocide or genocidal acts.
CAIR says that the State Department has blamed Israel’s closure of the Rafah crossing — which happened in May after Israeli forces violated President Joe Biden’s supposed “red line” — but say that the lawsuit requests evacuation through Kerem Shalom, which has been the site of other evacuations, and which remains open.
“The law requires the U.S. government to protect Americans wherever they may be. With every passing day, the danger of our clients dying from Israeli bombardment or the starvation and disease now rampant in Gaza only goes up,” Maria Kari, the case’s lead attorney, said in a statement. “The State Department must do the right thing and save these people from certain death.”
The plaintiffs’ stories are horrific. They include that of the Khalid Mourtaga, from Mississippi, who is trapped in Gaza with untreated Hepatitis A; Sahar Harara, of Texas, whose father was killed by Israel and whose mother, a green card holder, is critically injured; Marowa Abusharia, who lives in New Jersey, whose spouse, stuck in north Gaza, hasn’t met their twin daughters who were born shortly after the genocide began; and Heba Enayeh, whose 17-year-old son, Abdallah, is trapped in Gaza and in need of urgent medical care.
One of the plaintiffs, Salsabeel ElHelou, is hoping for evacuation for her and her three sons, who are 7, 12 and 15 years old. In March, three of their names appeared on the evacuation list — but not that of Almotasem, the eldest. Months later, Almotasem was hit and wounded in an Israeli airstrike, and all of the children now have skin conditions and suffer from malnutrition.
“Defendants have full knowledge of the desperate condition of the Plaintiffs and yet have failed to fulfill their mandatory, non-discretionary duty to evacuate Palestinians from Gaza just like the federal government has evacuated other United States persons of other nationalities,” the lawsuit says.
The lawsuit is the second filed against the U.S. government this week by Palestinian Americans after a group of five Palestinians sued aiming to stop the U.S.’s weapons transfers to Israel, saying that the U.S. is violating the Leahy Law by continuing to aid Israel’s assault.
The U.S. has consistently shown total indifference toward the lives of Americans if their existence is a supposed affront to Israelis. This week, the State Department implied to members of Congress that they are not independently investigating Israel’s killing of Turkish American activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, and are instead relying solely on Israel’s word — despite Israel having a long history of lying to exonerate itself.
This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.
Agroup of Palestinian Americans is suing the U.S. government for failing to evacuate American citizens and legal residents stranded in Gaza amid Israel’s genocide, saying that the U.S. is violating constitutional protections afforded to all Americans by discriminating against Palestinians and leaving them stranded.
The group of nine Palestinian Americans, either themselves stuck in Gaza or whose family are stranded there, accuse the government of violating the Fifth Amendment, promising equal protection, “by depriving Plaintiffs of the normal and typical evacuation efforts the federal government extends to Americans who are not Palestinians,” the lawsuit says.
The plaintiffs were in Gaza before the U.S. issued a travel advisory against going to Gaza on October 11, 2023, the lawsuit says, and were thus trapped as the White House said that the government had no plans for Palestinian Americans trapped in Gaza — despite having arranged charter flights for Israeli Americans to flee Israel shortly after the October 7, 2023, attack.
The U.S.’s evacuation of people from other countries or of other nationalities from war zones but not of Palestinians is evidence of a “discriminatory two-tier system” employed by the government against people of Palestinian origin, the lawsuit says.
All of the plaintiffs are people who are eligible for evacuation but whose requests to leave have been swept under the rug by the Biden administration, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which is supporting the lawsuit. Each of them have “tried for months to exhaust non-legal means to escape Gaza,” including with other previous legal actions.
The groups are the latest to join the large number of prominent voices accusing Israel of genocide or genocidal acts.
CAIR says that the State Department has blamed Israel’s closure of the Rafah crossing — which happened in May after Israeli forces violated President Joe Biden’s supposed “red line” — but say that the lawsuit requests evacuation through Kerem Shalom, which has been the site of other evacuations, and which remains open.
“The law requires the U.S. government to protect Americans wherever they may be. With every passing day, the danger of our clients dying from Israeli bombardment or the starvation and disease now rampant in Gaza only goes up,” Maria Kari, the case’s lead attorney, said in a statement. “The State Department must do the right thing and save these people from certain death.”
The plaintiffs’ stories are horrific. They include that of the Khalid Mourtaga, from Mississippi, who is trapped in Gaza with untreated Hepatitis A; Sahar Harara, of Texas, whose father was killed by Israel and whose mother, a green card holder, is critically injured; Marowa Abusharia, who lives in New Jersey, whose spouse, stuck in north Gaza, hasn’t met their twin daughters who were born shortly after the genocide began; and Heba Enayeh, whose 17-year-old son, Abdallah, is trapped in Gaza and in need of urgent medical care.
One of the plaintiffs, Salsabeel ElHelou, is hoping for evacuation for her and her three sons, who are 7, 12 and 15 years old. In March, three of their names appeared on the evacuation list — but not that of Almotasem, the eldest. Months later, Almotasem was hit and wounded in an Israeli airstrike, and all of the children now have skin conditions and suffer from malnutrition.
“Defendants have full knowledge of the desperate condition of the Plaintiffs and yet have failed to fulfill their mandatory, non-discretionary duty to evacuate Palestinians from Gaza just like the federal government has evacuated other United States persons of other nationalities,” the lawsuit says.
The lawsuit is the second filed against the U.S. government this week by Palestinian Americans after a group of five Palestinians sued aiming to stop the U.S.’s weapons transfers to Israel, saying that the U.S. is violating the Leahy Law by continuing to aid Israel’s assault.
The U.S. has consistently shown total indifference toward the lives of Americans if their existence is a supposed affront to Israelis. This week, the State Department implied to members of Congress that they are not independently investigating Israel’s killing of Turkish American activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, and are instead relying solely on Israel’s word — despite Israel having a long history of lying to exonerate itself.
This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.
Sharon Zhang is a news writer at Truthout covering politics, climate and labor. Before coming to Truthout, Sharon had written stories for Pacific Standard, The New Republic, and more. She has a master’s degree in environmental studies. She can be found on Twitter and Bluesky.
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