'They Must Be Prosecuted': Video Found on Phone of Murdered Gaza Medic Refutes IDF Claims
People gather around the body of Palestinian paramedic Mohamed Bahloul, who was killed with other first responders a week before in Israeli military fire on ambulances, as it lies at Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on March 30, 2025.
(Photo by AFP via Getty Images)
Jon Queally
Apr 05, 2025
COMMON DREAMS
A video presented to officials at the United Nations on Friday and first made public Saturday by the New York Times provides more evidence that the recent massacre of Palestinian medics in Gaza did not happen the way Israeli government claimed—the latest in a long line of deception when it comes to violence against civilians that have led to repeated accusations of war crimes.
The video, according to the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS), was found on the phone of a paramedic found in a mass grave with a bullet in his head after being killed, along with seven other medics, by Israeli forces on March 23. The eight medics, buried in the shallow grave with the bodies riddled with bullets, were: Mustafa Khafaja, Ezz El-Din Shaat, Saleh Muammar, Refaat Radwan, Muhammad Bahloul, Ashraf Abu Libda, Muhammad Al-Hila, and Raed Al-Sharif. The video reportedly belonged to Radwan. A ninth medic, identified as Asaad Al-Nasasra, who was at the scene of the massacre, which took place near the southern city of Rafah, is still missing.
The PRCS said it presented the video—which refutes the explanation of the killings offered by Israeli officials—to members of the UN Security Council on Friday.
"They were killed in their uniforms. Driving their clearly marked vehicles. Wearing their gloves. On their way to save lives," Jonathan Whittall, head of the UN's humanitarian affairs office in Palestine, said last week after the bodies were discovered. Some of the victims, according to Gaza officials, were found with handcuffs still on them and appeared to have been shot in the head, execution-style.
The Israeli military initially said its soldiers "did not randomly attack" any ambulances, but rather claimed they fired on "terrorists" who approached them in "suspicious vehicles." Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, an IDF spokesperson, said the vehicles that the soldiers opened fire on were driving with their lights off and did not have clearance to be in the area. The video evidence directly contradicts the IDF's version of events.
As the Times reports:
The Times obtained the video from a senior diplomat at the United Nations who asked not to be identified to be able to share sensitive information.
The Times verified the location and timing of the video, which was taken in the southern city of Rafah early on March 23. Filmed from what appears to be the front interior of a moving vehicle, it shows a convoy of ambulances and a fire truck, clearly marked, with headlights and flashing lights turned on, driving south on a road to the north of Rafah in the early morning. The first rays of sun can be seen, and birds are chirping.
In an interview with Drop Site News published Friday, the only known paramedic to survive the attack, Munther Abed, explained that he and his colleagues "were directly and deliberately shot at" by the IDF. "The car is clearly marked with 'Palestinian Red Crescent Society 101.' The car's number was clear and the crews' uniform was clear, so why were we directly shot at? That is the question."
The video's release sparked fresh outrage and demands for accountability on Saturday.
"The IDF denied access to the site for days; they sent in diggers to cover up the massacre and intentionally lied about it," said podcast producer Hamza M. Syed in reaction to the new revelations. "The entire leadership of the Israeli army is implicated in this unconscionable war crime. And they must be prosecuted."
"Everyone involved in this crime against humanity, and everyone who covered it up, would face prosecution in a world that had any shred of dignity left," said journalist Ryan Grim of DropSite News.
Trump Sends Israel 20,000 Rifles Withheld by Biden Over Settler Violence
The sale comes as Israeli ministers are pledging permanent annexation of the occupied West Bank.
By Sharon Zhang ,
Oscar-Winning Hamdan Ballal Released From Israeli Custody Bruised and Bloodied
Fellow co-director Basel Adra said there has been an uptick in Israeli settler violence since the Oscar win. By Sharon Zhang , Truthout March 25, 2025
In December 2023, reports found that the Biden administration was putting a pause on rifle shipments, after sending Congress notification of the sale weeks before. President Joe Biden had also paused a shipment of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel over concerns about the military’s invasion of Rafah, in southern Gaza — a city now completely leveled by Israeli forces after Biden failed to enforce his supposed red line over Israel’s invasion there.
Both the rifles and the bombs, a sale worth $2 billion, ultimately represented an extremely small proportion of the amount of weapons Biden sent to Israel in his last year in office. His administration sent a record number of weapons to Israel, including tens of thousands of other bombs, missiles, ammunition packages, and at least 14,000 2,000-pound bombs, in spite of research showing the massive death toll caused by dropping such bombs in civilian areas.
President Donald Trump has already lifted a pause on the shipment of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel — a move that came as his administration gutted a U.S. initiative to reduce civilian harm in military operations. Trump had also lifted such restrictions in his first term, leading to a huge increase in civilian harm compared to previous administrations, research has shown — though the U.S. has a long history of disregarding civilian death.
On Thursday, the Senate voted down an attempt by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) to block the sale of $8.8 billion worth of weapons to Israel, including 35,000 2,000-pound bombs, and tens of thousands of other bombs and JDAMs.
Trump has also lifted sanctions placed by the Biden administration on some of the most extremist Israeli settler groups, seemingly finalizing the extremely few, and arguably inconsequential, actions Biden took to help enforce international law when it comes to Israeli massacres, occupation and apartheid.
The sale comes as Israeli ministers are pledging permanent annexation of the occupied West Bank.
By Sharon Zhang ,
April 4, 2025
Israeli soldiers stand guard near a security fence in the West Bank town of Jenin on September 6, 2021.
Ilia Yefimovich / picture alliance via Getty Images
Did you know that Truthout is a nonprofit and independently funded by readers like you? If you value what we do, please support our work with a donation.
The Trump administration has reportedly advanced a shipment of over 20,000 assault rifles to Israel that was paused by the Biden administration over concerns that the weapons would be used by settlers to further their illegal occupation of the occupied West Bank.
The State Department notified Congress of the sale totalling $24 million in value last month, Reuters reports. The recipient listed in the notification is the Israeli National Police.
However, it is widely known that Israeli officials overseeing Israel’s plans to expand its occupation and annexation of the occupied West Bank funnel such weapons to Israeli settlers, extremists who regularly terrorize Palestinians and steal their homes and land.
The sale comes as settler violence has increased in the occupied West Bank amid Israel’s genocide in Gaza. This campaign is only set to worsen, after Israeli leaders put out a statement earlier this week outlining the government’s intention of permanent annexation of the occupied West Bank, which a UN expert called a “serious and egregious violation of international law” that could lead to the collapse of the concept of international law itself.
Israeli media reported early in the Gaza genocide that the Israeli military was in the process of distributing hundreds of assault rifles to “civilian security squads,” with Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir reportedly prioritizing distributing the weapons to settlers.
Related Story
Did you know that Truthout is a nonprofit and independently funded by readers like you? If you value what we do, please support our work with a donation.
The Trump administration has reportedly advanced a shipment of over 20,000 assault rifles to Israel that was paused by the Biden administration over concerns that the weapons would be used by settlers to further their illegal occupation of the occupied West Bank.
The State Department notified Congress of the sale totalling $24 million in value last month, Reuters reports. The recipient listed in the notification is the Israeli National Police.
However, it is widely known that Israeli officials overseeing Israel’s plans to expand its occupation and annexation of the occupied West Bank funnel such weapons to Israeli settlers, extremists who regularly terrorize Palestinians and steal their homes and land.
The sale comes as settler violence has increased in the occupied West Bank amid Israel’s genocide in Gaza. This campaign is only set to worsen, after Israeli leaders put out a statement earlier this week outlining the government’s intention of permanent annexation of the occupied West Bank, which a UN expert called a “serious and egregious violation of international law” that could lead to the collapse of the concept of international law itself.
Israeli media reported early in the Gaza genocide that the Israeli military was in the process of distributing hundreds of assault rifles to “civilian security squads,” with Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir reportedly prioritizing distributing the weapons to settlers.
Related Story
Oscar-Winning Hamdan Ballal Released From Israeli Custody Bruised and Bloodied
Fellow co-director Basel Adra said there has been an uptick in Israeli settler violence since the Oscar win. By Sharon Zhang , Truthout March 25, 2025
In December 2023, reports found that the Biden administration was putting a pause on rifle shipments, after sending Congress notification of the sale weeks before. President Joe Biden had also paused a shipment of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel over concerns about the military’s invasion of Rafah, in southern Gaza — a city now completely leveled by Israeli forces after Biden failed to enforce his supposed red line over Israel’s invasion there.
Both the rifles and the bombs, a sale worth $2 billion, ultimately represented an extremely small proportion of the amount of weapons Biden sent to Israel in his last year in office. His administration sent a record number of weapons to Israel, including tens of thousands of other bombs, missiles, ammunition packages, and at least 14,000 2,000-pound bombs, in spite of research showing the massive death toll caused by dropping such bombs in civilian areas.
President Donald Trump has already lifted a pause on the shipment of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel — a move that came as his administration gutted a U.S. initiative to reduce civilian harm in military operations. Trump had also lifted such restrictions in his first term, leading to a huge increase in civilian harm compared to previous administrations, research has shown — though the U.S. has a long history of disregarding civilian death.
On Thursday, the Senate voted down an attempt by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) to block the sale of $8.8 billion worth of weapons to Israel, including 35,000 2,000-pound bombs, and tens of thousands of other bombs and JDAMs.
Trump has also lifted sanctions placed by the Biden administration on some of the most extremist Israeli settler groups, seemingly finalizing the extremely few, and arguably inconsequential, actions Biden took to help enforce international law when it comes to Israeli massacres, occupation and apartheid.
Israel Bombs More Gaza Schools, Killing Dozens, Including Many Women and Children
"While your kids are getting ready for school, kids in Gaza were once against just massacred in one," said one observer.
First responders rescue victims of an April 3, 2025 Israeli airstrike on the Dar al-Arqam school in Gaza City, Palestine.
(Photo: Ayman Alhesi/Anadolu via Getty Images)
An official from Gaza's Civil Defense, five of whose members were also found in the mass grave on Sunday, said: "What's going on here is a wake-up call to the entire world. This war and these massacres against women and children must stop immediately. The children are being killed in cold blood here in Gaza. Our teams cannot perform their duties properly.
Gaza Health Ministry spokesperson Zaher al-Wahidi said that the death toll was likely to rise, as some survivors were critically injured.
Dozens of victims were reportedly trapped beneath rubble of Thursday's airstrikes, but they could not be rescued due to a lack of equipment.
The IDF claimed that "key Hamas terrorists" were targeted in a strike on what it called a "command center." Israeli officials routinely claim—often with little or no evidence—that Palestinian civilians it kills are members of Hamas or other militant resistance groups.
Israel also bombed the nearby al-Sabah school, killing four people, as well as the Fahd School in Gaza City, with three reported fatalities.
Some of the deadliest bombings in the war have been carried out against refugees sheltering in schools, many of them run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA)—at least 280 of whose staff members have been killed by Israeli forces during the war.
The United Nations Children's Fund has called Gaza "the world's most dangerous place to be a child." Last year, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres for the first time added Israel to his so-called "List of Shame" of countries that kill and injure children during wars and other armed conflicts. More than 17,500 Palestinian children have been killed in Gaza since October 2023, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
Thursday's school bombings sparked worldwide outrage and calls to hold Israel accountable.
"While your kids are getting ready for school, kids in Gaza were once against just massacred in one," Australian journalist, activist, and progressive politician Sophie McNeill wrote on social media. "We must sanction Israel now!"
There were other IDF massacres on Thursday, with local officials reporting that more than 100 people were killed in Israeli attacks since dawn. Al-Wahidi said more than 30 people were killed in strikes on homes in Gaza City's Shejaya neighborhood, citing records at al-Ahli Arab Baptist Hospital in Gaza.
Al Jazeera reported that al-Ahli's emergency room "is overwhelmed with casualties and, as is so often the case over the past 18 months, the victims are Gaza's youngest."
Thursday's intensified airstrikes came as Israeli forces pushed into the ruins of the southern city of Rafah. Local and international media reported that hundreds of thousands of Palestinian families fled from the area, which Israel said it will seize as part of a new "security zone."
Human rights defenders around the world condemned U.S.-backed killing and mass displacement, with U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)—whose bid to block some sAmerican arms sales to Israel was rejected by the Senate on Thursday—saying: "There is a name and a term for forcibly expelling people from where they live. It is called ethnic cleansing. It is illegal. It is a war crime."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his former defense minister, are fugitives from the International Criminal Court, which last year issued arrest warrants for the pair over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity. Israel is also facing a genocide case at the International Court of Justice.
According to Gaza officials, Israeli forces have killed or wounded at least 175,000 Palestinians in Gaza, including upward of 14,000 people who are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath rubble. Almost everyone in Gaza has been forcibly displaced at least once, and the "complete siege" imposed by Israel has fueled widespread and sometimes deadly starvation and disease.
"While your kids are getting ready for school, kids in Gaza were once against just massacred in one," said one observer.
First responders rescue victims of an April 3, 2025 Israeli airstrike on the Dar al-Arqam school in Gaza City, Palestine.
(Photo: Ayman Alhesi/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Brett Wilkins
Apr 03, 2025
COMMON DREAMS
Israeli airstrikes targeted at least three more school shelters in the Gaza Strip on Thursday, killing dozens of Palestinians and wounding scores of others on a day when local officials said that more than 100 people were slain by occupation forces.
Gaza's Government Media Office said that at least 29 people—including 14 children and five women—were killed and over 100 others were wounded when at least four missiles struck the Dar al-Arqam school complex in the Tuffah neighborhood of eastern Gaza City, where hundreds of Palestinians were sheltering after being forcibly displaced from other parts of the embattled coastal enclave by Israel's 535-day assault.
Al Jazeera reported that "when terrified men, women, and children fled from one school building to another, the bombs followed them," and "when bystanders rushed to help, they too became victims."
A first responder from the Palestine Red Crescent Society—which is reeling from this week's discovery of a mass grave containing the bodies of eight of its members, some of whom had allegedly been bound and executed by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops—toldAl Jazeera that "we were absolutely shocked by the scale of this massacre," whose victims were "mostly women and children."
Warning: Video contains graphic images of death.
Apr 03, 2025
COMMON DREAMS
Israeli airstrikes targeted at least three more school shelters in the Gaza Strip on Thursday, killing dozens of Palestinians and wounding scores of others on a day when local officials said that more than 100 people were slain by occupation forces.
Gaza's Government Media Office said that at least 29 people—including 14 children and five women—were killed and over 100 others were wounded when at least four missiles struck the Dar al-Arqam school complex in the Tuffah neighborhood of eastern Gaza City, where hundreds of Palestinians were sheltering after being forcibly displaced from other parts of the embattled coastal enclave by Israel's 535-day assault.
Al Jazeera reported that "when terrified men, women, and children fled from one school building to another, the bombs followed them," and "when bystanders rushed to help, they too became victims."
A first responder from the Palestine Red Crescent Society—which is reeling from this week's discovery of a mass grave containing the bodies of eight of its members, some of whom had allegedly been bound and executed by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops—toldAl Jazeera that "we were absolutely shocked by the scale of this massacre," whose victims were "mostly women and children."
Warning: Video contains graphic images of death.
An official from Gaza's Civil Defense, five of whose members were also found in the mass grave on Sunday, said: "What's going on here is a wake-up call to the entire world. This war and these massacres against women and children must stop immediately. The children are being killed in cold blood here in Gaza. Our teams cannot perform their duties properly.
Gaza Health Ministry spokesperson Zaher al-Wahidi said that the death toll was likely to rise, as some survivors were critically injured.
Dozens of victims were reportedly trapped beneath rubble of Thursday's airstrikes, but they could not be rescued due to a lack of equipment.
The IDF claimed that "key Hamas terrorists" were targeted in a strike on what it called a "command center." Israeli officials routinely claim—often with little or no evidence—that Palestinian civilians it kills are members of Hamas or other militant resistance groups.
Israel also bombed the nearby al-Sabah school, killing four people, as well as the Fahd School in Gaza City, with three reported fatalities.
Some of the deadliest bombings in the war have been carried out against refugees sheltering in schools, many of them run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA)—at least 280 of whose staff members have been killed by Israeli forces during the war.
The United Nations Children's Fund has called Gaza "the world's most dangerous place to be a child." Last year, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres for the first time added Israel to his so-called "List of Shame" of countries that kill and injure children during wars and other armed conflicts. More than 17,500 Palestinian children have been killed in Gaza since October 2023, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
Thursday's school bombings sparked worldwide outrage and calls to hold Israel accountable.
"While your kids are getting ready for school, kids in Gaza were once against just massacred in one," Australian journalist, activist, and progressive politician Sophie McNeill wrote on social media. "We must sanction Israel now!"
There were other IDF massacres on Thursday, with local officials reporting that more than 100 people were killed in Israeli attacks since dawn. Al-Wahidi said more than 30 people were killed in strikes on homes in Gaza City's Shejaya neighborhood, citing records at al-Ahli Arab Baptist Hospital in Gaza.
Al Jazeera reported that al-Ahli's emergency room "is overwhelmed with casualties and, as is so often the case over the past 18 months, the victims are Gaza's youngest."
Thursday's intensified airstrikes came as Israeli forces pushed into the ruins of the southern city of Rafah. Local and international media reported that hundreds of thousands of Palestinian families fled from the area, which Israel said it will seize as part of a new "security zone."
Human rights defenders around the world condemned U.S.-backed killing and mass displacement, with U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)—whose bid to block some sAmerican arms sales to Israel was rejected by the Senate on Thursday—saying: "There is a name and a term for forcibly expelling people from where they live. It is called ethnic cleansing. It is illegal. It is a war crime."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his former defense minister, are fugitives from the International Criminal Court, which last year issued arrest warrants for the pair over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity. Israel is also facing a genocide case at the International Court of Justice.
According to Gaza officials, Israeli forces have killed or wounded at least 175,000 Palestinians in Gaza, including upward of 14,000 people who are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath rubble. Almost everyone in Gaza has been forcibly displaced at least once, and the "complete siege" imposed by Israel has fueled widespread and sometimes deadly starvation and disease.
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