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haaretz
Israeli Analysis Affirms Gaza Health Ministry’s Official Palestinian Death Count
One Israeli expert placed discrepancies in the list at "around 1%." Another said the error rate appears even lower.
Feb 24, 2026
An Israeli analysis published Tuesday examining the Gaza Health Ministry's list of Palestinians killed during Israel's US-backed annihilation of the Gaza Strip largely affirmed the official death count, while noting some imperfections in the 2,000-page document.
Haaretz, Israel's oldest daily newspaper, dissected the Gaza Health Ministry's (GHM) database of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in Gaza, which at the time contained nearly 70,000 names—it's now over 72,000—in part by using artificial intelligence to analyze the massive file.
"A consensus has taken shape: Even if the list has weaknesses, including the fact that it does not differentiate between combatants and civilians, it reflects the scale of the disaster inflicted on Gaza and its people," article author Nir Hasson wrote. "It also forms the basis for allegations that Israel committed war crimes, crimes against humanity, and even genocide."
Lee Mordechai, a historian at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem who says Israeli is committing genocide in Gaza, told Hasson, "It's clear that the list isn't 100% accurate and that it has errors, but I think they're around 1%."
Gabriel Epstein, an associate at the US-based Israel Policy Forum who was formerly skeptical of the GHM list, "now believes it is largely accurate and may even slightly undercount the dead," according to Hasson.
"Epstein reviewed the list obtained by Haaretz," the article states. "He found 24 duplicates and 38 entries with problems in the ID numbers. That means 99.91% of the entries were complete, with verified ID numbers. He also found that 64 deaths that had appeared on earlier lists were later removed, while 158 names removed by March of last year were added back."
The GHM list notably only contains the names of people who died from combat-related violence, not from "hunger, disease, accidents, or the collapse of the health system."
It also does not include the thousands of people who are missing and likely dead and buried beneath the rubble of the 80% of Gaza's buildings that have been destroyed or damaged during the war.
Other research, including multiple peer-reviewed studies in the prestigious British medical journal the Lancet, have also concluded that the ministry was undercounting the number of people killed by Israel's war on Gaza.
As for the issue of Hamas not differentiating between combatants and civilians on the ministry's death list, an investigation last year by Israeli journalist and filmmaker Yuval Abraham and Guardian senior international affairs correspondent Emma Graham-Harrison analyzed classified Israel Defense Forces intelligence data showing that 5 in 6 Palestinians killed by Israeli troops through the first 19 months of the war were civilians. The probe obliterated IDF claims of a historically low civilian-to-combatant kill ratio.
Last September, Former IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi—who was in command for much of the war—said that “over 10%” of Gaza’s approximately 2.2 million people “were killed or injured” since October 2023. Halevi’s acknowledgment tracked with GHM figures showing at least 228,815 people killed or wounded at the time.
In January, Israeli media outlets including Haaretz, the Jerusalem Post, and the Times of Israel reported that the IDF accepted the accuracy of GHM's death count, which at the time stood at over 71,000.
Israeli officials and media, along with their supportive US counterparts during both the Biden and Trump administrations, once cast doubt upon or outright denied GHM figures because the ministry is under Hamas' control. These aspersions came in addition to widespread Israeli and US denials of Israel’s forced famine and starvation deaths and IDF war crimes in Gaza.
"As the months have passed, claims of fabrication and exaggeration have largely remained confined to Israeli television panels," Hasson wrote in the new analysis. "At the end of January, an apparent dispute over the number of dead seemed to end in Israel when a senior army source confirmed that the IDF recognizes that 70,000 people died, precisely the figure cited by Gazan authorities."
"Even if the argument over the total number of dead is, for now, largely settled, disagreement in Israel continues over who the dead were," he continued. "How many were gunmen, how many were affiliated with Hamas, how many were killed under circumstances that meet the conditions of international law?"
"None of this alters the stark figures in the table," Hasson added. "Of the recorded deaths, 20,876, about 30%, are young girls, teenage girls, and women. Another 3,220 were aged 65 and over, including the final name on the list, Tamam al-Batsh, who was 110 when she died."
While Israel officials continue to insist that GHM figures are "misleading and unreliable"—or even "fake"—Hasson noted the general consistency between Israeli and Palestinian tallies across past Israeli attacks on Gaza. During Operation Cast Lead (2008-09), the Palestinian count was 23% higher than Israel's. For Operation Pillar of Success (2012), Israel's tally of Gazan deaths was 11% higher than the Palestinian figure. In Operation Protective Edge (2014), the Palestinian count was 8% higher. And during 2021's Operation Guardian of the Walls, Palestinian officials counted 10% more Gaza deaths than Israel.
The United Nations and US administrations of both major political parties have long acknowledged the GHM's accounting of Palestinian casualties in Israeli attacks, including the assault that began in October 2023.
Hasson noted that "it has been increasingly harder to find Israeli officials commenting on the subject" of the GHM death count in the ongoing war as evidence of its accuracy mounts.
"Since the war began," he said, "Israel has made no serious effort to demonstrate that the list is false or to present an alternative. It has not proven even once that a person listed as deceased is in fact alive."
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'A Horror So Vast, It Could No Longer Be Ignored': US Media Finally Centering Starving Gazans
However, one critic lamented that corporate media "continues to act like starvation is the unfortunate byproduct of 'war.'"
Jul 25, 2025
As more and more Palestinians, mostly children, starve to death due to Israel's 657-day obliteration and siege of Gaza, reliably pro-Israel U.S. corporate media outlets in recent days have centered the starvation crisis—which began in October 2023—while critics have decried passive language and anti-Palestinian tropes used in some reporting.
The Washington Post published at least two articles on the subject in as many days, including an Associated Press story by Wafaa Shurafa, Sarah El Deeb, and Lee Keath titled "Dozens of Kids and Adults in Gaza Have Starved to Death in July as Hunger Surges" and an internal piece by Louisa Loveluck, Heba Farouk Mahfouz, Siham Shamalakh, Miriam Berger, and Abbie Cheeseman with the headline "Mass Starvation Stalks Gaza as Deaths Rise From Hunger." The authors of the latter article noted that "Israel has severely limited the amount of food entering Gaza, where society is on the brink of collapse."
The New York Times on Friday published a morning newsletter article by Lauren Jackson titled "The Starvation Spreading in Gaza," which stressed that "hunger in Gaza is not new" amid an Israeli blockade that has choked the strip "for nearly two decades." Jackson's piece followed a Thursday front-page story by Rawan Sheikh Ahmad, Isabel Kershner, and Abu Bakr Bashir, with images by Palestinian photographer Saher Alghorra, headlined "Gazans Are Dying of Starvation."
Palestinian peace activist Ihab Hassan, who heads the Agora Initiative's Human Rights for Gaza project, said on the social media site X, "Starvation in Gaza made it to the front page of The New York Times—a horror so vast, it could no longer be ignored."
Carnegie Middle East Center senior editor Michael Young wrote on X, "Don't underestimate that a mainstream media outlet in the U.S. is finally stating the obvious, that Gazans are dying of starvation."
"But it's not as if they're just dying, for no reason; they are being denied adequate amounts of food by Israel, therefore are being killed," Young added. "Nonetheless, that the NYT presents the story in so blunt a way, under a heartbreaking photograph, must qualify as a turning point of sorts given how reluctant U.S. media outlets are to say anything bad about Israel."
Assal Rad, a fellow at the Arab Center Washington D.C. and frequent media critic, offered a more accurate headline for the Times story—"ISRAEL IS STARVING PALESTINIANS TO DEATH."
Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting's Counterspin blog took aim at the Post's "Mass Starvation Stalks Gaza" headline, noting that "it's actual human beings stalking Gaza, who could right now choose to act differently."
Still, there have recently been remarkable discussions about Gaza in U.S. corporate media outlets that would have been all but unimaginable during past Israeli attacks on Palestine.
CNN's "NewsNight" with Abby Phillip on Thursday aired a panel discussion titled, "Why Is the U.S. Silent About the Starvation in Gaza?" The segment featured journalist Peter Beinart, who highighted the International Criminal Court's issuance of arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes including forced starvation, U.S. support for Israel's ethnic cleansing of Gaza, and the Israeli government's ban on foreign journalists entering the strip.
"To say the United States is silent, it's much worse than that," Beinart said. "We are profoundly complicit and deeply responsible. It is our weapons that enforce this starvation. It is our diplomatic efforts that prevent international justice from being done."
"The blood is on our hands!" he stressed.
The CNN segment also featured a video clip of United Nations World Food Program Director Cindy McCain, whose warnings of a looming starvation emergency in Gaza began in October 2023.
Asked by Phillip if the images of starving Gazans making headlines around the world marked "an inflection point," Beinart replied, "Why did it take this long?"
Meanwhile, Israel's oldest newspaper, Haaretz, ran an editorial Thursday titled "Israel Is Starving Gaza."
"Gaza is starving, and Israel is responsible," the Haaretz editors wrote. "According to the Gaza Health Ministry, 111 people have died from malnutrition since the war began, most of them children. Alarmingly, 43 of those deaths occurred just in the past week."
"The famine that has been created is another facet of Israel's cruel inhumanity towards the people of Gaza," the editors added. "It constitutes a war crime and a crime against humanity and is a clear violation of the orders issued a year and a half ago by the International Court of Justice in The Hague."
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The Vilification of Zohran Mamdani–and Why He's Right About Israel's Genocide
Bloviating about Mamdani's alleged antisemitism for criticism of Israel has garnered more attention than a shocking report that Israeli soldiers are ordered to shoot at civilians waiting for aid in Gaza.
Jun 30, 2025
It says a lot about how corrupted U.S. politics have become that so many elected leaders, Republicans and Democrats, are more enraged about the Democratic candidate for mayor of New York City's opposition to the slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza than they are about Israeli policy itself. And U.S. complicity with it.
That contradiction became especially apparent in recent days when the bloviating about Zohan Mamdani's alleged antisemitism for criticism of Israel has garnered more attention than a shocking report in an Israeli publication, Haaretz, that Israeli soldiers are "ordered to shoot deliberately at unarmed Gazans waiting for humanitarian aid."
The backdrop is an environment in which leaders of both parties for nearly two years have exploited campus protests against Israeli war crimes by weaponizing antisemitism to blunt widespread criticism of U.S. arms sales and other support for Israel's war.
At the same time, many Jews, especially younger ones, strongly supported Mamdani, for both his progressive program to address an affordability crisis in New York City as well as breaking ranks with Israeli apologists.
Hoping to scoring national electoral talking points against all Democrats, GOP politicians predictably rushed to label Mamdani as a "raging antisemite Communist" in the words of Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.). Far-right Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) even called for him to be "subject to denaturalization proceedings" and deported.
Some Democrats also jumped on the fear mongering Islamophobia bandwagon, with several notable leaders failing to endorse the nominee of their own party. New York Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand falsely claimed Mamdani was condoning "global jihad."
What has Mamdani actually said that prompts such panic? He responded to the outbreak of the Gaza war by rightly noting "a just and lasting peace can only begin by ending the occupation and dismantling apartheid" and called for equal rights for all religious and ethnic groups in Israel. Mamdani's most vociferous critics fail to note he has repeatedly and emphatically also condemned antisemitism and branded Hamas' October 7 attacks as "horrific war crimes."
At the same time, many Jews, especially younger ones, strongly supported Mamdani, for both his progressive program to address an affordability crisis in New York City as well as breaking ranks with Israeli apologists like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. As Christi Olson noted on Twitter "Mamdani swept the most Jewish neighborhoods on Earth outside of Israel."
Mamdani's apt depiction of Israel's policy in Gaza as a "genocide"—that has infuriated those unwilling to accept that term—which has been increasingly apparent in recent days. While official death counts of Palestinians in Gaza are at an alarming 56,500 and counting, it has been reported that since the start of the war the population of Gaza has plummeted from 2.2 million to 1.8 million, reinforcing the likelihood that the official death count is a massive undercount.
Israeli Troops "Ordered to Shoot"
Following the collapse of a temporary cease-fire in February, Israel imposed a blockade of food that led to a famine—with the cost of civilian lives, including children. Israel was finally forced by international pressure to begin to allow dribs of aid into Gaza.
But that has been followed by repeated incidents of Israeli troops killing starving people walking long distances to get food at a small handful of aid sites. These are the stations operated by private security contractors (the untested, so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, GHF) working for a U.S. contractor with the oversight of Israeli soldiers that Israel and the U.S. accepted after banning far more experienced United Nations aid relief workers.
At least 410 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli military, the U.N. human rights office has reported.
If American readers doubted that Israel was deliberately shooting starving, desperate people, Haaretz lifted the veil.
The death toll is more easily understood with the Haaretz bombshell expose June 27. It opens with a chilling revelation. "Israeli soldiers in Gaza told Haaretz that the army has deliberately fired at Palestinians near aid distribution sites over the past month."
That's quite a contrast with most of the U.S. media silence. When The New York Times finally provided front page coverage June 26, they carefully avoided blaming Israel. The headline read: "The Lethal Risk of Seeking Food in Gaza," as if the hundreds were dying of heat stroke or food poisoning, merely noting the "life-risking endeavor for Palestinians." It took eight paragraphs to get to Israeli troops "opened fire on the approaches to the new aid hubs" which they described merely as "warning shots."
Only farther down did the Times add that "France on Tuesday condemned what it said was Israeli gunfire at civilians gathered around an aid distribution point in Gaza, saying it had left dozens of dead and wounded."
If American readers doubted that Israel was deliberately shooting starving, desperate people, Haaretz lifted the veil.
"Conversations with officers and soldiers reveal that commanders ordered troops to shoot at crowds to drive them away or disperse them, even though it was clear they posed no threat," Haaretz reported.
That was just the opening:
"It's a killing field," one soldier said. "Where I was stationed, between 1 and 5 people were killed every day. They're treated like a hostile force—no crowd-control measures, no tear gas—just live fire with everything imaginable: heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, mortars."
"We open fire early in the morning if someone tries to get in line from a few hundred meters away, and sometimes we just charge at them from close range. But there's no danger to the forces." According to him, "I'm not aware of a single instance of return fire. There's no enemy, no weapons." He also said the activity in his area of service is referred to as Operation Salted Fish—the name of the Israeli version of the children's game "Red light, green light."
Haaretz is a left of center publication that is repeatedly threatened by the Netanyahu government. But it has not been daunted and continues to report what most Americans never read in major U.S. media. And the recent Netanyahu and Trump attacks on Iran have only further hidden the daily death toll.
"IDF officers told Haaretz that the army does not allow the public in Israel or abroad to see footage of what takes place around the food distribution sites. According to them, the army is satisfied that the GHF's operations have prevented a total collapse of international legitimacy for continuing the war. They believe the IDF has managed to turn Gaza into a "backyard," especially since the war with Iran began."
"Gaza doesn't interest anyone anymore," a reservist told Haaretz. "It's become a place with its own set of rules. The loss of human life means nothing."
It means something to Zohran Mamdani, and to far too few other U.S. politicians who have the courage to say it out loud. And it should mean something to the rest of us too, especially as this genocide would not be possible without the weapons, diplomatic cover, and collusion of our own government.
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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.
Dec 20, 2024
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.
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'If It Looks Like Ethnic Cleansing, It Probably Is,' Says Israeli Newspaper of North Gaza Siege
"If this process doesn't stop immediately, hundreds of thousands of people will become refugees, entire communities will be destroyed and the moral and legal stain of this crime will cling to and pursue every Israeli."
Oct 30, 2024
The editors of Israel's oldest newspaper on Wednesday published an editorial decrying the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from northern Gaza amid a ferocious Israeli offensive there that's killed more than 1,000 people over the past three weeks.
"For three and a half weeks, Israeli forces have been besieging the northern Gaza Strip," the editors of the left-wing newspaper Haaretz wrote in Wednesday's lead editorial. "Israel has almost completely blocked the entry of humanitarian aid, thereby starving the hundreds of thousands of people who live there. Information emerging from the besieged area is only partial, because ever since the war began, Israel has barred journalists from entering Gaza."
"Israel says it told the residents that they needed to leave northern Gaza, and even now, they can still move southward on routes the army has designated for this purpose," the editors noted. "Thus the residents, many of whom have already been uprooted two or three times or even more from the places to which they have fled the terrors of war, are now being asked to move again. Yet Israel has refrained from giving the displaced any guarantee that they will be able to return once the war ends."
"Given this," they added, "it's no wonder that grave suspicions have arisen that Israel is effectively perpetrating ethnic cleansing in northern Gaza and that this operation is intended to permanently empty this area of Palestinians."
"This suspicion fits with both the principles of the 'Generals' Plan' being pushed by Maj. Gen. (Res.) Giora Eiland—a plan Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has denied implementing—and the demands of the Jewish supremacist parties in the governing coalition that are openly pursuing a policy of mass expulsions and the renewal of Jewish settlement in northern Gaza," the editorial states.
Last week, senior Israeli officials including members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Cabinet and far-right Knesset lawmakers gathered near the Gaza border for a conference dedicated to the ethnic cleansing of Arabs and Jewish recolonization in the embattled Palestinian enclave.
"We came here with one clear purpose: to settle the entire Gaza Strip... Every inch from north to south," settler leader Daniella Weiss told attendees of the rally, which was backed by Netanyahu's Likud party. "Each of you will witness how Jews go to Gaza and Arabs will disappear from Gaza."
As the Haaretz editors noted:
Ethnic cleansing is both a moral crime and a legal one. Criminal law treats mass expulsions as both a war crime and a crime against humanity. Horrifyingly, some members of Benjamin Netanyahu's government want to commit these crimes. As soon as the war began, they began calling for "erasing Gaza" and for perpetrating a "second Nakba." But many Israelis made light of such statements, and the law enforcement system, headed by Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, refrained from dealing with this incitement to commit crimes.
Now, we can see the results: Israel is sliding into ethnic cleansing; its soldiers are carrying out the criminal policies of the messianic, Kahanist right; and even the opposition on the center and center-left isn't making a peep. This consensus behind ethnic cleansing is shameful, and every public leader who doesn't demand an end to the de facto expulsion is supporting this crime and has become a party to it.
"If this process doesn't stop immediately," the editors stressed, "hundreds of thousands of people will become refugees, entire communities will be destroyed and the moral and legal stain of this crime will cling to and pursue every Israeli."
Israel was founded in 1948, largely through the ethnic cleansing of more than 750,000 Arabs from Palestine during the Nakba, or "catastrophe." Zionist militias—the two most violent of which were led by future Israeli prime ministers—utilized terror tactics including massacres and a death march to force the Indigenous Arabs from their homeland.
Israeli ethnic cleansing continued over the following eight decades and, according to critics, currently involves home demolitions and expulsions in the illegally occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, systematic land theft, and pogroms and other violent attacks by Jewish settler colonists backed—and sometimes joined—by Israel Defense Forces troops.
United Nations officials and international human rights groups said this week's Knesset vote to ban the life-saving U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) will exacerbate Israeli crimes in Gaza, including ethnic cleansing.
"Efforts to eliminate UNRWA are illegal under international law and will only amplify the genocide and ethnic cleansing Israel is enacting in Gaza while also undermining long-term prospects for peace," the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker group, said Tuesday. "The Israeli government is not only deliberately blocking humanitarian and medical aid to people who are starving and dying, it is undermining support for Palestine refugees and the international legal framework protecting their rights."
On Monday, Francesca Albanese, the U.N.'s special rapporteur on Palestine, published a
report "contextualizing the situation within
a decadeslong process of territorial expansion and ethnic cleansing aimed at liquidating the Palestinian presence in Palestine."
Albanese's report was released a day after Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich—who supports the "total annihilation" of Gaza and said that killing 2 million Palestinians would be "justified and moral"—reiterated his call for Israeli annexation of the entire West Bank and the expulsion of the occupied territory's Palestinians.
Israel's policies and practices in Gaza—where more than 150,000 Palestinians have been killed or wounded by Israeli forces since the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, 2023—are the subject of an ongoing South Africa-led genocide case before the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
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Rights Groups List 50+ Calls for Gaza Genocide on Israel's Channel 14
"Incitement to war crimes is part of the Channel 14 poison machine, and its aim is to create a forever war here," said one campaigner.
Sep 25, 2024
Since the October 7 attack, Israel's right-wing Channel 14 has broadcast over 50 statements by presenters, panelists, and guests advocating or defending genocide against Palestinians in Gaza and more than 150 calls for war crimes and crimes against humanity, according to a report published Tuesday by an Israeli newspaper.
Haaretz reported that the Israeli human rights groups—Zulat for Equality and Human Rights, Hatzlacha: Movement for the Promotion of a Fair Society, and the Democratic Bloc—have compiled a list of genocidal statements and incitements to war crimes made by individuals appearing on Channel 14 since October 7.
The groups have written to Israeli Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara requesting a criminal investigation into the station for "systematic and widespread incitement." The organizations want Channel 14 sanctioned and fined.
"On October 7, the terrorist organization Hamas committed war crimes and crimes against humanity," attorneys Michael Sfard, Alon Sapir, and Einat Gaier—who are representing the groups—told Haaretz. This caused "massive grief, deep sorrow, and burning and understandable fury."
"Israeli society is deeply traumatized, and this trauma will take years to heal," the lawyers continued. "This is exactly the type of ground upon which moral monstrosities are liable to flourish, and are flourishing."
The Haaretz article lists each incident in which genocidal statements have aired on Channel 14, with one program, "The Patriots," appearing repeatedly on the list.
On October 12, former Israeli lawmaker Moshe Feiglin—who has quoted Adolf Hitler, the leader of Nazi Germany, while arguing for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza—said on "The Patriots" that "if the goal of this operation isn't destruction, occupation, expulsion, and settlement, then we've done nothing."
Two days later on the program, presenter Nave Dromi said that "there are no innocents" in Gaza.
"In 1948, they brought the Nakba on themselves," she added, referring to the ethnic cleansing of more than 750,000 Arabs from Palestine by Jewish militias during the foundation of modern Israel. "Now they'll have a second Nakba, but for real, to finish the job."
The following day, October 15, Channel 14 aired a prerecorded message from Israeli singer Eyal Golan, who asserted that "Gaza should be totally wiped out, not one person should be left there."
Golan's message was cited in the South Africa-led genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague. Israeli State Attorney Amit Aisman is also considering a criminal investigation of Golan's remarks.
The human rights groups and Haaretz documented many other instances of on-air calls for indiscriminate bombing of Gaza, shooting civilians, and to "just exterminate" Palestinians.
Channel 14 personalities were aware of the legal implications of these statements. Following the ICJ's January order for Israel to avoid genocidal acts—which the country's far-right government has been accused of ignoring—Israeli journalist Shimon Riklin said on air that a law professor "warned me before the broadcast that if I say these things on the show I could be sued in The Hague."
"But I want you all to know that since October 7, one of the things that helps me to sleep is when I see all kinds of buildings flying through the air in Gaza, I enjoy it," he said. "Let's have more! Destroy as much as possible, so they won't have anywhere to go back to. Hang on a second, The Hague is calling... Hello?"
That same day another Israeli journalist, Itamar Fleischmann, argued on air that "the more humane solution is to starve" Palestinians in Gaza.
"And the choice is up to the civilians there," he added. "You want to keep starving? Keep supporting Hamas... That's why in my view, the Israeli interest is starvation in Gaza and a humanitarian disaster in Gaza."
At least dozens of Gazans, mostly children, have starved to death amid Israel's siege of the embattled enclave, where more than 147,000 Palestinians have been killed or injured by Israel's nearly yearlong onslaught.
"Incitement to war crimes is part of the Channel 14 poison machine, and its aim is to create a forever war here," Zehava Galon, a former left-wing Israeli lawmaker and president of Zulat for Equality and Human Rights, told Haaretz.
In a social media post, Zulat for Equality and Human Rights said Tuesday that "we specifically present here evidence of a serious crime being committed on Channel 14 and it needs to be stopped immediately."
Channel 14 "turned these statements into a systematic agenda," the group added. "An urgent investigation is required so that this incitement cannot be legitimate and allowed in Israel. It's time for the instigators to pay the price."
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'Insane Torture': Israeli Soldiers Confirm Horrific Abuse of Palestinians at Sde Teiman
"Teeth were broken, bones were broken," said one soldier. "You notice how easy it is to lose your humanity," said another.
Aug 16, 2024
An Israeli newspaper on Friday published interviews with Israel Defense Forces reservists and medical staff who witnessed the "day-to-day torture" of Palestinian prisoners at the notorious Sde Teiman prison in the Negev Desert, where dozens of detainees have died and others were allegedly raped.
The Israelis described seeing torture and abuse of Palestinians detained in Sde Teiman, who included everyone from Hamas fighters to innocent civilians, and ranged in age from children to octogenarians.
"We said, 'It's torture.' But you don't get into it; you change the subject immediately."
"What's happening there is total dehumanization. You don't really relate to them as if they're real human beings," said one public hospital physician who worked at Sde Teiman. "In the end it's no less than torture. There are ways to administer even poor treatment, or even to torture a person, without crushing cigarettes on them."
One female former medical staffer said that "the place was totally unimaginable, I had never considered anything like it."
"My first thought was: What have I done?" she said, describing prisoners being forced to relieve themselves in diapers and take their meals through straws.
"The conditions there were described as torture," she added. "Maybe. In many senses, yes, I agree with that. Maybe even insane torture."
A 37-year-old male reservist said some of the worst abuse was committed by members of Force 100, the unit of the nine Israelis recently arrested for allegedly gang-raping a Sde Teiman prisoner.
"They took... guys aside and really laid into them," he said. "I think that each time teeth were broken, bones were broken... And there was also a dog."
Former Sde Teiman prisoners have described dogs attacking and performing "vile acts" on them.
Another IDF reservist said that "when you come to the camp, the first thing that hits you is the smell... of dozens of people who have been sitting in close quarters for more than a month in the same clothes and in insane heat."
"They let them shower for a few minutes around twice a week, but I don't remember ever seeing that they gave them a change of clothes, in any case not on my shifts," he added.
The Haaretz interviewees said that much of the abuse occurred in the open.
"It wasn't something that was done in the dark," the 37-year-old reservist said. "Everyone saw what was going on... It's not something that was done behind the back of the commander of the camp."
"Most of the guys were just fine with what was happening," he continued. "There were some who were a little bothered by it, and there were others who were bothered by it at the start and then they toed the line with the system."
"There were people who in conversations suddenly mentioned the word 'torture,'" he added. "And then we said, 'It's torture.' But you don't get into it; you change the subject immediately."
Some of those interviewed by
Haaretz expressed misgivings about what they did or saw at Sde Teiman.
"When I was there, I wrestled with myself about whether to stay on and try to do the right thing, the best I could as a moral person, or whether I should just get up and declare that I refused to take part in it," said one male reservist and student. "I came out with a heavy feeling of guilt."
Another reservist said, "The more distance I have from the place, the more my eyes have opened up."
"What most disturbed me was to see how easily and how quickly ordinary people can disconnect themselves and not see the reality right in front of their eyes when they're in the midst of a shocking human situation," he added.
There were also rare moments of mercy.
"Sometimes the military police gave the minors candy, like in the evening, before sleep," the 37-year-old reservist said. "One time a detainee started to cry. He was older, 60 years old. So the duty officer tried to speak to him and cheer him up a little."
But more often, guards were "filled with rage," said one reservist, who added that "there's a desire for revenge."
"What most disturbed me was to see how easily and how quickly ordinary people can disconnect themselves and not see the reality right in front of their eyes."
One reservist said that "there was a female officer who gave us a briefing on the day we arrived. She said, 'It will be hard for you. You'll want to pity them, but it's forbidden. Remember that they aren't people."
"You notice how easy it is to lose your humanity in a second, how easy it is to come up with justifications for treating people as if they're not people," he added.
One 27-year-old female reservist said that upon arriving at Sde Teiman—where she was welcomed with popcorn and cotton candy—she was alarmed to find that "good people whom I know talked about being cruel and abusive to people, like they were talking about something routine."
"The dehumanization frightened me," she said. "I couldn't understand how a group of young people who were around me every day underwent such a dangerous process in such a short time."
Another reservist said that some Sde Teiman staff—especially the volunteers—were "sadists" who "really enjoy beating up Arabs."
The
Haaretz interviews add to a growing body of evidence of torture and other war crimes perpetrated by Israelis against Palestinian prisoners at Sde Teiman and other lockups.
Former Palestinian detainees and Israeli personnel have described beatings, rape and sexual torture by male and female soldiers, routine amputations due to constant shackling, burnings, electrocutions, attacks by dogs, ice-water dousings, denial of food and water, sleep deprivation, constant loud music, and other abuse.
The Israeli military is investigating the deaths of at least 36 Sde Teiman detainees, including one who died after allegedly being sodomized with an electric baton.
On Friday, Alice Jill Edwards, the United Nations special rapporteur on torture, said that "there are no circumstances in which sexual torture or sexualized inhuman and degrading treatment can be justified."
"I am troubled by recent attempts by Israeli citizens—including reportedly one member of Parliament—to intervene violently after the arrests of soldiers on these abuse charges," she said of the recent storming of Sde Teiman and another base by a far-right mob in response to the arrests of the alleged rapists.
"Criminal proceedings into all allegations must proceed unhindered," Edwards added. "No one is above the law. No one is immune from prosecution for torture."
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Israeli Newspaper Confirms IDF Employed 'Hannibal Directive' on October 7
IDF soldiers were reportedly ordered to "turn the area around the border fence into a killing zone."
Jul 07, 2024
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported Sunday that Israel's military repeatedly employed a protocol known as the "Hannibal Directive" during the October 7 Hamas-led attack in an attempt to prevent the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers—even if it meant putting the lives of army captives and civilians at risk.
Haaretz found based on documents and interviews with soldiers and senior Israeli officers that Hannibal—an operational order developed in 1986 that "directs the use of force to prevent soldiers being taken into captivity" by enemy militants—was used "at three army facilities infiltrated by Hamas, potentially endangering civilians as well."
During the first hours of the Hamas-led attack, according to Haaretz, Israeli soldiers were given an order: "Not a single vehicle can return to Gaza."
"At this point, the IDF was not aware of the extent of kidnapping along the Gaza border, but it did know that many people were involved," the newspaper continued. "Thus, it was entirely clear what that message meant, and what the fate of some of the kidnapped people would be."
The full text of the Hannibal Directive has never been published. But according to a Haaretz story about the directive from more than two decades ago, part of it states that "during an abduction, the major mission is to rescue our soldiers from the abductors even at the price of harming or wounding our soldiers."
"Light-arms fire is to be used in order to bring the abductors to the ground or to stop them," it adds. "If the vehicle or the abductors do not stop, single-shot (sniper) fire should be aimed at them, deliberately, in order to hit the abductors, even if this means hitting our soldiers. In any event, everything will be done to stop the vehicle and not allow it to escape."
Israeli authorities have acknowledged "multiple incidents of our forces firing on our forces" on October 7. In April, Israel's military said that one of the hostages taken by Hamas militants during the October attack was likely killed by Israeli helicopter fire.
But the IDF, which has killed more than 38,000 people in Gaza since October 7, has declined to say whether Hannibal was used during the Hamas-led attack.
Haaretz stressed Sunday that it "does not know whether or how many civilians and soldiers were hit due to these procedures, but the cumulative data indicates that many of the kidnapped people were at risk, exposed to Israeli gunfire, even if they were not the target."
The first of the known uses of the Hannibal Directive on October 7 came "when an observation post at the Yiftah outpost reported that someone had been kidnapped at the Erez border crossing, adjacent to the IDF's liaison office," Haaretz reported.
"'Hannibal at Erez' came the command from divisional headquarters, 'dispatch a Zik.' The Zik is an unmanned assault drone, and the meaning of this command was clear," the newspaper found.
The directive was employed at least two additional times during the attack, according to Haaretz, which cited one unnamed source in Israel's Southern Command as saying that the country's forces were instructed to "turn the area around the border fence into a killing zone, closing it off toward the west."
The newspaper continued:
One case in which it is known that civilians were hit, a case that received wide coverage, took place in the house of Pessi Cohen at Kibbutz Be'eri. Fourteen hostages were held in the house as the IDF attacked it, with 13 of them killed. In the coming weeks, the IDF is expected to publish the results of its investigation of the incident, which will answer the question of whether Brig. Gen. Barak Hiram, the commander of Division 99 who was in charge of operations in Be'eri on October 7, was employing the Hannibal procedure. Did he order the tank to move ahead even at the cost of civilian casualties, as he stated in an interview he gave later to The New York Times?
Haaretz's reporting comes weeks after a United Nations investigation concluded that the IDF "had likely applied the Hannibal Directive" on October 7, killing more than a dozen Israeli civilians.
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Doctor at Israeli Detention Camp for Gazans Blows Whistle on War Crimes
"Just this week, two prisoners had their legs amputated due to handcuff injuries, which unfortunately is a routine event."
Apr 04, 2024
A doctor at an Israeli field hospital inside a notorious detention center where hundreds of Palestinian prisoners are temporarily held is sounding the alarm about torture and horrific conditions at what some human rights defenders—including Israelis—are calling "Israel's Guantánamo Bay" and even a "concentration camp."
In a letter to Israel's attorney general and defense and health ministers viewed by Haaretz—which reported the story Thursday—the anonymous physician describes likely war crimes being committed at the Israel Defense Forces' Sde Teiman base near Beersheva. Palestinian militants captured by IDF troops, as well as many civilian hostages ranging in age from teenagers to septuagenarians, are held there in cages, 70-100 per cage, until they are transferred to regular Israeli prisons or released.
"From the first days of the medical facility's operation until today, I have faced serious ethical dilemmas," the doctor wrote. "More than that, I am writing to warn you that the facility's operations do not comply with a single section among those dealing with health in the Internment of Unlawful Combatants Law."
Gazans arrested and detained by Israeli forces are not legally considered prisoners of war by Israel because it does not recognize Gaza as a state. These detainees are mostly held under the Internment of Unlawful Combatants Law, which allows the imprisonment of anyone suspected of taking part in hostilities against Israel for up to 75 days without seeing a judge.
Human Rights Watch has warned that the law "strips away meaningful judicial review and due process rights."
Sde Teiman detainees are fed through straws and forced to defecate in diapers. They're also forced to sleep with the lights on and have allegedly been subjected to beatings and torture. Other Palestinians taken by Israeli forces have described being electrocuted, mauled by dogs, soaked with cold water, denied food and water, deprived of sleep, and blasted with loud music at temporary detention sites.
The whistleblowing Sde Teiman physician said that all patients at the camp's field hospital are handcuffed by all four limbs, regardless of how dangerous they are deemed. In December, Israeli Health Ministry officials ordered such treatment after a medical worker at the facility was attacked. Now the camp's estimated 600-800 prisoners are shackled 24 hours a day.
At first, the cuffs were plastic zip ties. Now they're metal. The doctor said that more than half of his patients at the camp have suffered cuffing injuries, including some that have required "repeated surgical interventions."
"Just this week, two prisoners had their legs amputated due to handcuff injuries, which unfortunately is a routine event," he told Haaretz.
The whistleblower also alleged substandard medical care at the facility, where there is only one doctor on duty, who is sometimes a gynecologist or orthopedist.
"This ends in complications and sometimes even in the patient's death," he said. "This makes all of us—the medical teams and you, those in charge of us in the Health and Defense ministries, complicit in the violation of Israeli law, and perhaps worse for me as a doctor, in the violation of my basic commitment to patients, wherever they are, as I swore when I graduated 20 years ago."
The doctor claims in his letter that he warned the Health Ministry's director-general about the appalling conditions at Sde Teiman, but that there have been "no substantial changes in the way the facility operates."
An ethics committee visited the camp in February; the physician said that its members "are worried about their legal exposure and coverage in view of their involvement in a facility that is operated contrary to the provisions of the existing law."
Last month, Haaretz revealed that 27 detainees have died in custody at the Sde Teiman and Anatot camps or during interrogation in Israel since October 7. While some were Hamas or other militants captured or wounded while fighting IDF troops, others were civilians, including some with preexisting health conditions like the diabetic laborer who was not suspected of any offense when he was arrested and sent to his death at Anatot.
One former Sde Teiman detainee claims that he personally witnessed Israeli troops execute five prisoners in separate incidents.
"Israel's indifference to the fate of Gazans, at best, and desire for revenge against them, at worst, are fertile ground for war crimes."
Responding to the 27 detainee deaths and invoking the U.S. military prison in Cuba known for torture and indefinite detention, the Haaretz editorial board wrote last month that "Sde Teiman and the other detention facilities are not Guantánamo Bay and... the state has a duty to protect the rights of detainees even if they are not formally prisoners of war."
"Israel's indifference to the fate of Gazans, at best, and desire for revenge against them, at worst, are fertile ground for war crimes," the editors said. "Indifference by Israelis and desire for revenge must not constitute license to shed the blood of detainees... The fact that Hamas is holding and abusing Israeli hostages cannot excuse or justify the abuse of Palestinian detainees."
In December, the Geneva-based advocacy group Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor—which has also
accused IDF troops of allowing Israeli civilians to witness the torture of Palestinian prisoners—demanded an investigation of what it called the "new Guantánamo."
Israeli rights groups and individuals have also condemned the abuses at Sde Teiman, which, like Guantánamo, has been described as a "concentration camp."
"Enough, just enough. We have to stop this gallop into the abyss," urged Hebrew University senior lecturer Tamar Megiddo on Wednesday. "This war has to end. This government needs to end."
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Israeli Newspaper Details IDF's Creation of 'Kill Zones' in Gaza
"In practice, a terrorist is anyone the IDF has killed in the areas in which its forces operate," said one Israeli reservist.
Apr 01, 2024
Israel's military says it has killed around 9,000 militants in Gaza since October 7—and adamantly denies targeting civilians.
But new reporting published Sunday by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz casts serious doubt on the IDF's estimate and details how the U.S.-armed military has established combat zones that have become death traps for ordinary Gazans.
The boundaries of such "kill zones" are not clearly marked, making it almost impossible for Palestinian civilians to know whether they are entering one. An Israeli reserve officer told Haaretz that "as soon as people enter" a kill zone, "orders are to shoot and kill, even if that person is unarmed."
"To a large extent, the tragedy in which three hostages were killed by the IDF is such a story," the newspaper reported, "since in fleeing from their captors the three entered a kill zone in the middle of the Shujaiyeh neighborhood of Gaza City."
Significant discretion is given to Israeli commanders to decide whether to open fire on people near a kill zone. Unnamed Israeli soldiers told Haaretz that "there are commanders who will shoot at a building with a suspect in it even if there are civilians in the vicinity, while other commanders will act differently."
"For our commanders, if we identified someone in our area of operation who was not part of our forces, we were told to shoot to kill," said one soldier. "We were explicitly told that even if a suspect runs into a building with people in it, we should fire at the building and kill the terrorist, even if other people are hurt."
One Israeli commander described to Haaretz "incidents in which civilians tried to reach areas they thought the army had left, possibly in the hope of finding food left behind."
"When they went to such places, they were shot, perceived as people who could harm our forces," the commander said.
"One reason why the Israeli government, media, the Biden administration, et al. have been trying to undermine the credibility of Gazan casualty figures is to deflect from the fact that the IDF's own figures are almost certainly bullshit."
The new reporting points to a recent example documented by Al Jazeera in which the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it attacked "a terrorist" who was allegedly behind a rocket attack on southern Israel.
"Ostensibly, this was another statistic in the roster of dead Hamas militants," Haaretz reported. "However, over a week ago, other documentation of the incident surfaced on Al Jazeera. It showed four men, not one, walking together on a wide path, in civilian clothing. There is no one nearby, only the ruins of houses where people once lived. This apocalyptic silence in the Khan Younis area was shattered by a loud explosion. Two of the men were killed instantly. Two others were wounded and tried to continue walking. Perhaps they thought they had been saved, but seconds later, a bomb was dropped on one of them. You can then see the other one falling to his knees and then, a boom, fire, and smoke."
A senior IDF officer told the Israeli newspaper that the individuals who unwittingly entered a kill zone "were unarmed" and "didn't endanger our forces in the area in which they were walking." It was also not clear they were involved in the rocket attack.
"It's quite possible that Palestinians who never held a gun in their lives were elevated to the rank of 'terrorist' posthumously, at least by the IDF," Haaretz noted. As one officer who served in Gaza told the newspaper, "In practice, a terrorist is anyone the IDF has killed in the areas in which its forces operate."
Last week, Al Jazeera published video footage showing Israeli forces gunning down two unarmed Palestinians in northern Gaza, one of whom was waving a piece of white fabric. They are believed to have entered an Israeli "kill zone."
. @ajimran on reports of 'kill zones' being operated by the IDF in Gaza - if unarmed Palestinian civilians enter these areas Israeli soldiers kill them and then label them as 'terrorists' to justify their murder. pic.twitter.com/XtQyXAAljU
— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) April 1, 2024
Israeli forces have killed more than 32,600 people in Gaza since October 7, according to Gaza health officials. One human rights monitor recently estimated that 90% of those killed were civilians, contradicting the Israeli military's estimate of the civilian-to-militant death ratio.
"One reason why the Israeli government, media, the Biden administration, et al. have been trying to undermine the credibility of Gazan casualty figures is to deflect from the fact that the IDF's own figures are almost certainly bullshit," foreign policy analyst Derek Davison wrote Sunday in response to the Haaretz story.
Brianna Rosen, a senior fellow at Just Security, argued that the "kind of indiscriminate killing" detailed in Haaretz's reporting "is illegal and falls far short of any gold standard for civilian harm."
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