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israel defense forces
Israel Has Demolished Majority of Villages in Southern Lebanon—Mostly After the Ceasefire
Defense Minister Israel Katz has bragged that Israel was destroying "not one house at a time," but "the entirety of those villages."
Oct 12, 2026
When Israel and Lebanon reached a ceasefire in April, the Israel Defense Forces' systematic destruction of villages in southern Lebanon was supposed to halt. Instead, it was just getting started.
Israeli forces have largely leveled 48 of the roughly 60 villages and towns in occupied southern Lebanon, a New York Times investigation published Monday revealed, fueling fears that Israel intends to permanently prevent displaced residents from returning.
Rather than collateral damage from military attacks, the razing of Lebanese villages since April has largely been carried out through controlled demolitions by Israeli forces.
Nearly all the villages destroyed have been majority Shia—the sect from which Hezbollah draws much of its support—while those containing Christian, Druze, and Sunni Muslims have largely been spared.
In July, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz acknowledged that Israel had destroyed at least 24 historic Lebanese villages, describing it as punishment for their residents.
“Twenty-four Lebanese villages that were hundreds of years old—with Shiite residents who acted as enemies [of Israel] on behalf of Hezbollah and threatened our borders and our residents—we destroyed all of the buildings.”
“Not one house at a time," he emphasized. "The entirety of those villages—their demolition has been completed.”
Since March, Israel's military campaign has displaced at least 1.1 million Lebanese civilians, while its forces have entrenched themselves in an occupied swath of southern Lebanon extending as far as eight miles from the border.
Roughly 270,000 people remain barred from returning home. Many have no homes to return to. In many villages, homes, roads, utilities, and public facilities no longer function.
The Times found that Israeli forces have also burned about 16,500 acres of land—roughly 11% of the total occupied area—since the April ceasefire, including farmland and olive groves. Meanwhile, thousands of trees have been bulldozed.
As this life-sustaining infrastructure has come down, Israel has erected what appear to be the fixtures of a long-term military occupation: satellite imagery shows at least three new Israeli military outposts have been at least partially built since the ceasefire began, alongside new roads connecting them to Israeli territory.
The US-brokered ceasefire expressly prohibited "offensive military operations against Lebanese targets, including civilian, military, and other state targets, in the territory of Lebanon" except in cases where it was necessary to take defensive measures against planned, imminent, or ongoing attacks.
Israel's military told the Times it received no directive “to carry out widespread damage to structures or to demolish villages" in southern Lebanon. “The IDF operates in the security zone in southern Lebanon with the aim of removing threats posed by the Hezbollah terrorist organization to the residents of Israel and to IDF troops," it added.
Israeli officials have suggested that the occupation of southern Lebanon will continue indefinitely. Katz said last month that Israel "will not withdraw from the security zone" until Hezbollah disarms.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has suggested that some of the Christian villages would like to be annexed into Israeli territory. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, meanwhile, renewed his call last month for Israel to extend its borders north to the Litani River, which encompasses most of the Lebanese territory it currently occupies.
Israel has said it has razed entire villages to destroy Hezbollah military infrastructure and prevent fighters from returning to the area near the Israeli border.
Janina Dill, a professor of global security at the University of Oxford, has said using mass destruction to carry out this objective was "manifestly illegal" under international law, which says that destroying civilian property without an imperative military necessity can constitute a war crime.
"It’s deeply implausible that imperative military necessity applies to every house in a particular village," she told the Financial Times in August.
Volker Türk, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, said in July that Israel was engaging in the "wholesale destruction" of civilian homes, adding that "demolition of this type raises huge flags about compliance with international humanitarian law.”
"In large parts of southern Lebanon, Israel’s ‘everybody-leave’ orders were followed by ‘don’t-come-back’ orders," said Kristine Beckerle, Amnesty International's deputy regional director for the Middle East and North Africa in June. "Israel’s forced displacement and prevention of return of tens of thousands of civilians from southern Lebanon amounts to unlawful transfer, which is a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention and thus a war crime."
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IDF Vets: Post-10/7 Rules Allowed Hundreds of Civilian Deaths to Kill Single Hamas Member
"You can't authorize the potential killing of 300 civilians... and still tell the public we did everything we could to avoid harming innocent people," said one veteran.
Oct 12, 2026
Former Israeli military and intelligence personnel affirmed that rules for targeting confirmed and alleged Hamas members in Gaza were dramatically loosened after the October 7, 2023 attack, allowing strikes expected to kill hundreds of Palestinian civilians to target even low-ranking members of the Palestinian resistance group, according to a report published Monday.
In a paywalled article published by Haaretz, Israel's oldest daily newspaper, Yaniv Kubovich gathered testimonies from former Israel Defense Forces intelligence personnel that add to the body of evidence from Israeli whistleblowers, military officials, and investigative journalists documenting how the IDF expanded its targeting practices during its devastating US-backed annihilation of Gaza, which has killed or wounded more than 250,000 Palestinians in the coastal exclave over the past three years.
One change described by some of those interviewed by Kubovich was "the opening of the intelligence apparatus to untrained personnel."
"People arrived at military intelligence who weren't from the unit, reservists who'd never even served in intelligence, brought in from all sorts of places," said one veteran, identified as "A."
"They sat in the Targeting Directorate looking for the most insignificant targets, the small fry, so they could kill them," A added. "Anyone displaying Hamas symbols on Facebook or identifying themselves as Hamas was marked as a target. Some were Hamas members, some were fighters too, but they really were small fry."
Another veteran, "D," who was assigned to a strike cell—units that coordinate drone and other aerial attacks—said: "Suddenly, the IDF was striking even the lowest of the low indiscriminately, and everyone had forgotten about conserving ammunition. We were striking Hamas drivers. That's how far it went."
Kubovich wrote that "a recurring theme in the accounts is the gap between a target's importance, the scale of the strike and the civilian toll deemed acceptable."
For example, on October 31, 2023, IDF warplanes dropped 2,000-pound "bunker-buster" bombs supplied by the United States on the densely populated Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza in order to kill one Hamas commander, Ibrahmi Biari.
"We knew Biari was underground, beneath several large buildings, but we couldn't pinpoint which building he was under," said D. "So they chose several buildings that were still occupied and decided to bring down all the buildings above the tunnel he was in. We didn't initiate an evacuation because it was important to kill him before he could get away."
A, who was also involved in the mission, said the decision to bomb the buildings was referred to the IDF chief of staff for approval, since intelligence officials estimated that there would be hundreds of civilian casualties. The IDF calculated that roughly 100 people would be killed or wounded in the proposed attack.
"We couldn't get any more intelligence to pinpoint his exact location," said veteran D. "They told us, 'He's killing soldiers right now. We have to strike him,' out of concern for the troops on the ground, and in the end the strike was approved. They really wanted to kill this guy."
Hamas said that 400 people were killed or wounded in the attack.
"Among other things, we relied on figures coming from Hamas, which we considered relatively plausible, even if they weren't 100% accurate," veteran A told Kubovich. "As time went on, we realized the death toll was around 250. I remember being stunned that we were bringing down several densely populated buildings, killing and injuring hundreds of people, to kill a battalion commander who, just a few weeks earlier, hadn't even been someone we were supposed to gather intelligence on."
The UK-based civilian casualty monitor Airwars said that at least 126 civilians, including 69 children, were killed in the attack, which wiped out whole families.
"You can't authorize the potential killing of 300 civilians for a battalion commander, or the killing of 20 civilians for every Hamas truck driver, and still tell the public we did everything we could to avoid harming innocent people," Nadav Weiman, executive director of the IDF veterans' group Breaking the Silence, told Kubovich.
Referring to the Jabalia massacre, D said: "I can't say this particular strike is what really messes with my head. What's much harder for me is the system of strike after strike after strike, with collateral damage running into dozens of people, sometimes hundreds. Being part of a system like that bothers me more than taking part in any particular strike."
The veterans' accounts raise further questions about Israel's repeated assertions that its military operations have been conducted in accordance with international humanitarian law, which requires parties in armed conflicts to distinguish between civilians and combatants and prohibits attacks expected to cause excessive civilian harm relative to the anticipated concrete and direct military advantage.
Those claims stand in stark contrast with statements by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other senior Israeli officials, who began calling for the genocidal destruction of Gaza and its 2.2 million people in the immediate aftermath of the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023.
Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant—his former defense minister who ordered the “complete siege” of Gaza, explaining that “we are fighting human animals, and we are acting accordingly"—are currently fugitives from the International Criminal Court in The Hague, where they are wanted for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes, including murder and forced starvation.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ), also in The Hague, is currently conducting a genocide case against Israel filed by South Africa and formally supported by more than 15 nations. While a ruling in the case isn’t expected until at least 2029, a United Nations commission of inquiry, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, and other experts—including many Israeli and international Jewish academics, jurists, human rights campaigners, and others—have already concluded that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
The new Haaretz investigation adds to the body of reporting on Israel's loosened rules of engagement and their disastrous implications for Gaza civilians, including a December 2024 New York Times exposé involving interviews with over 100 IDF soldiers and veterans, Israeli officials, dozens of airstrike victims, and experts on the law and conduct of war.
Kubovich's revelations also come as the documentary NAZA, directed by Israeli journalists and filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, brings testimony from Israeli military and intelligence insiders to international audiences. The film features 24 anonymized insiders describing the surveillance, artificial intelligence-assisted targeting, and military procedures used during the assault on Gaza.
IDF veteran testimonies are consistent with earlier investigations into the IDF's use of artificial intelligence to generate targets at extraordinary speed, often with limited human scrutiny.
In April 2024, Abraham reported for +972 Magazine and Local Call that the military used an AI system called Lavender to identify suspected Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad operatives. The investigation found that the IDF initially authorized officers to accept civilian casualty estimates of up to 15 or 20 people for each low-ranking alleged militant targeted, and more than 100 civilians for certain senior Hamas officials.
“The IDF bombed them in homes without hesitation, as a first option,” one intelligence officer told the outlets. “It's much easier to bomb a family's home. The system is built to look for them in these situations.”
The investigation also found that officers were permitted to rely on Lavender's recommendations without thoroughly checking the underlying intelligence.
Former IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi has also acknowledged the enormous human toll of the war.
“This is not a gentle war; we took the gloves off from the first minute,” Halevi said during a September 2025 speech to residents of Ein Habor, adding that “not once” has any legal authority “limited” his wartime conduct.
Implicitly confirming Gaza Health Ministry casualty figures—which then stood at around 220,000 Palestinians killed or wounded—Halevi said that “over 10%” of Gaza’s population of approximately 2.2 million had been "killed or injured” since October 2023.
In August 2025, Abraham and Emma Graham-Harrison, The Guardian's senior international affairs correspondent, revealed that classified IDF intelligence data suggested that 5 in 6 Palestinians, or 83% of people, killed by Israeli forces through the first 19 months of the war were civilians.
Current and former IDF troops have accused their own of deliberately shooting Palestinian civilians, including children, sometimes out of sheer boredom. Palestinian and international volunteer medical professionals have also described what they say is the deliberate shooting of Gazans, including children, more than 21,500 of whom have been killed by Israeli bombs and bullets—with more victims added to that grim total with every passing day.
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Palestinian Researcher Dismantles Israel's List of So-Called 'Terrorist' Journalists Slain in Gaza
Researcher Muhammad Shehada reviewed all 170 names on the IDF's list of supposed militants posing as journalists and found it to be "the most sloppy shameless fraud possible."
Oct 04, 2026
Seeking to discredit reports of its unprecedented killing of journalists in Gaza, the Israel Defense Forces last week published a list of 170 slain Palestinians it claimed were not legitimate media workers but members of "terrorist groups."
Palestinian political analyst Muhammad Shehada, a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, reviewed every single entry on the list. He called it "the most sloppy shameless fraud possible."
Israeli officials and Western supporters have trumpeted the IDF's list as a counter to findings by groups like International Federation of Journalists, which has described Israel's nearly three-year-old war in Gaza as “the deadliest period in the history of journalism" and cataloged at least 240 journalists and media workers killed.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has found dozens of cases in which it concluded journalists were targeted deliberately because of their reporting and filed multiple complaints with the International Criminal Court (ICC) alleging war crimes against the press.
The database, which the IDF refers to as the "Press Files," says "that claim does not tell the full story" and states that "individuals presented as innocent journalists were, in fact, militants in the military wings of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and other terrorist organizations."
The IDF claims the list was the product of an “in-depth investigation” consisting of open-source information, documents recovered by Israeli forces in Gaza, interrogations of alleged Palestinian militants, and intelligence gathered during military operations.
But as Shehada explained in a thread posted to social media on Sunday, "In the overwhelming majority of those listed, the IDF presents ZERO credible evidence. In most of them, their pages are literally blank."
In 59 cases, Shehada found that the IDF did not provide any evidence for its claim that a journalist was a member of Hamas or PIJ other than that the claim was "based on multiple intelligence sources."
Shehada said this amounted to essentially saying "trust me, bro," which is especially insufficient given the numerous instances in which the IDF has been found to have misled the public about its responsibility for certain attacks, like the killing of 5-year-old Hind Rajab in 2024.
In another 42 cases, Shehada found, the IDF provided only decontextualized "snippets" of files, which were "undated and unspecified." Without more information, Shehada said, this is "not... evidence of anything."
"Those snippets could be taken from random files; they could be outdated or fabricated," Shehada said, pointing to previous cases in which purported Hamas intelligence circulated by Israeli sources was later revealed to be misleadingly presented as fabricated.
Shehada pointed to specific cases in which Israel's allegations against specific journalists have been undermined by the underlying evidence.
Israel claimed that Al Jazeera reporter Ismail al-Ghoul, whom the IDF killed in July 2024, was an operative with Hamas' elite Nukhba wing and released a supposed Hamas personnel document as proof.
But as Reporters Without Borders has previously explained, the document says al-Ghoul, born in 1997, received a military rank in 2007, when he was 10, while elsewhere saying he joined in 2014. It also identifies him as an engineer, contradicting the IDF’s description of him as a Nukhba fighter. Israeli troops also detained al-Ghoul at al-Shifa hospital months before he was killed but released him after 12 hours.
The case of Anas al-Sharif, another Al Jazeera journalist killed in 2025, is similar. As Shehada documented for +972 magazine last year, al-Sharif was seriously injured in 2017, listed in a military context in 2019, but described as “suspended” and “unassigned” by 2023—while another document nevertheless portrays him as an elite Nukhba fighter. He was also reportedly detained and released by Israeli forces during the 2024 al-Shifa raid.
In other cases, the IDF's evidence outright debunks the military's own claims. For instance, Israel labeled photojournalist Hassan Aslih—killed by an airstrike at Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis in May 2025—as a "military operative." But the 2019 Hamas document provided as evidence for this lists him as a "photographer" involved with "media services."
While the document, if authentic, does establish a relationship between Aslih and Hamas' Qassam Brigades at least six years before his death, this does not make him a legitimate target under international humanitarian law, which distinguishes between those who have a “continuous combat function" and those who provide political or other indirect forms of support, like media coverage.
Shehada found at least seven cases in which the only evidence provided by the IDF was photos of slain journalists holding guns. In another 12 cases, the IDF provided undated photos of journalists allegedly taking part in Hamas or PIJ military activities.
Shehada noted that many prominent Israeli journalists also have past military service, such as Axios correspondent Barak Ravid, who was an IDF reservist until 2023. "Does that make him a 'legitimate target'? or a non-civilian forever?" Shehada asked.
Palestinian hospital staff inspect the destruction inside Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip, following an Israeli strike early on May 13, 2025 in which Palestinian journalist Hassan Aslih was killed along with several others. (Photo by Eyad Baba/AFP)
The distinction between past military affiliation and active combatant status has been a repeated source of dispute for press freedom groups that have attempted to tally the number of journalists killed.
Last month, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) completed a sweeping review of 229 deaths after Hamas and PIJ published obituaries identifying some people listed as journalists as members of armed groups.
CPJ ultimately removed 22 people from its list, including some it found had participated in combat—but retained others despite militant obituaries, gun photos, or past organizational ties when the evidence did not establish active combatant status.
The "Press Files" database contains 49 cases in which the main piece of evidence is one of these obituaries. Among them are people who CPJ examined and concluded were not active combatants, such as photojournalist Amr Abu Odeh—a 26-year-old freelance photographer for the Anadolu Agency and Reuters—whom the IDF database labels a Hamas "squad commander."
CPJ examined photos of Odeh wearing a military uniform, which came from a 2021 military training course with Gaza's Ministry of the Interior. The group noted that "No armed factions in Gaza have claimed Abu Odeh as being affiliated with them, and the IDF has not alleged he was involved in combat."
"In multiple cases, despite obituaries by Hamas/PIJ, the Committee to Protect Journalists investigated thoroughly and concluded those journalists were NOT engaged in any militant activity during the genocide," Shehada wrote. "They may have in the past. That doesn't make them combatants forever."
He added that the flimsiness of the IDF's evidence was more striking given the sophistication of the intelligence unit it uses to "dig up dirt" on journalists to provide post hoc justification for their killings, which has been referred to internally as the "Legitimization Cell," which was revealed in a +972 investigation.
"If that's all they can provide as "evidence" (e.g. blank pages, random snippets, outdated docs) despite having formidable resources," Shehada wrote, "then it's a vindication of Gaza's journalists!"
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NAZA Filmmakers to Make Film Available for Free Online Amid Israel's Smear Campaign
"It is the duty of every citizen whose government commits crimes to know, and of every soldier who witnessed them to tell."
Sep 24, 2026
Israeli journalists and filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor are determined to ensure that their documentary, NAZA, has the farthest reach possible even as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government accuses them of "blood libel" for interviewing soldiers who described the Israeli military's mass killing of civilians, and threatens to revoke their citizenship for making the film.
Abraham said Thursday morning on social media that he, Szor, and The Guardian, which produced the film, had decided to make NAZA accessible "online for free, without any time limit, so that every person can watch it and the soldiers' testimonies," starting in November.
Until then, the filmmakers are approaching movie theaters in Israel and offering the film "at no cost, in the hope that it will be screened in the country" as it is distributed worldwide.
Commentators in Israel have criticized Abraham and Szor for not making the film free, said journalist Ryan Grim, and theaters are now "being dared to follow through on their bluff and screen it."
The film builds on reporting Abraham has done since the beginning of Israel's current assault on Gaza, which started in 2023 in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack. In NAZA, as well as in investigative reports for the Israeli news outlets +972 Magazine and Local Call, Abraham has extensively covered the Israel Defense Forces' rules of engagement in Gaza, including its use of artificial intelligence for targeting and the IDF policy of allowing the killing of more than 100 Palestinian civilians for every Hamas commander killed.
The film's title refers to the IDF's term for the number of civilians commanders expected to be killed in a particular strike.
" Journalism is not betrayal. Criticism is not betrayal."
NAZA received a record-breaking standing ovation and the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival this month, and the film will premiere in North America at the New York Film Festival this Saturday, with a theatrical release beginning four days later. A wider release in the US is scheduled for October 9, and 50 other countries and territories are also expected to release the film.
While the film has been widely acclaimed, Abraham noted that at home in Israel, "many incorrect things were said about us and about the film in the past week."
Officials have accused the filmmakers, who interviewed 24 military and intelligence officers for the film, of lying about the IDF's practices in Gaza.
Netanyahu, who is facing legislative elections next month, said after the film's release at the Venice Film Festival that he would introduce a bill to revoke the citizenship of Israelis who defame the IDF. Eyal Zamir, chief of staff at the IDF, said military lawyers were considering legal action against Abraham and Szor.
Protesters outside Szor's family home could be heard chanting, "Death sentence for traitors" one evening, and the Committee to Protect Journalists noted that the call for violence "followed days of increasingly hostile public rhetoric targeting the filmmakers, which underscores the risks created when government officials publicly target journalists."
The offices of +972 Magazine and Local Call were also reportedly broken into.
"We made the film to spark a public discussion about the government's actions in Gaza, the killing of more than 73,000 people, most of them civilians, the normalization of a war of extermination, of the notion that 'there are no uninvolved,'" said Abraham.
"Journalism is not betrayal. Criticism is not betrayal," he continued. "It is the duty of every citizen whose government commits crimes to know, and of every soldier who witnessed them to tell. There are thousands of such soldiers walking around here, who will watch the film and recognize what is described in it personally: the killing of unarmed people crossing an imaginary line, the [NAZA] approvals in the hundreds, the systematic attacks on family homes, the burning and physical destruction of Gaza, murder and shooting at hungry people in food distribution centers, and other crimes that have no justification."
Ali Abunimah, director of Electronic Intifada, said the filmmakers should have made the film free for viewers "from the start."
He also called for Abraham and Szor to "turn over any and all evidence they have that could lead to the arrest and punishment of perpetrators of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide to the International Criminal Court," which has a warrant out for the arrest of Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
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Children Among at Least 21 Killed as Gaza Building Damaged by Israel's US-Backed Assault Collapses
"Today’s tragedy underscores the grave risks faced by families living in these structures and the urgent need for safer alternatives," said one UN official.
Sep 16, 2026
Nearly three years of Israeli bombardment in Gaza have left tens of thousands of Palestinians with no choice but to live in an estimated 2,000 buildings that have been severely damaged, and the danger of such precarious living conditions was starkly illustrated early Wednesday morning when an apartment building in Gaza City collapsed, killing at least 21 people and trapping dozens beneath rubble.
Rescuers reported that at least eight children were among those killed when the bombed-out building fell down onto adjacent tents that were also housing forcibly displaced Palestinians.
More than 10 families had been living in the building, which had four apartments on each floor and became even more vulnerable to collapse as damp autumn weather arrived in recent weeks.
"There are approximately 400 buildings at risk of collapse," Alessandro Mrakic, head of the United Nations Development Program's Gaza office, told Reuters. "And we know that these buildings will collapse, especially now with the upcoming winter."
Rescuers reported hearing people calling out beneath the rubble, but the search-and-rescue operation has been made more difficult by a lack of machinery, Mrakic said.
Heavy machinery is among many items that Israeli authorities restrict from entering Gaza, claiming that they'll be used by Hamas.
"There are actually people are digging with their bare hands," Mrakic told Reuters. "We need to prepare [for more deaths]."
Adequate tents and mobile homes are also blocked from entering Gaza, reported Drop Site News, contributing to families' reliance on severely damaged buildings for shelter.
When asked by The Guardian whether they were afraid to live in the building, survivors of the collapse said: “Yes, we are afraid, but where can we go? This is better than staying out on the street.”
At least 25 people were confirmed as injured and hospitalized on Wednesday.
"Across Gaza, people are living in hundreds of damaged structures assessed as unsafe, for lack of better options," said Ramiz Alakbarov, the UN humanitarian coordinator for the occupied Palestinian territories. "Today’s tragedy underscores the grave risks faced by families living in these structures and the urgent need for safer alternatives. No one should have to risk their life simply to find a safe place to shelter."
"I call for urgent approvals for the entry of heavy machinery, specialized equipment, engine oil and fuel needed for search-and-rescue operations," said Alakbarov. "Tents, tarpaulins, and other nonfood items must also reach the most vulnerable communities in the next four weeks. Every possible effort must be made to save lives, protect people from further harm, and provide families with safer places to live. Every minute counts."
Videos and images circulating on social media showed rescue workers desperately trying to pull people from the rubble, and the spokesperson for Gaza's Civil Defense, Mahmoud Basal, carrying a child wrapped in a scarf stained with blood.
At least 20 people, mostly women and children, have been killed after a six-story residential building collapsed in Gaza City.
Extensive efforts are underway to rescue dozens of civilians missing under the rubble of the building, which had previously been damaged by Israeli… pic.twitter.com/gqHSgfKUEp
— PALESTINE ONLINE 🇵🇸 (@OnlinePalEng) September 16, 2026
More than 90% of housing units in Gaza have been destroyed by Israel since October 2023, when it began its assault on Gaza in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack. More than 73,000 Palestinians have been killed, including thousands of children, journalists, healthcare workers, and humanitarian workers—while Israel and its allies, including the US government, have persisted in claiming the military operation is targeting Hamas fighters.
Attacks have continued in Gaza despite a ceasefire that was brokered last October, and families have become increasingly desperate to find housing after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the Israel Defense Forces to take over 70% of Gaza in violation of the ceasefire deal.
The building collapse came as it was reported that the Trump administration was preparing to send Israel tens of thousands of 2,000-pound bombs.
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Trump Plans New Sale of 2,000-Pound Bombs to Israel, Which Keeps Using Them to Massacre Gazans
"You don't have healthcare or a living wage," said one critic who lamented the proposed $2.8 billion, taxpayer-funded transfer, "but hey, more war crimes!"
Sep 15, 2026
The Trump administration is preparing to send Israel tens of thousands of 2,000-pound bombs, The Washington Post reported Tuesday—a move that would rank as the largest single sale of the highly destructive munitions, which the Israel Defense Forces have used in some of the deadliest US-backed airstrikes on Gaza and Lebanon.
According to the Post, the proposed $2.8 billion package includes 20,000 MK-84 bombs and 20,000 BLU-117 bombs, as well as 20,000 I-2000 penetrator warheads. The munitions would be purchased with US taxpayer funds through the Foreign Military Financing program. The proposal has been informally presented to congressional committees that review major arms transfers.
The MK-84 is among the largest conventional bombs in the US arsenal. The Post reported that its blast can propel metal fragments thousands of feet, penetrate thick concrete and metal, and create large craters.
“If Hezbollah or whoever is in a building, an MK-84 will bring down the whole building," Trevor Ball, a former US Army explosive ordnance disposal technician, told the Post.
Following the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) loosened rules of engagement to effectively allow the killing of an unlimited number of civilians when targeting even a single low-ranking Hamas member in an airstrike.
Combined with the utilization of cutting-edge artificial intelligence technology to select targets at a far faster rate than humans alone could, IDF use of 1,000- and 2,000-pound bombs has contributed heavily to the staggering casualty toll in Gaza, where officials say that more than 250,000 Palestinians have been killed or wounded since October 2023.
That month, Israeli forces struck Gaza's Jabalia refugee camp with such munitions, killing at least 126 Palestinians in a bid to assassinate a single Hamas commander.
Michael Lynk, who served as the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories from 2016 to 2022, said early in the war that “the scale of Palestinian civilian deaths in such a short period of time appears to be the highest such civilian casualty rate in the 21st century."
In December 2023, University of Chicago military historian Robert Pape called Israel's bombing "one of the most intense civilian punishment campaigns in history.”
Classified IDF intelligence data leaked last year revealed that 5 in 6 Palestinians killed by the IDF through the first 19 months of the US-backed war were civilians.
Israel continues to kill Palestinians with US-supplied 2,000-pound bombs, despite a nearly yearlong supposed ceasefire. Last week, the IDF reportedly massacred two young girls and their parents when it bombed their home in northern Gaza.
A South Africa-led case backed by nearly 20 nations that is currently before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) accuses Israel of genocide in Gaza. The International Criminal Court has also issued warrants for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in the strip, including murder and forced starvation.
“[President] Donald Trump is sending bombs paid for by American taxpayers to a government led by a wanted war criminal—all while the Netanyahu government continues to bomb Gaza and Lebanon, and block justice and accountability for Americans killed on its watch,” US Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said Tuesday, according to the Post. “This is not putting Americans first. We will work to stop it."
Israel denies all accusations against it. Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders and supporters have repeatedly claimed that the IDF is the "world's most moral army."
The IDF has also dropped 2,000-pound bombs in Lebanon. In September 2024, it launched a massive strike on Beirut's southern suburbs that killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and destroyed multiple residential buildings. Analyses subsequently indicated that US-made 2,000-pound bombs were likely used in the attack.
In another IDF strike on Beirut the following month, at least 22 people were killed and more than 115 wounded. Human Rights Watch and a former US military explosives expert identified remnants from the attack as coming from a US-made Joint Direct Attack Munition guidance kit compatible with MK80-series bombs weighing between 500 and 2,000 pounds.
The United States has nevertheless supplied Israel with thousands of the weapons during both the Biden and Trump administrations. Reuters reported in June 2024 that the Biden administration had sent Israel more than 10,000 2,000-pound bombs since the October 2023 Hamas-led attack, along with thousands of other munitions.
In May 2024, then-President Joe Biden paused delivery of a shipment containing 1,800 2,000-pound bombs and 1,700 500-pound bombs amid concerns that Israel could use them during its assault on Rafah, where more than a million displaced Palestinians were sheltering, and where the ICJ ordered Israel to immediately halt its offensive and prevent genocidal acts. Israel ignored the order.
That pause became a rare instance in which Washington explicitly withheld a major category of offensive weaponry from Israel over concerns about civilian casualties. Trump reversed the policy almost immediately after returning to office in January 2025, ordering the release of the withheld 2,000-pound bombs.
When asked why, Trump replied: “Because they bought them.”
But with American taxpayers often footing the bill for such transfers, critics again lashed out at the practically unconditional US support for Israel.
"We don’t have universal healthcare because our government prioritizes money for bombs," leftist commentator and activist Sabrina Salvati said Tuesday on social media, lamenting that the "$2.8 billion bomb sale [is] going to Israel to slaughter more babies."
Author and leftist podcaster Wajahat Ali also took to social media to blast the proposed transfer, writing: "Congrats, MAGA. Trump is using our money to give bombs to Israel to kill civilians."
"You don't have healthcare or a living wage," he added, "but hey, more war crimes!"
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Israeli Documentary ‘NAZA’ Exposes 'System of Killing' in Gaza From Eyes of Secret Intelligence Unit
The directors of the film—which premiered at the Venice Film Festival—said they "felt the responsibility" to expose insider testimony about Israel's systematic mass killing of Palestinians.
Sep 10, 2026
A documentary film that premiered Thursday at the Venice Film Festival offers a rare inside account of Israel’s US-backed genocide in Gaza, with former members of a secret Israeli intelligence unit describing how they helped transform the mass killing of Palestinian civilians into a routine, bureaucratized affair.
NAZA, directed by Israeli filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, is based on interviews with 24 Israeli military and intelligence insiders, several of whom served in a secret unit that reported directly to the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
"We really are looking at... a system of killing, which is mass killing [and] relies on mass surveillance," Abraham told reporters in Venice on Thursday. "We felt the responsibility as Israelis to use our position... to bring insider testimony into how the system looks like from the inside... And this is the film that we made."
Szor said that "a lot of these things are also, it's important to say... known because they've been documented by journalists, Palestinian journalists, in Gaza. It's footage that has been out there."
"But I think that we felt that there is still some sort of an importance to take those testimonies and put it in a film in a way that, of course, first of all, it's different to hear," she added. "The people who designed and operated those systems talk about it in front of a camera."
According to the film, one former member bluntly said that the unit's mission was to “thwart peace.”
However, Abraham and Szor said their purpose was not to expose a handful of rogue soldiers, but to examine the machinery and policies behind the violence.
The documentary’s title refers to an Israeli military acronym used to quantify the civilians expected to be killed in an attack—a chilling bureaucratic shorthand for people often referred to as collateral damage, or, in the so-called "War on Terror" still being waged by the United States 25 years after the September 11, 2001 attacks, "bugsplat."
The film’s sources describe artificial intelligence-assisted targeting, mass surveillance, and the hacking of mobile phones to identify alleged Hamas operatives, sometimes despite the known presence of family members and other civilians.
Israeli forces have operated under loosened rules of engagement that effectively permit the killing of an unlimited number of civilians when targeting even a single low-ranking Hamas member. The Israel Defense Forces utilizes cutting-edge AI technology to select targets at a far faster rate than humans alone could, and destroys them with weapons including 1,000- and 2,000-pound bombs—many supplied by the US.
The result has been the killing and wounding of more than 250,000 Palestinians since the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023. Most of the victims have been civilians, including more than 21,500 children killed and tens of thousands more disabled or wounded.
Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant are wanted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza, including murder and forced starvation. Israel is facing an ongoing genocide case filed by South Africa at the International Court of Justice—also in The Hague—and formally supported by nearly 20 nations.
Abraham and Szor are best known internationally for co-directing with two others the film No Other Land, which chronicled ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the illegally occupied West Bank by Israeli settlers and soldiers. The film won the 2025 Academy Award for best documentary feature. No Other Land co-director, co-writer, and producer Hamdan Ballal, who is Palestinian, was brutally attacked by Israeli settlers and violently detained by IDF troops in March 2025, as Common Dreams reported at the time.
NAZA—which reportedly received a 25-minute standing ovation at its Venice premiere—is the sole documentary among the films competing for the festival's famed Golden Lion. It joins a growing body of recent films about the Gaza genocide.
American Doctor, directed by Poh Si Teng, follows US physicians working inside Gaza hospitals amid Israel's deliberate destruction of the strip's medical and healthcare systems.
Last year's The Voice of Hind Rajab offered a harrowing mix of acted scenes and the actual 70-minute audio recording of a 5-year-old Palestinian girl's desperate final phone call to Palestine Red Crescent Society personnel amid an Israeli massacre of her family as they were trapped in a car under tank fire.
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'There Is No Ceasefire': Israel Kills 12 More in Lebanon, Including Children
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's "apologists have to explain why killing kids happens so regularly and effortlessly," said one congressman who noted growing support for blocking US weapons to Israel.
Sep 07, 2026
A series of Israeli strikes across southern Lebanon since Friday night have killed and wounded dozens of people, including women, children, and paramedics, despite a US-brokered ceasefire.
On Monday, Israeli strikes in Kfar Rumman killed 12 people: a paramedic and 11 people in a targeted residential building, including at least four women and two children, according to Lebanon's Ministry of Public Health.
Al Jazeera reported that the attack on the targeted home killed three generations of one family, including a 2-month-old baby.
Another 11 people were killed in Lebanon on Sunday, and four others before that, bringing the death toll to 27, with at least 69 civilians wounded, according to the ministry. Women, children, medics, and journalists were among those harmed.
Those casualties followed Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz claiming Friday that the IDF had taken control of Lebanon's Ali al-Taher ridge, about six miles from the border, and vowing that his country's military "will not withdraw from the security zone in Lebanon until Hezbollah is disarmed."
Since Hamas led the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, resulting in the Israel Defense Forces' genocidal war on the Gaza Strip, the Lebanese political and militant group Hezbollah has sided with Palestinians in the besieged exclave, and the IDF has been attacking southern Lebanon.
Hezbollah has also backed Iran since the US and Israel began bombing the country in February, leading to renewed Israeli violence in Lebanon. In addition to slaughtering at least 73,658 Palestinians in Gaza since October 2023, the IDF has killed more than 8,900 Lebanese and injured over 30,6000, according to the ministry.
That bloodshed over the past few years has fueled calls for cutting off the billions of dollars in military aid that the United States gives Israel annually. US Congressman Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) issued one such call after the attacks on Monday, stressing on social media that "Israel strikes Lebanon and kills kids. They continue to strike Gaza and kill kids."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's "apologists have to explain why killing kids happens so regularly and effortlessly," Pocan continued. "More and more members of Congress are saying it's time to #BlocktheBombs."
Although a June ceasefire brought some relief to the people of Lebanon, hundreds of thousands remain displaced by Israeli occupation and attacks. Agence France-Presse reported Monday that after the June ceasefire deal was reached, villagers returned home to Kfar Rumman.
Following the attack after midnight Monday, "an AFP photographer saw the building that was hit in Kfar Rumman had been destroyed, with school books and remnants of furniture strewn across the rubble," the agency detailed. It continued:
"Since we returned here, we've lived in fear," Fouad Chakaron told AFP.
He insisted the targeted building was inhabited by "peaceful people with no connection to anyone."
Neighbors fled after the strike, which also damaged nearby buildings, AFP's photographer said.
Multiple outlets noted that the IDF didn't issue an evacuation warning before the strikes on Kfar Rumman. Reuters pointed out that the IDF claimed steps had been taken to mitigate harm "to uninvolved individuals, including the use of precise munitions and aerial surveillance," and it is now reviewing the reported casualties.
The IDF said on social media Monday that it hit "several Hezbollah terrorist infrastructure sites across southern Lebanon, including a weapons storage facility. Additionally, the IDF struck terrorists who were identified transferring weapons in the area of Kfar Rumman, in order to remove the threat they posed. The strikes were in response to Hezbollah’s launch of two explosive drones toward IDF troops in the security zone."
The deadly strikes on Monday came after Lebanon's Ministry of Public Health announced Sunday that "the Israeli raids launched by the occupation forces this morning led to the complete destruction of the Ghandour Hospital in Nabatieh, which constitutes an additional serious violation of international humanitarian law that provides for the protection of health facilities."
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun condemned the destruction of the hospital, which was reportedly emptied of patients and staff, and highlighted that attacks in the area also "resulted in the fall of innocent victims and caused severe damage to the building of the Ministry of Finance there."
Israel's assault on the Nabatieh region is "a dangerous escalation," the president said, and "reveals a persistent pattern of attacks that goes beyond the alleged military targets to purely civilian administrations and health centers, reflecting a clear intent to strike the continuity of Lebanese institutions' operations and disrupt people's daily interests."
While Aoun said he holds "the Israeli side fully responsible for this ongoing escalation," he is also "calling on the United States of America and the international community to take urgent action to stop these violations and hold their perpetrators accountable, affirming that Lebanon, despite all these attacks, is committed to upholding its sovereignty, the stability of its south, and the safety of its citizens."
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IDF Condemned for Refusal to Probe Deadly Attacks on Doctors Without Borders, World Central Kitchen Staff
"This is not justice," said the healthcare charity. "Two years of silence, followed by closures that raise more questions than they answer, is unacceptable."
Aug 20, 2026
The international healthcare charity Médecins Sans Frontières on Thursday joined the humanitarian group World Central Kitchen in demanding that an "impartial investigative body" examine deadly Israeli attacks on its staffers in Gaza, following the Israeli military's announcement that it was closing the cases without opening a criminal investigation.
MSF, also known in English as Doctors Without Borders, noted that the decision by the Israeli military advocate general (MAG) did "not come as a surprise" and was "the predictable output of a military apparatus investigating itself."
The Israel Defense Forces and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government, said the France-based organization, have proven themselves "unwilling to respond to the extent of violations that may amount to war crimes emerging from Gaza," with Israeli officials continuing to insist that the IDF has been targeting Hamas with its bombardment of Gaza—despite the fact that the death toll of more than 73,000 Palestinians includes at least 22,000 women and 20,000 children and that healthcare facilities, schools, and at least 92% of residential buildings have been destroyed or damaged in attacks.
In addition, said MSF, 15 staff members of the healthcare organization have been killed by Israeli forces since they began bombarding Gaza in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack in October 2023, including two who were killed in multiple attacks on an aid convoy in Gaza City in November 2023 and two who were killed in a strike on an MSF shelter in Khan Younis in February 2024.
"There is no military objective that justifies the wholesale sacrifice of civilians. And there is no internal military review that can substitute for genuine, independent, and impartial accountability."
MSF submitted those cases to the MAG for review, but along with an attack that killed seven World Central Kitchen (WCK) aid workers in April 2024, the military said there was no suspicion of criminal conduct in the assaults on MSF workers.
"This is not justice," said MSF. "Two years of silence, followed by closures that raise more questions than they answer, is unacceptable."
"MSF staff and their family members are dead. Their names are known," the group continued. "Their locations were shared. Their vehicles were identified. We have always maintained that all elements point to a clear responsibility of the Israeli army for the deadly attacks. And yet, those responsible for their deaths have declined to pursue any criminal investigation."
The decision by the MAG makes clear, said the group, that "there is no prospect of accountability within the Israeli legal system for the killing of our staff, just as there has been no accountability for Israel's ongoing genocide against Palestinians."
Following the MAG's announcement on Wednesday, World Central Kitchen issued a statement condemning Israel's "account of the deaths of our seven colleagues on April 1, 2024."
"We fundamentally disagree with their decision about criminal investigations into the IDF airstrikes that killed our team," said WCK. "There has never been any excuse or justification for the attacks, and there is nothing in this account that does so. The decision is inconsistent with the full truth and deeply offensive."
Israeli authorities did not issue a warning to WCK before it attacked the aid organization's convoy, which was traveling through what was supposed to be a deconflicted zone when it was struck.
"At the time of the lethal attacks, the IDF knew that our team in Gaza was unarmed and posing a threat to nobody. It had full visual clarity on our clearly marked humanitarian vehicles during the extended, multiple airstrikes. It knew our team’s movements, identities, and activities in advance," said WCK. "We continue to demand truth and justice for our team and their families. We continue to demand an independent commission to investigate the airstrikes because the IDF cannot credibly investigate its own conduct. And we continue to grieve the loss of our friends."
MSF stressed that Israel's decision to "close" the cases of the attacks "must be understood in their proper context: In Gaza, tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed. Healthcare facilities have been destroyed. Humanitarian convoys have been struck. Journalists, medical personnel, UN personnel, and aid workers have been killed in numbers unprecedented in any recent conflict."
"MSF reaffirms what we have stated since the beginning of this violence: There is no military objective that justifies the wholesale sacrifice of civilians," said the group. "And there is no internal military review that can substitute for genuine, independent, and impartial accountability."
"To our colleagues we have lost," MSF added, "and to the countless civilians and humanitarian workers who have perished in Gaza: We will not let your deaths be filed away as procedural inevitabilities. You deserved protection. You deserve justice."
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Opening ‘Worthless’ Criminal Probes, IDF Admits Massacring 5-Year-Old Hind Rajab and Family, 15 Gaza Medics
"933 days since Hind Rajab and her family were killed. All that time, Israel lied, denied, deflected, distorted, gaslit," said one critic. "This is their modus operandi with high-profile crimes. The 'criminal probe' will be a sham."
Aug 19, 2026
After years of denying responsibility, the Israel Defense Forces announced Wednesday that it is opening what critics fear will be sham criminal investigations into numerous high-profile killings of Palestinians in Gaza, while separately clearing troops involved in other deadly attacks, including a massacre of World Central Kitchen aid workers.
The IDF Military Advocate-General’s Corps published its first war crimes report since October 2023 on Wednesday, covering more than 150 probes into massacres and other killings of Palestinians.
The most infamous case involves the January 2024 attack in which invading IDF troops fired hundreds of rounds of ammunition at a car carrying 5-year-old Hind Rajab and six relatives as they tried to flee Gaza City, and then attacked a Palestine Red Crescent Society ambulance dispatched to rescue survivors. The ambulance attack killed two PRCS medics.
Other "exceptional operational incidents" by IDF troops are also under investigation, including the apparent execution-style killing of 15 on-duty first responders—among them PRCS medics, Civil Defense personnel, and a United Nations worker—traveling in a convoy of ambulances and other vehicles in Rafah in March 2025.
The IDF cleared troops involved in the April 2024 attack on a World Central Kitchen humanitarian convoy in Deir al-Balah that killed seven members of an international aid team working to feed Palestinians amid the burgeoning famine caused by Israel's "complete siege" of Gaza.
The military also cleared troops involved in a February 2024 tank attack on a house in al-Mawasi where Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) staff and their families were sheltering. Two women were killed and seven others were wounded in the attack.
Israeli officials had initially either denied carrying out these attacks or claimed the victims were members of or associated with Hamas, the Palestinian resistance group that led the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
"The Israeli army lied through their teeth. They claimed no Israeli troops were operating in the area where Hind Rajab and her family were killed," British journalist Owen Jones wrote Wednesday on X. "They lie and lie and lie again—yet Western media outlets still treat Israeli claims as credible."
Few critics of Israel welcomed the IDF probes, while many said they won't accomplish anything.
"Investigations into violations committed by Israeli forces overwhelmingly end without meaningful examination, prosecution, or punishment," the Brussels-based Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF), which was established to challenge Israeli impunity, said Wednesday in a statement. "In the small number of cases in which soldiers have been convicted of crimes, the punishments imposed have often been exceptionally lenient or administrative in nature."
HRF continued:
The killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh provides a stark example. After conducting its own investigation into her May 2022 killing, the Israeli military acknowledged in September 2022 that there was a “high possibility” that Abu Akleh had been shot by Israeli military fire. Yet the Military Advocate General concluded that there was no suspicion of a criminal offense warranting a Military Police investigation. No criminal investigation was opened.
"This is not new," HRF stressed. "It is the continuation of a decadeslong pattern in which announcements of internal investigations have repeatedly failed to produce meaningful accountability for crimes committed against Palestinians."
HRF noted that 88% of publicly reported Israeli probes into alleged IDF crimes in Gaza "had either been closed without a finding of wrongdoing or remained under review without any publicly reported outcome. Only one resulted in a prison sentence."
"Against this record, the sudden announcement of criminal investigations into the murders of Hind Rajab and the 15 Palestinian paramedics should not be mistaken for a genuine turn toward justice," the group said. "These investigations come amid mounting international scrutiny... Their purpose is not to deliver accountability, but to preserve its appearance while perpetuating impunity."
In the United States—which backs Israel's war with billions of dollars in annual armed aid, diplomatic cover, and genocide denial—Council on American Islamic Relations national deputy director Edward Ahmed Mitchell said Wednesday that “everyone, including the Israeli government and its supporters, have long known that Israel was responsible for deliberately murdering Hind Rajab, her family, and the paramedics who tried to save her."
"The Netanyahu regime’s belated admission that it murdered Hind and will open a token criminal investigation is worthless. No one should take it seriously," he added, referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza.
“Instead, our nation should hold the Israeli government accountable for killing Hind and tens of thousands of other innocent people during the ongoing genocide in Gaza by suspending military aid and imposing sanctions on Israel," Mitchell added. "So should the international community.”
Israeli scholar Shaiel Ben-Ephraim asked on X: "After spending over two years denying even having been in the area, Israel finally admitted to shooting Hind Rajab. Why?"
"Certainly not because of accountability," he continued. "A source in the IDF legal department told the Jerusalem Post that issuing real decisions, including ones critical of soldiers, is 'critical to defend Israel' in those forums and to 'preserve receiving military weapons overseas from the US and other allies.'"
"And because this is the highest profile case of Israeli murder in this genocide, and the most difficult to defend, since Israel had advance knowledge that there was a child in the car, this is the one they chose," Ben-Ephraim added.
Israel's 1,047-day assault on Gaza has left more than 250,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing, including thousands who are believed to be dead and buried beneath rubble. Around 2 million other Gazans have been forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened.
Attacks on Palestinian children—more than 21,500 of whom have been killed by Israeli forces—and aid workers, as well as the obliteration of Gaza's healthcare infrastructure, have been defining features of a war that United Nations experts, human rights groups, scholars, and a South Africa-led case currently before the International Court of Justice call a genocide.
The plight of Hind Rajab drew worldwide attention after the PRCS published a recording of a desperate phone call made by Hind and her 15-year-old cousin Layan Hamadeh, who was also killed in the car. The recording, which continues for several hours while the mortally wounded child slowly died, was the basis of the award-winning 2025 film "The Voice of Hind Rajab."
Exhaustive investigations, especially into the Hind Rajab massacre, have already occurred. Forensic Architecture, Earshot, and Al Jazeera published the most detailed reconstruction of the attack; The Washington Post, Sky News, and others also documented the events of the massacre.
In the case of the 15 first responders, Forensic Architecture and Earshot, The Washington Post, Bellingcat, The New York Times, and other media outlets investigated the massacre, with some of the reports refuting the IDF's initial claim that the convoy vehicles—at which Israeli forces fired around 1,000 rounds of ammunition—had approached without headlights or emergency signals. The Times affirmed that victims were shot in the head execution-style, while the Post also documented the burial of the responders and their destroyed vehicles in a mass grave.
Despite these exhaustive reports, many Israelis and their international supporters called the Hind Rajab story a fabrication, pointing to discrepancies in reporting about the child's age and other ultimately inconsequential details. Many media outlets, including Common Dreams, initially reported that Rajab was 6 years old. Some supporters of Israel denied that Hind Rajab ever existed; others claimed she was killed by Hamas.
"We know who killed Hind. We know the responsibility of the 401st Armoured Brigade under Beni Aharon, the 52nd Battalion commanded by Daniel Ella, and the Vampire Empire Company commanded by Sean Glass," HRF director general Dyab Abou Jahjah said Wednesday. "These people should be behind bars."
However, he added that “we have no trust whatsoever in the Israeli judicial system. This is a charade aimed at whitewashing and exonerating the criminals who killed Hind Rajab and her family."
"We believe justice will be served, but not by a system responsible for justifying crimes committed during the genocide," Jahjah added. "Justice will be served through international justice, through the ICC, and through national jurisdictions abroad. HRF will continue on this path, and we will not be fooled by these maneuvers.”
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