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netzarim corridor
'Killing Is Normalized': IDF Soldier Speaks Out About Orders to Shoot Civilians in Gaza
The commands are: everyone that comes inside needs to die," the soldier said. "If they're inside, they're dangerous, you need to kill them. No matter who it is."
Jul 07, 2025
Another Israel Defense Forces soldier has spoken out publicly against the IDF's brutalization of civilians in Gaza.
In an interview with the British Sky News Monday, a reservist who has served three tours of duty in Gaza spoke candidly about orders he and other soldiers received to shoot any person arbitrarily who entered defined "no-go zones," regardless of whether they posed a threat.
The soldier gave his testimony anonymously for fear of being labeled a "traitor." However, he identified himself as a reservist from the 252nd Division who was stationed at the Netzarim Corridor, a road which divides North and South Gaza.
The area has been one of the most critical strategic points for Israel's occupation of Gaza, allowing control over the flow of aid and people.
The soldiers, stationed on the edge of a civilian neighborhood in the homes of displaced Palestinians, were ordered by their commanders to kill anyone who passed an "imaginary line" that marked the beginning of the military stronghold, the soldier said.
"We have a territory that we are in, and the commands are: everyone that comes inside needs to die," the soldier said. "If they're inside, they're dangerous, you need to kill them. No matter who it is."
"It was like pretty much everyone that comes into the territory, and it might be like a teenager riding his bicycle," he said.
The soldier said that the prevailing attitude among the troops was that all Palestinians were "terrorists," and that this attitude was reinforced by commanders.
"They say if someone comes here, it means that he knows he shouldn't be there, and if he still comes, it means he's a terrorist," he said. "This is what they tell you. But I don't really think it's true. It's just poor people, civilians, that don't really have too many choices."
He said that when soldiers in the corridor kill civilians, a lot of them "think that they did something good."
That sense of impunity, he said, comes from the higher-ups.
"Some commanders can really decide to do war crimes and bad things and don't face the consequences of that," he said.
"You can't be in this scenario for so long and not normalize it," he said. "Killing is normalized, and you don't see the problem."
This anonymous soldier is the latest of many who have decided to speak out against atrocities their military has committed.
His testimony comes on the heels of a harrowing Haaretz expose, in which several other Israeli soldiers described being ordered to shoot Palestinian aid-seekers, turning the U.S.-Israeli administered Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) sites into "killing fields." Others provided The Associated Press with video of soldiers bombarding civilians in an aid site with pepper spray and stun grenades.
Others have spoken out against the attacks on civilians near the Israeli stronghold at Netzarim.
In April, a report by the Israeli veterans group Breaking the Silence detailed many more accounts of brutality over the first year-and-a-half of the war. It included accounts of Israeli soldiers razing agricultural land, bulldozing entire city blocks, and designating "large swathes of the land" that "were turned into massive kill zones."
"All of them were wiped off the face of the Earth. Annihilation, expropriation, and expulsion are immoral and must never be normalized or legitimized," the report said.
The soldier who spoke to Sky News said his deployment left a similar stain on his conscience.
"I kind of feel like I took part in something bad, and I need to counter it with something good that I do, by speaking out, because I am very troubled about what I took and still am taking part of, as a soldier and citizen in this country," he said. "I think the war is... a very bad thing that is happening to us, and to the Palestinians, and I think it needs to be over."
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Israel Bombs Gaza's Only Cancer Hospital in 'US-Backed War Crime' as Death Toll Grows
One group noted that Israel "bombs hospitals, kills healthcare workers, blocks medicine, and destroys clinics—leaving Palestinians without treatment as disease spreads, starvation worsens, and people suffer."
Mar 21, 2025
U.S.-backed Israeli forces drew international condemnation Friday after bombing the only cancer hospital in the Gaza Strip, where more than 700 Palestinians including over 200 children have been killed this week and where the death toll from 532 days of genocidal assault is approaching at least 50,000.
Israel Defense Forces troops carried out an airstrike on the abandoned Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital in Gaza's Netzarim Corridor, where the IDF launched what it called a "limited ground operation" earlier this week amid a ferocious wave of airstrikes that have killed at least 700 Palestinians, including 200 children and 112 women, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. More than 900 other Palestinians have been injured since Israel unilaterally broke a cease-fire.
Today, Israeli occupation forces blew up Gaza’s Turkish Friendship Hospital. It was the last hospital in Gaza that was able to treat cancer patients. This is a US-backed war crime.
[image or embed]
— CODEPINK ( @codepink.bsky.social) March 21, 2025 at 8:01 AM
"The ministry emphasizes that this criminal behavior of the occupation comes in line with the systematic destruction of the health system and the completion of the episodes of genocide," the Gaza Health Ministry said in a statement, adding that the renewed Israeli slaughter has brought the overall Gaza death toll since October 2023 to at least 49,617, with upward of 112,950 others injured, and approximately 14,000 more missing and presumed dead and buried beneath rubble.
The effects of Israel's bombing and invasion—which include widespread starvation and sickness—have been exacerbated by the "completem siege" imposed on Gaza in October 2023 and the forced displacement of around 2 million Palestinians.
The IDF said it bombed the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital because Hamas, which rules Gaza and carried out the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, was using the facility as "terrorist infrastructure." No evidence was provided to support this allegation; past Israeli claims of this nature have been
debunked.
In fact, the IDF had used the facility as a base from which snipers indiscriminately shot Palestinians including women and children who tried to cross what Israeli soldiers and veterans described as a "kill zone." One IDF veteran said that these random slayings have become "a competition between units" to see who can kill more people.
Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital—which was built using a $34 million donation from Turkey—was the only one in Gaza equipped to treat cancer patients, although the facility had not been used as a hospital for over a year. Prior to Israel's onslaught, the hospital provided critical treatment to thousands of cancer patients.
In a statement Friday, the Turkish Foreign Ministry condemned Israel's latest hospital bombing.
"The deliberate targeting of a hospital providing healthcare services to civilians in Gaza is part of Israel's policy to render Gaza unlivable and force the Palestinian people into displacement," the ministry asserted, according to Hürriyet Daily News. "We urge the international community to take firm and effective steps against Israel's unlawful attacks and systematic state terrorism."
Israeli forces have obliterated Gaza's medical infrastructure along with the rest of the densely populated strip. Last year, an independent United Nations commission found that "Israel has perpetrated a concerted policy to destroy Gaza's healthcare system as part of a broader assault on Gaza, committing war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination with relentless and deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities."
The report detailed hundreds of IDF attacks on Gaza healthcare facilities and the killing or wounding of around 1,700 medical workers, calling such killings "widespread and systematic."
Israel is the subject of an ongoing
genocide case brought before the International Court of Justice in The Hague by South Africa. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant are also wanted by the International Criminal Court, also in The Hague, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
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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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