𝐴 𝑔𝑟𝑜𝑢𝑝 𝑜𝑓 𝐼𝐷𝐹 𝑣𝑒𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑠 𝑐𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑟𝑒𝑝𝑜𝑟𝑡 𝑎 ‘𝑐𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑟-𝑢𝑝’

by Kyle Anzalone, Antiwar News, April 20, 2025

An inquiry by the Israeli Defense Forces into its soldiers murdering 15 Palestinian medics in Rafah last month dismissed its forces’ opening fire on the first responders.

The report by the IDF (Israeli Army) found that “professional failures” and “operational misunderstandings” were the cause of Israeli soldiers killing 15 Palestinian medics. It concluded the troops opened fire on the ambulances “after perceiving an immediate and tangible threat.”

On March 23, IDF soldiers in Rafah opened fire on a convoy of ambulances. Initially, Tel Aviv claimed that the vehicles were driving erratically and without their lights on. However, a video from one of the medics’ phones showed that the ambulances were driving with caution and were using their sirens.

After the massacre of the medics, most of whom worked for the Red Crescent, the IDF buried the victims and their vehicles in a mass grave. Once the crime scene was exhumed, autopsies showed most of the first responders were killed by bullets to the head or chest.

The report claimed the mass grave was not an effort at an IDF cover-up. “There was no attempt to conceal the event, which was discussed with international organizations and the UN, including coordination for the removal of bodies,” the IDF asserted.

Breaking the Silence, an organization of IDF veterans, called the report a “cover-up.” “The investigation is riddled with contradictions, vague phrasing, and selective details. The only ‘serious’ disciplinary action taken: the dismissal of the deputy commander of Golani’s elite unit.” The statement continued. “His reported ‘failure’ was submitting an incomplete account of the incident. In other words, he lied.”

The organization added, “We all remember when the IDF claimed that the ambulances’ emergency lights weren’t on — and then we saw the footage proving otherwise. Not every lie has a video to expose it, but this report doesn’t even attempt to engage with the truth.”

Over the past 18 months, the IDF has committed countless atrocities in Gaza. Most of the time, the mass killings of Palestinians by Israelis go unreported in Western media.

However, on a few occasions, IDF operations have come under scrutiny in the US. Tel Aviv has skirted any responsibility for the war crimes by investigating its forces and concluding there were errors made but no intentional or systemic wrongdoing.

Kyle Anzalone is the opinion editor of Antiwar.com and news editor of the Libertarian Institute. He hosts The Kyle Anzalone Show and is co-host of Conflicts of Interest with Connor Freeman.

Staff Writer With AFP Follow on X April 14, 2025

Facebook X LinkedIn Reddit Share via Email Print

A senior Hamas official said on Monday that the Palestinian group is prepared to release all Israeli hostages in exchange for a “serious prisoner swap” and guarantees that Israel will end the war in Gaza.

Hamas is engaged in negotiations in Cairo with mediators from Egypt and Qatar — two nations working alongside the United States to broker a ceasefire in the besieged territory.

“We are ready to release all Israeli captives in exchange for a serious prisoner swap deal, an end to the war, the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip and the entry of humanitarian aid,” Taher al-Nunu, a senior Hamas official, told AFP.

However, he accused Israel of obstructing progress towards a ceasefire.

“The issue is not the number of captives,” Nunu said, “but rather that the occupation is reneging on its commitments, blocking the implementation of the ceasefire agreement and continuing the war.”

“Hamas has therefore stressed the need for guarantees to compel the occupation (Israel) to uphold the agreement,” he added.

Israeli news website Ynet reported on Monday that a new proposal had been put to Hamas.

Under the deal, the group would release 10 living hostages in exchange for US guarantees that Israel would enter negotiations for a second phase of the ceasefire.

The first phase of the ceasefire, which began on January 19 and included multiple hostage-prisoner exchanges, lasted two months before disintegrating.

Efforts towards a new truce have stalled, reportedly over disputes regarding the number of hostages to be released by Hamas.

Meanwhile, Nunu said that Hamas would not disarm, a key condition that Israel has set for ending the war.

“The weapons of the resistance are not up for negotiation,” Nunu said.

The war in Gaza broke out after Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel. The attack resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.

Militants also took 251 hostages, 58 of whom are still held in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.

Gaza’s health ministry said on Sunday that at least 1,574 Palestinians had been killed since March 18, when the ceasefire collapsed, taking the overall death toll since the war began to 50,944.

ceasefire Conflict Egypt Gaza Gaza Strip Gaza war Hamas hostage rescue Israel Palestine Qatar United States

Daniel Warner, Counterpunch, April 11, 2025

Photograph Source: Tasnim News Agency – CC BY 4.0

The Israeli killing of medical workers in Gaza is further proof of a lack of any restraint on the part of Israel’s Defense Forces (IDF). They have been accused of executing 15 handcuffed medics before burying them in a mass grave underneath their crushed ambulances in southern Gaza. As Middle East Eye reported on the medics: “They were found over the weekend in a mass grave with around 20 multiple gunshots in each one of them.” According to Mahmoud Basal, spokesperson for the Palestinian Civil Defence in Gaza; “At least one of them had their legs bound, another was decapitated and a third topless,” he added.

Here are some of the reactions to the execution:

The top United Nations interim official for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Jonathan Whittall, told journalists: “What is happening here defies decency, it defies humanity, it defies the law. It really is a war without limits. It’s an endless loop of blood, pain, and death.”

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) was “outraged.” IFRC Secretary General Jagan Chapagain stated: “Even in the most complex conflict zones, there are rules. These rules of International Humanitarian Law could not be clearer – civilians must be protected; humanitarians must be protected. Health services must be protected.”

“Preliminary analysis suggests they were executed, not from a distant range,” a forensic consultant who examined the exhumed bodies told The Guardian, “since the locations of the bullet wounds were specific and intentional,” he said. “One observation is that the bullets were aimed at one person’s head, another at their heart, and a third person had been shot with six or seven bullets in the torso.”

What was Israel’s explanation? “When Hamas terrorists operate in active combat zones — while using humanitarian vehicles as cover, launching rockets from hospitals and stealing aid — Israel will do whatever it takes to protect its soldiers and citizens,” justified Jonathan Harounoff, a spokesman for Israel’s mission to the U.N.

The New York Times contradicted Israel’s version of what happened: “The video obtained by the Timesshows that the approaching ambulances and fire truck were clearly marked and had their emergency signal lights on when Israeli troops hit them with a barrage of gunfire.” The video was discovered on the cellphone of one of the dead paramedics.

After watching the video, Farnaz Fassihi and Christoph Koettl described what they saw and heard in the Times. It is worth repeating the gruesome details:

“Rescue workers, at least two of whom can be seen wearing uniforms, are seen exiting a fire truck and an ambulance marked with the emblem of the Red Crescent and approaching the ambulance derailed to the side. Then, sounds of intense gunfire break out. A barrage of gunshots is seen and heard in the video hitting the convoy. The camera shakes, the video goes dark. But the audio continues for five minutes, and the rat-a-tat of gunfire does not stop. A man says in Arabic that there are Israelis present.

The paramedic filming is heard on the video reciting, over and over, the ‘shahada,’ or a Muslim declaration of faith, which people recite when facing death. ’There is no God but God, Muhammad is his messenger,’ the paramedic is heard saying. He asks God for forgiveness and says he knows he is going to die.

‘Forgive me, mother. This is the path I chose — to help people,’ he said.’”

After reports on the video went public, Israeli officials modified their initial justifications. “The Israeli military on Saturday [April 5] acknowledged that the initial accounts from troops involved in the killing last month of 15 people in southern Gaza — who the United Nations said were paramedics and rescue workers — had been partially ‘mistaken,’” journalist Isabel Kershner reported from Jerusalem. Israel now says the episode was “under thorough examination.” (The Times has interviewed several witnesses to the shootings Eyewitnesses Recount Deadly Israeli Attack on Medics in Gaza – The New York Times)

The outright assassination of medical workers is a new and different form of Israeli violations of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) in its continuing refusal to respect international norms. Over 50,000 people, including women, the elderly and children, have died in Gaza. An entire infrastructure has been destroyed. Millions have been displaced. IHL in all its complexities is only effective if it is respected by all parties to a conflict. Israel signed the Geneva Conventions on Dec. 8, 1949, and ratified them on July 6, 1951.

What happens if a party to a conflict like Israel continues to violate IHL in the most egregious manner? So far, very little. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visits Hungary and the United States as if they were normal diplomatic trips, ignoring the fact that the International Criminal Court has issued search warrants for his arrest. (The U.S. and has no obligation to arrest Netanyahu since is not party to the Rome Treaty.)

For years, my dear friend Eugene Schulman often wore a keffiyeh to honor the Palestinian people. He would regularly unfurl a Palestinian flag on his Geneva balcony in support of a Palestinian state. A non-practicing Jew, Gene was constantly outraged at how Palestinians were treated by Israel. Gene died five years ago next month – Matthew Stevenson movingly described him in CounterPunch (Our Friend Eugene Schulman – CounterPunch.org.). Gene would be beyond outrage today at what is happening to Palestinians.

Hunters have seasons to shoot. Their prey have respites. The IDF and Israeli military have shown it is an open season in Gaza. Nothing is out of bounds. There is no respite for anyone, including humanitarian workers and medics. Even the erudite Gene Schulman would not find words to describe what is taking place. He would be, as we all should be, beyond outrage.

Daniel Warner is the author of An Ethic of Responsibility in International Relations. (Lynne Rienner). He lives in Geneva.

Palestinians ethnically cleansed from Rafah in southern Gaza carry their belongings as they flee in search of safety on March 31, 2025.

(Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib/Anadolu via Getty Images)

“The entire city of Rafah is being swallowed up,” warned one Israeli human rights group. “The massive death zone… continues to grow by the day.”

Brett Wilkins, Common Dreams, Apr 09, 2025

The Israel Defense Forces is preparing to permanently seize the largely depopulated Palestinian city of Rafah—comprising about 20% of Gaza’s land area—and incorporate what was once the embattled enclave’s third-largest city into a borderland buffer that IDF troops have described as a “kill zone” rife with alleged war crimes.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretzreported Wednesday that “defense sources” said an area from the so-called Philadelphi corridor along Gaza’s border with Egypt and the Morag corridor—the name of a Jewish colony that once stood between Rafah and Khan Younis—will be incorporated into the buffer zone that runs along the entire length of the Israeli border.

The affected area includes the entire city of Rafah—which is thousands of years old—and surrounding neighborhoods, which were home to more than 250,000 people before Israeli launched what United Nations experts have called a genocidal assault on Gaza in retaliation for the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023.

As Haaretz‘s Yaniv Kubovitch reported:

Expanding the buffer zone to this extent carries significant implications. Not only does it cover a vast area—approximately 75 square kilometers (about 29 square miles), or roughly one-fifth of the Gaza Strip—but severing it would effectively turn Gaza into an enclave within Israeli-controlled territory, cutting it off from the Egyptian border. According to defense sources, this consideration played a central role in the decision to focus on Rafah…

It has yet to be decided whether the entire area will simply be designated a buffer zone that is off-limits to civilians—as has been done in other parts of the border area—or whether the area will be fully cleared and all buildings demolished, effectively wiping out the city of Rafah.

In recent weeks and for the second time during the war, IDF troops forcibly expelled hundreds of thousands residents from Rafah and other areas of southern Gaza in an ethnic cleansing campaign reminiscent of the 1948 Nakba, or “catastrophe” in Arabic, through which the modern state of Israel was founded. Most Gaza residents today are Nakba survivors or descendants of Palestinians who fled or were expelled from other parts of Palestine in 1948.

Earlier this month, Israeli officials including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—a fugitive from the International Criminal Court wanted for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza—and Defense Minister Israel Katz announced plans to seize “large areas” of southern Gaza to be added to what Katz called “security zones” and “settlements.”

Jewish recolonization of Gaza is a major objective of many right-wing Israelis. Last month, Katz announced the creation of a new IDF directorate tasked with ethnically cleansing northern Gaza, which Israeli leaders euphemistically call “voluntary emigration.” Katz said the agency would be run “in accordance with the vision of U.S. President Donald Trump,” who in February said that the United States would “take over” Gaza after emptying the strip of its over 2 million Palestinians, and then transform the enclave into the “Riviera of the Middle East.” Trump subsequently attempted to walk back some of his comments.

Earlier this week, the Israeli human rights group Breaking the Silence published testimonies of IDF officers, soldiers, and veterans who took part in the creation of the buffer zone. Soldiers recounted orders to “deliberately, methodically, and systematically annihilate whatever was within the designated perimeter, including entire residential neighborhoods, public buildings, educational institutions, mosques, and cemeteries, with very few exceptions.”

Palestinians who dared enter the perimeter, even accidentally were targeted, including civilian men, women, children, and elders. One officer featured in the report toldThe Guardian: “We’re killing [men], we’re killing their wives, their children, their cats, their dogs. We’re destroying their houses and pissing on their graves.”

Most of Gaza’s more than 2 million residents have been forcibly displaced at least once since Israel launched the war, which has left more than 180,000 Palestinians dead, wounded, or missing, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Widespread starvation and disease have been fueled by a “complete siege” which, among other Israeli policies and actions, has been cited in the ongoing South Africa-led genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.

An Unconstitutional Rampage

about:blank

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

Brett Wilkins

Brett Wilkins is a staff writer for Common Dreams.

Full Bio >