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international court of justice
Israeli Troops Blow Whistle on War Crimes in Gaza 'Kill Zone'
One IDF officer said that not only are Israeli troops killing military-age males, "we're killing their wives, their children, their cats, their dogs. We're destroying their houses and pissing on their graves."
Apr 07, 2025
An Israeli human rights group on Monday published a report in which Israel Defense Forces officers and soldiers who took part in the creation of a buffer zone along Gaza's border with Israel described alleged war crimes including indiscriminate killing, as well as the wholesale deliberate destruction of civilian infrastructure in what multiple whistleblowers called a "kill zone."
The new report from Breaking the Silence (BTS) details how Israel—which for decades has dubiously relied upon defensive buffer zones in territories it conquers or controls—decided on a policy of "widespread, deliberate destruction" in order to create a security perimeter ranging between roughly half a mile and a mile in width on the Gaza side of the Israeli-Palestinian border.
"To create this area, Israel launched a major military engineering operation that, by means of wholesale destruction, entirely reshaped about 16% of the Gaza Strip... an area previously home to some 35% of Gaza's agricultural land," the report states. "The perimeter extends from the coast in the north to the Egyptian border in the south, all within the territory of the Gaza Strip and outside of Israel's internationally recognized borders."
"The mission given to soldiers in the field, as revealed in their testimonies, was to create an empty, completely flat expanse about a kilometer wide along the Gaza side of the border fence," the publication continues. "This space was to have no crops, structures, or people. Almost every object, infrastructure installation, and structure within the perimeter was demolished."
"Palestinians were denied entry into the area altogether, a ban which was enforced using live fire, including machine gun fire and tank shells. In this way, the military created a death zone of enormous proportions," the report adds. "Places where people had lived, farmed, and established industry were transformed into a vast wasteland, a strip of land eradicated in its entirety."
"The testimonies demonstrate that soldiers were given 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," the paper says. "Industrial zones and agricultural areas which served the entire population of Gaza were laid to waste, regardless of whether those areas had any connection whatsoever to the fighting."
"Places where people had lived, farmed, and established industry were transformed into a vast wasteland."
Palestinians who dared enter the perimeter, even accidentally were also targeted, including civilian men, women, children, and elders. The officers and soldiers interviewed by BTS struggled to explain whether noncombatants were informed of the no-go zone's limits, with one saying civilians knew to stay away when they saw that "enough people died or got injured" crossing the unmarked boundary.
Some people who entered the perimeter out of sheer desperation were targeted. Israel's blockade of Gaza has fueled widespread and sometimes deadly starvation, and Palestinians entered the "kill zone" to pick hubeiza, a nutritious wild plant, after the area's farmland was razed.
"The IDF really is fulfilling the public's wishes, which state: 'There are no innocents in Gaza. We'll show them,'" one reserve warrant officer explained. "People were incriminated for having bags in their hands. Guy showed up with a bag? Incriminated, terrorist. I believe they came to pick hubeiza, but... boom," tank shells were fired at him from half a mile away.
In a separate interview with The Guardian, that same officer said that at first, his attitude toward invading Gaza was, "I went there because they killed us and now we're going to kill them."
"And I found out that we're not only killing them—we're killing them, we're killing their wives, their children, their cats, their dogs," they added. "We're destroying their houses and pissing on their graves."
Another IDF reservist officer told BTS that he was briefed that "there is no civilian population" in the area, where Palestinians are "terrorists, all of them." Asked what the area looked like after the IDF clearing operation, the officer replied: "Hiroshima."
A captain in an armored division of the IDF reserves said "the borderline is a kill zone" where "there are no clear rules of engagement" or "proper combat procedure."
"Anyone who crosses a certain line, that we have defined, is considered a threat and is sentenced to death," the captain added.
The BTS report follows an investigation published last December by Haaretz, Israel's oldest newspaper, in which IDF soldiers and veterans described a "kill zone" in the Netzarim corridor in the heart of Gaza, where troops were ordered to shoot "anyone who enters."
"The forces in the field call it 'the line of dead bodies,'" one commander said. "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."
The new report comes as Israeli forces are carrying out an ethnic cleansing campaign in which hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are being forcibly expelled from areas of Gaza including the south and an expanded border perimeter. The Associated Pressreported Monday that Israel "now controls more than 50% of the territory and is squeezing Palestinians into shrinking wedges of land."
Israeli troops are moving to seize large tracts of the Gaza Strip for a so-called "security zone" and Jewish recolonization. Members of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's far-right government have said the campaign is being coordinated with the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump, who in February said that the United States would "take over" Gaza, remove all of its Palestinians, and transform the Mediterranean enclave into the "Riviera of the Middle East."
On Monday, Netanyahu arrived in Washington, D.C. from Hungary for talks with Trump and other U.S. officials regarding topics including a Gaza cease-fire, release of the remaining hostages held by Hamas, Iran policy, and tariffs. Netanyahu is a fugitive from the International Criminal Court, which last year issued arrest warrants for him and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, including extermination and using starvation as a weapon of war.
Israel is also facing a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its conduct in a war that has left more than 180,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing in Gaza and almost all of the strip's more than 2 million people forcibly displaced—often multiple times.
Israel's bombing and invasion of Gaza continued on Monday. An early morning IDF strike on a tent where numerous journalists were sleeping outside Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis killed Palestine Today reporter Hilmi al-Faqaawi and another man, who were burned alive as helpless witnesses were unable to douse the flames or rescue victims.
Nine others were reportedly wounded in the attack, which the IDF said targeted a Hamas member posing as a journalist. More than 230 journalists have been
killed by Israeli bombs and bullets since October 2023.
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Journalist Burned Alive in Tent Strike Among Scores of Gazans Killed by Israeli Forces
"How many more Israeli war crimes do we need to witness?" asked one Australian journalist.
Apr 07, 2025
Scores of Palestinians have been killed by Israel Defense Forces' bombing of the Gaza Strip since Sunday, including numerous children as well as a journalist who was burned alive in a Monday strike targeting a tent full of sleeping journalists.
The IDF strike on the journalists' tent outside Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis in southern Gaza at approximately 2:00 am local time Monday killed Palestine Today reporter Hilmi al-Faqaawi and another man, identified as Yusuf Al-Khazandar, both of whom burned to death as helpless bystanders tried but were unable to rescue them from the flames.
Al Jazeerareported that nine other people—including journalists Hassan Eslaih, Ahmed al-Agha, Muhammad Fayek, Abdallah Al-Attar, Ihab al-Bardini, and Mahmoud Awad—were injured in the strike. Palestine's Quds News Networkpublished footage of the burning tent, as well as Eslaih and al-Bardini in the hospital, the latter suffering from wounds to his head caused by shrapnel, a fragment of which pierced one of his eyes.
"The international community's failure to act has allowed these attacks on the press to continue with impunity."
The IDF said it carried out the strike in a bid to assassinate Eslaih, whom it accused of being a member of Hamas' Khan Younis Brigade posing as a journalist, partly because of his on-the-ground coverage of the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel. Eslaih, who previously worked for The Associated Press and CNN, had repeatedly been threatened by Israel amid his tireless coverage of its annihilation of Gaza.
The latest attack on journalists by Israel—which has killed well over 200 media professionals since October 2023—drew global condemnation and calls for U.S. corporate media to give more coverage to Israeli targeting of media professionals.
"This is not the first time Israel has targeted a tent sheltering journalists in Gaza. The international community's failure to act has allowed these attacks on the press to continue with impunity, undermining efforts to hold perpetrators accountable," said Sara Qudah, the Middle East and North Africa director at the Committee to Protect Journalists. "CPJ calls on authorities to allow the injured, some of whom have sustained severe burns, to be evacuated immediately for treatment and to stop attacking Gaza’s already devastated press corps."
🚨CPJ denounces Israel’s targeted airstrike that hit a media tent in southern Gaza on Monday, killing one journalist and injuring eight others, and calls on the international community to act to stop Israel killing Palestinian journalists. Read more: cpj.org?p=470309
[image or embed]
— Committee to Protect Journalists (@pressfreedom.bsky.social) April 7, 2025 at 10:09 AM
The Council on American-Islamic Relations said in a statement, "We call on all U.S. media outlets to air the video of journalists burning alive in their media tent after the Israeli government's bombing."
"Journalists must be the first in line to expose the intentional mass murder of fellow journalists, and the American people must be able to see the horror perpetrated in Gaza with American weapons and taxpayer dollars," CAIR added. "We call on every state and national association of journalists to condemn the Israeli government's bombing of a media tent in Gaza and express solidarity with the Palestinian journalists facing targeted assassination for just doing their jobs."
Antoinette Lattouf, a prolific Australian journalist, wrote on the Bluesky social network: "I feel physically ill. How are images of Palestinian journalists being burned alive not top story on every news site? This is after we watched the execution of paramedics. How many more Israeli war crimes do we need to witness? Or have we accepted our institutions and their so-called values are a lie?"
Monday's strikes followed Sunday bombing that killed dozens of Palestinians, including strikes on the al-Tuffah neighborhood of Gaza City that reportedly left 11 Palestinians, including nine children, dead and many others wounded. Other deadly IDF air and artillery strikes were also reported in cities including Khan Younis and Deir al-Balah. These attacks included an airstrike on a community kitchen in Khan Younis that killed seven people, at least three of whom were reportedly children.
Since October 2023, Israel's bombing, invasion, and "complete siege" of Gaza have left more than 180,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing, according to Gaza's Health Ministry. Israel's policies and practices in the war are the subject of an International Court of Justice genocide case brought by South Africa and backed by more than 30 nations and regional blocs.
Additionally, nearly everyone in Gaza has been forcibly displaced, sometimes multiple times, as Israeli forces move to seize large tracts of the Gaza Strip for a so-called "security zone" and Jewish recolonization. Israeli officials claim this ethnic cleansing is being carried out in coordination with the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump, who has walked back some of his earlier comments asserting that the United States would "take over" Gaza, empty it of Palestinians, and build the "Riviera of the Middle East" in the Mediterranean enclave.
On Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived in the United States from Hungary for talks with Trump and others on topics including Gaza, the hostages held by Hamas, Iran policy, and the 17% tariff Trump imposed on Israel last week, even though the country—which counts the U.S. as its biggest trade partner—lifted all levies on American imports in a bid to avert the move.
The Israeli newspaper
Haaretzreported that Netanyahu's aircraft deviated from the normal Budapest-Washington, D.C. route by about 250 miles (400 km) to avoid the airspace of the Netherlands, Ireland, and Iceland, which officials feared could enforce arrest warrants issued last year by the International Criminal Court against the prime minister for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, including using starvation as a weapon of war. Far-right Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Trump have both rejected the warrants, and the latter has sanctioned the ICC.
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Major Gaza Land Grab Underway as Israel's Ethnic Cleansing Escalates
Israeli forces also bombed an U.N. clinic in Jabalia, killing at least 22 Palestinians including elders, women, and children—one of them a newborn baby.
Apr 02, 2025
Israel's far-right government on Wednesday admitted to a major land grab in the embattled Gaza Strip, where the forced removal of Palestinians accelerated amid ongoing airstrikes that killed scores of civilians, including at least 22 people slain in the bombing of a health clinic run by the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees.
Defense Minister Israel Katz said the Israel Defense Forces' (IDF) renewed assault is "expanding to crush and clean" Gaza while "seizing large areas that will be added to the security zones of the state of Israel for the protection of fighting forces and the settlements," a reference to plans by far-right members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government for the ethnic cleansing and Israeli recolonization of the Palestinian enclave.
"Did you decide that we are sacrificing hostages for capturing land?"
Israeli forces control what they call a buffer zone along Gaza's entire border and on Monday ordered a sweeping evacuatione that forced approximately 140,000 Palestinians to flee from Rafah and other areas. In scenes reminiscent of the Nakba—during which over 750,000 Arabs fled or were forced from Palestine during the establishment of the modern state of Israel in 1948—Palestinian families were seen carrying their possessions or loading them atop vehicles and donkey carts as they sought ever-elusive safety.
Ihab Suliman, a former university professor forcibly expelled from Jabalia with his family, toldThe Associated Press on Monday that "there is no longer any taste to life. Life and death have become one and the same for us."
The fresh wave of expulsions follows last month's creation of a new IDF directorate tasked with ethnically cleansing northern Gaza under the guise of "voluntary emigration." Katz said the agency would be run "in accordance with the vision of U.S. President Donald Trump," who last month said that the United States would "take over" Gaza after emptying the strip of its over 2 million Palestinians and transform the coastal enclave into the "Riviera of the Middle East." Trump has since attempted to walk back some of his comments.
The renewed ethnic cleansing of southern Gaza came amid heavy IDF airstrikes throughout the strip, including the Wednesday bombing of a clinic-turned-shelter run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) in Jabalia that killed at least 22 civilians, including women, children, and elders and wounded dozens more, according to local officials. Graphic video of the strike's aftermath showed a man holding up the headless body of a newborn baby outside the Indonesian Hospital in Beit Lahia.
Gaza's Government Media Office called the strike "a full-fledged war crime," while the Palestinian Foreign Ministry urged the international community to pressure Israel "to halt its genocide, displacement, and annexation, and impose a political settlement per international law."
Israel admitted to carrying out the strike, claiming it targeted "Hamas terrorists" hiding among the civilians. Israeli policy implemented after Hamas led the deadliest-ever attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 permits the IDF to knowingly kill an unlimited number of civilians in order to kill just one Hamas member, no matter their rank or role in the organization.
Katz called on Gaza residents to "expel Hamas and return all hostages" kidnapped from Israel on October 7.
However, the umbrella group representing families of some of the abductees—24 of whom are believed to still be alive—on Wednesday accused Netanyahu of "burying the hostages alive" by unilaterally abandoning aa cease-fire with Hamas last month.
"Did you decide that we are sacrificing hostages for capturing land?" the Hostages and Missing Families Forum asked following Katz's announcement. "Instead of getting the hostages out in a deal and ending the war, Israel's government is sending more soldiers to Gaza to fight in the same places that they already fought over and over again."
Since March 18, when Israel broke the cease-fire with Hamas and resumed its assault on Gaza, more than 1,000 Palestinians, including over 320 children, have been killed, and thousands more wounded, according to local and international officials.
Since Israel resumed its terror bombing of Gaza on March 18, every day we see images of small children with their heads or limbs blown off by U.S. weapons. Doctors having to cut holiday clothes off of children in a desperate attempt to save them. Amputations without anesthesia.
— Jeremy Scahill ( @jeremyscahill.com) April 2, 2025 at 3:51 AM
Since October 2023, Israeli forces have killed or wounded more than 175,000 Palestinians in Gaza, most of them women and children, according the Gaza Health Ministry. That figure includes at least 14,000 people who are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath rubble. Almost all of Gaza's more than 2 million people have been forcibly displaced, often multiple times. Meanwhile, Israel's "complete siege" of Gaza has exacerbated widespread and sometimes deadly starvation and illness.
On Monday, the Gaza Government Media Office said that at least 1,513 humanitarian workers have also been killed by Israeli forces since October 2023. It is uncertain whether that figure includes the 15 first responders—including eight Red Crescent workers and six Civil Defense personnel—whose bodies, some of them allegedly bound and shot, were found in a mass grave that day.
Israel is facing an ongoing genocide case at the International Court of Justice, and Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant are fugitives from the International Criminal Court (ICC), which last year issued arrest warrants for the pair for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The ICC joined human rights groups on Wednesday in condemning Netanyahu trip to Hungary, a signatory to the Rome Statute governing the world's top war crimes tribunal. Hungarian President Viktor Orbán and other members of his far-right government are set to welcome Netanyahu for a four-day visit underscoring both countries' disdain for international law.
Meanwhile in the illegally occupied West Bank—where thousands of Palestinians have been killed or wounded by IDF troops and Jewish settler-colonists since October 2023—the UNRWA area director said this week that the scale of forced displacement is unprecedented during the 58 years of Israeli occupation.
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