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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 miltary 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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International Legal Coalition Launched to 'Pursue Israeli War Crimes Suspects'
"Under international law, states have a duty to investigate and prosecute war crimes, yet these obligations have been systematically neglected," one of the initiative's founders lamented.
Mar 19, 2025
Lawyers from half a dozen countries on Tuesday launched a coalition dedicated to bringing Israelis and dual nationals accused of war crimes in Palestine to justice.
The U.K.-based International Center of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP) hosted a launch event in London for the new initiative, called Global 195. ICJP said lawyers will "pursue Israeli war crimes suspects across the world" via arrest warrant applications and the initiation of legal proceedings including private prosecutions against implicated members and veterans of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), as well as "figures spanning the entire Israeli military and political chain of command, from senior policymakers to operational personnel, who are directly or indirectly responsible for violations of international law."
Participants include attorneys from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Canada, Malaysia, Norway, Turkey, and the United Kingdom, where "advanced preparations have already been made to pursue legal action against British citizens suspected of joining the IDF or committing war crimes in Gaza and the West Bank."
For the past 18 months, ICJP has been collecting evidence as part of its Justice for Gaza campaign, including 135 eyewitness testimonies backed by open-source intelligence. Documented violations of international law include indiscriminate and disproportionate bombing of civilians, attacks on designated "safe zones,"s airstrikes targeting refugee camps, use of starvation as a weapon of war, and forced displacement.
"The obstruction of international legal institutions in pursuing individuals responsible for war crimes in Palestine, coupled with the failure of national police forces to fulfill their obligations under humanitarian law and universal jurisdiction principles, has allowed impunity for Israeli suspected war criminals to persist," ICJP director Tayab Ali said in a statement.
"Under international law, states have a duty to investigate and prosecute war crimes, yet these obligations have been systematically neglected," Ali added. "The launch of Global 195 is a necessary legal intervention to remedy this failure. By activating domestic legal mechanisms across multiple jurisdictions, we are ensuring that those responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Gaza are subject to legal accountability and no longer have anywhere to hide."
Huseyin Disli, vice president of the Worldwide Lawyers Association, noted that "no domestic court has issued arrest warrants for Israeli genocide war criminals, exposing the failure of the international legal order" and called the global legal community "incoherent in its goals."
Israel is currently the subject of an International Court of Justice genocide case filed by South Africa, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant are fugitives from the International Criminal Court, which last November issued arrest warrants over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. However, key nations including the United States—which has not ratified the Rome Statute upon which the ICC is based—have ignored the warrants, and last month the Trump administration imposed sanctions on the tribunal.
Since October 2023, Israeli forces have killed or wounded more than 175,000 Palestinians in Gaza, including people who are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath rubble, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. On Tuesday, Israel unilaterally abandoned an eight-week cease-fire and resumed its assault on Gaza, killing more than 400 people including at least 174 children in airstrikes that wiped out entire families.
United Nations experts, international jurists, human rights groups, and others have found that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, as well as crimes including indiscriminate and disproportionate killing of civilians, extrajudicial killing, torture, sexual violence including rape, use of starvation as a weapon of war, and forced displacement.
The launch of Global 195 follows the establishment last September of the
Hind Rajab Foundation, a Belgium-based legal group that pursues arrest warrants for alleged Israeli war criminals traveling abroad. The organization is named after a 6-year-old Palestinian girl who was killed—along with six relatives—by Israeli forces in January 2024 while trying to flee to safety in a car. Two paramedics who tried to rescue her were also killed.
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As Israel Pulls Plug on Gaza, Smotrich Says Trump's Ethnic Cleansing Plan 'Taking Shape'
"By openly trying to starve and freeze an entire civilian population to death, the far-right government of indicted war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu has once again clearly demonstrated its genocidal intent in Gaza," said CAIR.
Mar 09, 2025
Israel's finance minister said Sunday that U.S. President Donald Trump's plan to ethnically cleanse Gaza is proceeding, remarks that came on the same day as Israel completely cut off electricity from the last receiving facility in the obliterated Palestinian enclave.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich of the far-right Religious Zionism party told fellow Knesset lawmakers that "this plan is taking shape, with ongoing actions in coordination" with the Trump administration.
Smotrich said that he is working with Cabinet members including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz to establish a "migration administration" that will oversee the removal of an indeterminate number of Gaza's approximately 2.1 million people, most of whom are descendants of Palestinians who fled or were ethnically cleansed from what is now Israel during the modern Jewish state's founding in 1948.
While Smotrich insisted that Palestinian removal would be "voluntary," it is highly questionable whether many Palestinians would leave what remains of their homeland of their own free will, or what kind of incentives it would take to convince them to go.
Last month, Trump—who on Wednesday threatened to kill everyone in Gaza unless Hamas handed over the dozens of remaining Israeli and other hostages it has held for over 500 days—vowed that the U.S. would "own" Gaza.
U.S. developers, the president said, will "level" Gaza and build the "Riviera of the Middle East" there after Palestinians—"all of them"—leave. Asked if his plan involved sending U.S. troops to Gaza, Trump replied, "If it's necessary, we'll do that."
Forced removal of people by an occupying power is a war crime according to Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, under which Israel's apartheid settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem are also illegal.
Smotrich said Sunday that the so-called Trump Plan "involves identifying key countries, understanding their interests—both with the U.S. and with us—and fostering cooperation."
"Just to give you an idea—if we remove 10,000 people a day, seven days a week, it will take six months," Smotrich said. "If we remove 5,000 people a day, it will take a year. Of course, this is assuming we have countries willing to take them, but these are very, very, very long processes."
Leaders of both Egypt and Jordan, where Trump has proposed sending Gazans, vehemently oppose the plan. A counterproposal issued by Egypt and other Arab nations—which involves rebuilding Gaza without forcibly displacing its residents—has the support of the 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation and nations including China, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and Italy.
Smotrich's remarks came on the same day that Israeli Energy Minister Eli Cohen said that he "just signed an order for the immediate halt of electricity to the Gaza Strip" as part of a policy to use "all of the tools that are at our disposal to ensure the return of all the hostages."
Smotrich weighed in on the power cut, arguing that "the Gaza Strip must be completely and immediately blacked out as long as even one Israeli hostage is being held there."
Israeli officials believe 24 hostages are still alive in Gaza, including 22 Israelis, one Thai, and one Nepali. The bodies of 35 hostages who died or were killed after their abduction are also being held in Gaza.
"Israel must bomb the huge fuel depots that entered the strip as part of the unfortunate deal, as well as the generators operated by Hamas," Smotrich said, referring to the crumbling cease-fire that went into effect on January 19. Israel stands accused of nearly 1,000 violations of the truce.
In recent days, renewed but limited Israeli airstrikes and statements from Israeli leaders about resuming a full assault on Gaza have further imperiled the shaky cease-fire.
Electricity was first cut off to Gaza in the immediate aftermath of the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, as then-Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant announced a "complete siege" of the coastal strip. The ongoing blockade has fueled deadly starvation, disease, and exposure.
Along with Israel's bombardment and invasion—which have left more than 170,000 Palestinians dead, maimed or missing in Gaza—the siege is cited in the South Africa-led genocide case currently before the International Court of Justice. Netanyahu and Gallant are also wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. Hamas leader Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri is also a fugitive from the ICC.
Humanitarian groups warned that the suspension of electricity to Gaza could force the shutdown of the strip's two functioning desalination plants, reducing the already scarce supply of fresh water.
However, Hamas spokesperson Hazem Qassem said Sunday that the electricity cutoff probably wouldn't have much impact, given the existing siege. But Qassem still called the move "behavior that confirms the occupation's intent to continue its genocidal war against Gaza, through the use of starvation policies, in clear disregard for all international laws and norms."
Hamas further slammed the Israeli move as "cheap and unacceptable blackmail."
In the United States, the Council on American-Islamic Relations condemned what it called "Israel's latest act of genocide in Gaza."
"By openly trying to starve and freeze an entire civilian population to death, the far-right government of indicted war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu has once again clearly demonstrated its genocidal intent in Gaza," CAIR said in a statement. "Banning food, water, fuel, medical supplies—and now electricity—threatens the lives of everyone in Gaza."
"The United States and other western nations must stop treating Palestinians as less than human and stop giving this one government impunity as it flagrantly violates international law," the group added.
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