Breaking the Silence

‘Another Day, Another Cover-Up,’ Rights Group Says as IDF Releases Report on Medics’ Killing

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Original article by Julia Conley republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Members of the Palestine Red Crescent and other emergency services pray by the bodies of fellow rescuers killed a week earlier by Israeli forces, during a funeral procession at Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on March 31, 2025. (Photo: Eyad Baba/AFP via Getty Images)

“This report doesn’t even attempt to engage with the truth,” said the Israeli group Breaking the Silence.

The Israel Defense Forces’ report on the killing of 15 paramedics in Gaza last month was “sure to lead to increased demands for an independent investigation,” said one journalist for Sky News, which recently released an extensive account of the incident that experts and advocates have called a potential war crime.

The IDF said it had found “several professional failures, breaches of orders, and a failure to fully report the incident” that took place on March 23, when Israeli troops opened fire on a convoy of vehicles that included ambulances, killing the 15 rescue workers.

But officials claimed that there was “no attempt to conceal the event” and the report suggested the firing of a deputy commander for providing an “inaccurate report” and the reprimanding of a commanding officer should satisfy the international outcry over the incident, after which United Nations and Palestinian Red Crescent officials discovered the medics’ bodies and their crushed rescue vehicles had been buried in a shallow mass grave.

“Is this meant to be a joke?” said Palestinian writer and poet Mosab Abu Toha after the IDF announced the commanders would be fired and reprimanded. “How is this supposed to help the children and families of these medics? …These war criminals should be arrested and handed over to the [International Criminal Court] for due legal processing.”

The IDF report found that six out of 15 Palestinians killed “were identified in a retrospective examination as Hamas terrorists,” but did not produce evidence to support the claim; Sky News, which released its investigation on on Friday, also did not find evidence.

The report also claimed that the army decided to “gather and cover the bodies to prevent further harm and clear the vehicles from the route in preparation for civilian evacuation”—an explanation for the buried bodies and ambulances.

As Common Dreams reported earlier this month, the IDF’s claim that soldiers “did not randomly attack” the convoy but rather fired on suspected “terrorists” in “suspicious vehicles” was refuted by video evidence from the phone of one of the medics who was found in the mass grave—believed to be Refaat Radwan.

The video showed a convoy of clearly marked ambulances and fire truck, with headlights and flashing lights on—contradicting the IDF’s claim that the vehicles were driving with their lights off.

Despite the video evidence, the IDF report said there was “no evidence to support claims of execution” and accused those who have made such accusations of “blood libels.”

The Sky News report released Friday found that Israel’s claim that the medics were not fired at from a close distance was false and that expert analysis of Radwan’s cellphone video determined shots had been fired from as close as 12 meters away

Palestinian-American policy analyst Yousef Munayyer said that in the case of the medics’ killing, “video evidence exposed [the IDF’s] lies forcing this flimsy effort mascarading as accountability so they can sweep it under the rug.”

Israel is able to repeatedly attack civilians and aid workers and claim that their deaths were accidental, Munayyer suggested, because “western media is willing to believe as fact initial Israeli narratives around atrocities.”

The Israeli probe found “professional failures,” said former Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth, but the IDF “doesn’t seem to have examined the rules of engagement, approved by senior officials, that permit killing before clear identification of a combatant.”

The killing of the paramedics underscored the “atmosphere of impunity” in Gaza, said one Israeli policy analyst.

“What we know is that we cannot trust the Israeli [military]. Unless The New York Times would have gotten hold of that video clip, I don’t think that we would know the truth,” Akiva Eldar told Al Jazeera. “It would be another cover-up.”

Human rights lawyer Geoffrey Nice told Al Jazeera that the IDF report “invites many questions that it will be difficult, I suspect, for the [Israeli military] to answer.”

“For example, [there is] the proposition that six of these people were Hamas, presumably members of Hamas on active [military] service, not people who might have been associated with Hamas in some way. No documentary evidence at all is identified [for that],” he told the outlet.

Breaking the Silence, a group made up of Israeli veterans of the IDF who speak out against Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories, said the report was “riddled with contradictions, vague phrasing, and selective details.”

“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,” said the group.

“Another day, another cover-up,” Breaking the Silence added. “More innocent lives taken, with no accountability.”

Original article by Julia Conley republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

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New Reporting Details ‘Large Scale’ Use of Human Shields by Israel in Gaza

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Original article by Olivia Rosane republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Footage shows a Palestinian man being used by the Israel Defense Forces as a human shield. (Photo: Al Jazeera)

“The earliest testimony we have on it is from a soldier who was aware of it just a few weeks after the ground invasion began,” one human rights expert said. “The latest testimony we have on this is from the summer.”

The Israel Defense Forces routinely use detained Palestinians as human shields in Gaza, according to testimony from four Palestinians and one IDF soldier shared withThe Washington Post.

Their stories, published on Sunday, build on other accounts from Haaretz, Al Jazeera, the international press, and Defense for Children International to reveal a pattern of Israeli soldiers forcing Palestinians—including children—to enter buildings or tunnels ahead of them to check for militants or explosives, in clear violation of international law.

“This wasn’t something that happened just here and there but rather on a large scale throughout a number of different units, at different times, throughout the war and in different places,” Joel Carmel, advocacy director of Breaking the Silence, told The Washington Post.

“My hospital was turning into rubble, and they were asking me to demolish it with my own hands.”

The incidents recounted to the Post occurred between January and August. One man, 20-year-old Mohammed Saad, said he was detained by the IDF in June and interrogated for several days. Then, a new pattern began. Every day, he and two other Palestinian men were blindfolded and taken to a different location. They were made to wear IDF uniforms, given cameras, and told to enter buildings ahead of the Israeli soldiers to film and check for explosives. On the second day, an explosion went off after Saad had made his forced investigation.

“They tied my hands and threw me on the sand,” he recalled. “They took turns beating me. I still don’t know where the explosion came from.”

Another time, the captain of the unit he was detained by showed him an image of his family home destroyed by bombing.

“If you do not cooperate with us, we will kill all your family members like this,” the captain said.

On the 15th day of Saab’s ordeal, he was given civilian clothes and told to walk. As he did so, he felt a pain and realized he had been shot in the back.

The other three Palestinians interviewed by the Post were detained during the IDF’s raid on al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City in March. One was a surgeon at the hospital, while the other two were taken from their homes nearby. They were made to enter the hospital building ahead of IDF troops, remove any barriers, and take pictures of each room they entered.

“I was telling them that my hands are precious for my work; I am the only vascular surgeon here,” the surgeon, Omar al-Jadba recalled to the Post. “My hospital was turning into rubble, and they were asking me to demolish it with my own hands.”

The IDF soldier, who spoke anonymously, said that two Palestinian detainees were placed with his unit to make sure that buildings were safe to enter. One of them was only a teenager. His commander said the two men were terrorists, but then later said they could be released after the mission was over.

“At this point we understood that if we could release them, then they were not terrorists,” the soldier, a reservist, told the Post. “The officer just lied to us.”

“Every one of their accusations is a confession.”

Another group of soldiers questioned the use of human shields, telling a higher-level commander that it was against international law.

“He told us that international law is not important and the only thing that simple soldiers need to think about is the ethical code of the IDF,” the soldier told the Post.

However, the IDF said in a statement that its orders prohibit the use of human shields.

Breaking the Silence, a group that records testimonies from Israeli soldiers in the occupied Palestinian territories, said the reservist’s account was in line with others they had received.

“The earliest testimony we have on it is from a soldier who was aware of it just a few weeks after the ground invasion began,” Carmel said. “The latest testimony we have on this is from the summer.”

The Post reporting came the same day as a major Associated Press investigation into Israeli raids on three hospitals in northern Gaza at the end of 2023. Israel has often justified its hospital raids with the claim that Hamas operates from the inside, turning all the patients and doctors into human shields. However, the AP concluded that “Israel has presented little or even no evidence of a significant Hamas presence at the three” hospitals it considered: the al-Awda, Indonesian, and Kamal Adwan hospitals.

“What do [former U.S. President Donald] Trump and [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu have in common?” asked journalist Mehdi Hasan in response to the Post‘s reporting. “Many things but especially… projection. Every one of their accusations is a confession.”

Other commenters responded to the clear violations of international law and questioned why the U.S. continues to provide weapons and funding to the IDF while it engages in war crimes.

The Austin for Palestine coalition shared a quote from the article, noting that what it described was “paid for by our tax dollars.”

Original article by Olivia Rosane republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue ReadingNew Reporting Details ‘Large Scale’ Use of Human Shields by Israel in Gaza