DAILY TRIFECTA: Let Yahweh Sort 'Em Out
War without limits
THE SET-UP: We often talk about news orgs “dropping” a new “explosive” story or we’ll call an investigative piece a “bombshell.” That seems a bit ghoulish when the story is about actual bombs. And, in the case of the NY Times’s deep dive into the IDF’s “loose” rules of engagement, it’s also a bit inaccurate. Yes, it’s solid, detailed reporting, but not particularly groundbreaking. Mostly, it confirms work that’s already been done by two Israeli sources—Haaretz and 972+ Magazine.
Haaretz reported on the IDF’s “kill zones” at the end of last March. 972+ Magazine followed-up just a few days later with an exposé of the IDF’s indiscriminate and highly suspect targeting system. Both relied on multiple IDF sources and their reporting has been repeatedly reconfirmed by the relentless carnage that’s followed. A quick Google search of “children” and “Gaza” will yield dozens of reports of provable non-combatants (children) dying in one attack after another. Even more telling is the number of times we’ve seen reports of entire families being wiped out in a single airstrike. The NY Times does fill-in some of the operational details behind entire families being functionally eliminated, so … yes … they “advanced” the story. It just took a while. The Associated Press reported on that emerging pattern last June.
And while the Times is playing catch-up, Haaretz is, as you’ll see below, still at the leading edge of the reporting on what’s happening inside Gaza. - jp
TITLE: Israel Loosened Its Rules to Bomb Hamas Fighters, Killing Many More Civilians
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/26/world/middleeast/israel-hamas-gaza-bombing.html
EXCERPTS: Under Israeli military protocols, there are four categories of risk for civilian casualties: Level Zero, which forbids soldiers to put any civilians at risk; Level One, which allows up to five civilian deaths; Level Two, which allows up to 10; and Level Three, which allows up to 20 — and became the standard on Oct. 7.
Suddenly, officers could decide to drop one-ton bombs on a vast array of military infrastructure — including small ammunition stockpiles and rocket factories — as well as on all Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters. The definition of a military target included lookouts and money changers suspected of handling Hamas’s funds, as well as the entrances to the group’s underground tunnel network, which were often hidden in homes.
Authorization from senior commanders was required only if the target was too close to a sensitive site, like a school or health facility, though such strikes were regularly approved too.
The effect was swift. Airwars, a London-based conflict monitor, documented 136 strikes that each killed at least 15 people in October 2023 alone. That was almost five times the number the group has documented during any comparable period anywhere in the world since it was founded a decade ago.
Strikes that endangered more than 100 civilians were occasionally permitted to target a handful of Hamas leaders, as long as senior generals or sometimes the political leadership approved, according to four Israeli officers involved in target selection. Three of them said those targeted included Ibrahim Biari, a senior Hamas commander killed in northern Gaza in late October, in an attack that Airwars estimated killed at least 125 others.
Another order, issued by the military high command at 10:50 p.m. on Oct. 8, provides a sense of the scale of civilian casualties deemed tolerable. Strikes on military targets in Gaza, it said, were permitted to cumulatively endanger up to 500 civilians each day.
Military officials characterized the order as a precautionary measure intended to cap the number of strikes that could take place each day. A scholar at West Point consulted by The Times, Prof. Michael N. Schmitt, said it risked being construed by mid-ranking officers as a quota that they had to reach.
In any case, the limit was removed two days later — allowing officers to sign off on as many strikes as they believed were legal. The Gazan authorities later reported occasional daily tolls of more than 500, but it was unclear how many were civilians or if their deaths had occurred over several days.
The risk to civilians was also heightened by the Israeli military’s widespread use of 1,000- and 2,000-pound bombs, many of them American-made, which constituted 90 percent of the munitions Israel dropped in the first two weeks of the war. By November, two officers said, the air force had dropped so many one-ton bombs that it was running low on the guidance kits that transform unguided weapons, or “dumb bombs,” into precision-guided munitions.
Military officials characterized the order as a precautionary measure intended to cap the number of strikes that could take place each day. A scholar at West Point consulted by The Times, Prof. Michael N. Schmitt, said it risked being construed by mid-ranking officers as a quota that they had to reach.
In any case, the limit was removed two days later — allowing officers to sign off on as many strikes as they believed were legal. The Gazan authorities later reported occasional daily tolls of more than 500, but it was unclear how many were civilians or if their deaths had occurred over several days.
The risk to civilians was also heightened by the Israeli military’s widespread use of 1,000- and 2,000-pound bombs, many of them American-made, which constituted 90 percent of the munitions Israel dropped in the first two weeks of the war. By November, two officers said, the air force had dropped so many one-ton bombs that it was running low on the guidance kits that transform unguided weapons, or “dumb bombs,” into precision-guided munitions.
The air force used the one-ton bomb to destroy whole office towers, two senior Israeli military officials said, even when a target could have been killed by a smaller munition.
TITLE: 'No Civilians. Everyone's a Terrorist': IDF Soldiers Expose Arbitrary Killings and Rampant Lawlessness in Gaza's Netzarim Corridor
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-12-18/ty-article-magazine/.premium/idf-soldiers-expose-arbitrary-killings-and-rampant-lawlessness-in-gazas-netzarim-corridor/00000193-da7f-de86-a9f3-fefff2e50000
EXCERPTS: Haaretz has gathered testimonies from active-duty soldiers, career officers, and reservists that reveal the unprecedented authority given to commanders. As the IDF operates across multiple fronts, division commanders have received expanded powers. Previously, bombing buildings or launching airstrikes required approval from the IDF chief of staff. Now, such decisions can be made by lower-ranking officers.
"Division commanders now have almost unlimited firepower authority in combat zones," explains a veteran officer in Division 252. "A battalion commander can order drone strikes, and a division commander can launch conquest operations." Some sources describe IDF units operating like independent militias, unrestricted by standard military protocols.
The chaotic reality has repeatedly forced commanders and fighters to face severe moral dilemmas. "The order was clear: 'Anyone crossing the bridge into the [Netzarim] corridor gets a bullet in the head,'" recalls a veteran fighter from Division 252.
"One time, guards spotted someone approaching from the south. 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. For about a minute or two, we just kept shooting at the body. People around me were shooting and laughing."
But the incident didn't end there. "We approached the blood-covered body, photographed it, and took the phone. He was just a boy, maybe 16." An intelligence officer collected the items, and hours later, the fighters learned the boy wasn't a Hamas operative – but just a civilian.
"That evening, our battalion commander congratulated us for killing a terrorist, saying he hoped we'd kill ten more tomorrow," the fighter adds. "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?"
Similar incidents continue to surface. An officer in Division 252's command recalls when the IDF spokesperson announced their forces had killed over 200 militants. "Standard procedure requires photographing bodies and collecting details when possible, then sending evidence to intelligence to verify militant status or at least confirm they were killed by the IDF," he explains. "Of those 200 casualties, only ten were confirmed as known Hamas operatives. Yet no one questioned the public announcement about killing hundreds of militants."
Another fighter describes witnessing four unarmed people walking normally, spotted by a surveillance drone. Despite clearly not appearing as militants, a tank advanced and opened fire with its machine gun. "Hundreds of bullets," he recalls. Three died immediately ("the sight haunts me," he says), while the fourth survived and raised his hands in surrender.
"We put him in a cage set up near our position, stripped off his clothes, and left him there," the soldier recounts. "Soldiers passing by spat on him. It was disgusting. Finally, a military interrogator came, questioned him briefly while holding a gun to his head, then ordered his release." The man had simply been trying to reach his uncles in northern Gaza. "Later, officers praised us for killing 'terrorists.' I couldn't understand what they meant," the fighter says.
After a day or two, the bodies were buried by a bulldozer in the sand. "I don't know if anyone remembers they're there. People don't understand – this doesn't just kill Arabs, it kills us too. If called back to Gaza, I don't think I'll go."
This approach isn't limited to Division 252. A Division 99 reservist describes watching a drone feed showing "an adult with two children crossing the forbidden line." They were walking unarmed, seemingly searching for something. "We had them under complete surveillance with the drone and weapons aimed at them – they couldn't do anything," he says. "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."
Most commanders interviewed say the air force initially acted as a restraining force, especially regarding drone strikes. They would refuse attacks on unconfirmed targets, populated areas, and humanitarian shelters. However, this caution eroded over time. "The air force barely questions anything anymore; their safety mechanisms have collapsed too," one commander states.
Division 252 found ways around air force oversight using a "magic word" – the "flash procedure," an officer familiar with operations explains. Designed for forces under fire or evacuating casualties, it guarantees an airstrike within 30 minutes with no approvals needed. Any officer from battalion commander up could invoke it. "When targeting requests were denied for various reasons, Brigadier General Yehuda Vach would tell us to use the 'flash procedure,'" the officer says.
Vach, 45, born in the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba, rose through elite military units before commanding the IDF's Officers Training School. Promoted to brigadier general last summer, he took charge of Division 252. His first address to commanders at a corridor outpost revealed much.
Vach declared "there are no innocents in Gaza," according to one officer. While such sentiment isn't uncommon among soldiers, with Vach "it wasn't just opinion – it became operational doctrine: everyone's a terrorist."
One of the concepts he introduced was declaring anyone entering the kill zone a terrorist conducting reconnaissance. "Every woman is a scout, or a man in disguise," an officer explains. "Vach even decided anyone on a bicycle could be killed, claiming cyclists were terrorists' collaborators."
TITLE: The lost limbs of Gaza: Israel's war on the strip has produced the largest population of child amputees in modern history, who now face lifelong struggles
https://www.thenationalnews.com/news/mena/2024/12/20/gaza-israel-war-amputees/
EXCERPTS: “We often get patients who already have had their arm or one or both legs blown off in an Israeli attack – or had lost blood circulation to their limb because of how long they remained under rubble,” said Abdul Hameed Qaradaya, physiotherapy manager for Doctors Without Borders (MSF) at Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis.
He has been working in the field for 18 years - and had seen numerous cases even before the current war, in 2014 and 2018 - but nothing like what he is treating today.
“We’re seeing a new category of amputees. Children as young as two years old with double amputations and this is very rare [elsewhere in the world],” he said.
Rosalia Bollen, a Unicef spokeswoman who has been based in Gaza for more than two months, told The National it was very difficult to put an exact figure on the number of children who have had a limb amputated during the war.
“Unicef estimates that at least 23,000 children have been injured and, out of those, we estimate that at least a quarter [5,750] need major rehabilitation,” she said, which includes lifelong injuries such as severe burns, spinal injuries and amputations.
Ms Bollen said most of the children she met with one or more limbs amputated all had the same story: they were injured in an air strike while playing outside or in their home and were taken to hospital with a broken bone or shrapnel lodged in a limb. But there was no medicine.
“In any normal hospital, a child would receive an orthopaedic intervention, the doctor would try to fix the broken bones and the child would probably get antibiotics. The doctor would use sterile surgical equipment. That is the type of care a child would get,” she said.
“In Gaza, hospitals lack medical supplies, they lack medicines, equipment, anaesthetics, there’s a lack of doctors even.”
The UN official said one child she spoke to, Qamar, was admitted to a hospital in northern Gaza after her foot was injured in an air strike. When the hospital came under siege from the Israeli army for 20 days - meaning no medicines, food or water were delivered - the girl's leg became infected and the doctor was forced to amputate it.
Another girl, eight-year-old Ritaj, was at home in December 2023 when her home was bombed. Her family was killed but she was rescued from beneath the rubble with a foot injury. While in hospital, her leg also became infected and the doctor was forced to amputate beneath the ankle. In the weeks that followed, the infection spread and the doctor had to amputate it above the ankle. In July, the injury became infected again and the doctors had to amputate for a third time - this time at the knee.
“Under normal circumstances, there’s a good chance that these children would still have their legs,” said Ms Bollen.
Services for people with amputations were already limited in Gaza before the war, with two rehabilitation and prosthetics centres serving the strip. Sheikh Hamad Hospital, which was established in 2016 and fitted about 150 new prosthetics a year, was severely damaged in the early stages of the war. The Artificial Limbs and Polio Centre provided services to more than 3,000 people a year, including 300 new prosthetics. In May, the UN’s OCHA reported the centre had not been damaged but was not accessible for staff or patients.
Dr Ahmad Al Absi, head of the prosthetics department at Sheikh Hamad Hospital, is working with Gaza’s Ministry of Health and international NGOs to create a plan for dealing with the higher-than-normal rates of amputations and people with permanent injuries in war.
“We are now just trying to perform life-saving surgeries because if we had to wait to treat and transfer the injured who are coming in by the dozens every day to specialised hospitals, they would die,” he said.
“Everywhere you look – there is someone on the street like this. Everyone has some sort of injury. There’s only so much we can do with what time and resources we have.”