The drone struck the town's central park while many people, including families with children, were there, Interior Minister Ivan Vyhivskyi said. An infant in a stroller and two women were among those killed, he added.
Yemen has condemned the international community’s silence on Saudi Arabia’s ongoing aggression and blockade, saying it emboldens Riyadh to continue its atrocities.
The Yemeni Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates, in a statement released on Saturday, said the Saudi military continues to target ordinary people and civilian infrastructure, as it has done over the past years.
The ministry denounced Saudi strikes on civilians and non-military installations as a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law, particularly the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 and Additional Protocol I of 1977.
In the latest attack, a series of Saudi airstrikes targeted a residential neighborhood in the Maqbanah district of Yemen’s southwestern Ta’izz province, killing nine civilians, including a woman and a girl, and injuring 16 others.
The statement also censured the deafening silence of the international community, which claims to uphold human rights while lecturing others about them.
It noted that such an approach would offer Saudi officials the carte blanche to keep on their brutalities, and would make the international community complicit in Riyadh’s crimes and aggression.
The Yemeni foreign ministry then called on the international community, particularly the UN Security Council, the Human Rights Council, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, as well as human rights organizations, to abandon double standards, condemn the heinous crimes committed against Yemeni people, and pressure Saudi Arabia to honor its obligations under international humanitarian law.
The ministry finally emphasized that Saudi atrocities would not go unpunished, and that the House of Saud, “whose hands are stained with blood and whose fingers with guilt,” would be held accountable.
On July 20, the Sana’a government announced a maritime blockade against Saudi Arabia in response to “an unjust and oppressive siege” on Yemen for almost 12 years.
Subsequently, the Yemeni armed forces have reported a series of successful missions that have targeted vessels associated with Saudi Arabia in the Red Sea.
In March 2015, Saudi Arabia and its allies imposed a blockade on Yemen, initiating a comprehensive military offensive that received support in terms of military, political, and logistical assistance from the United States and several Western countries.
Tens of thousands of Yemenis have lost their lives; however, Saudi Arabia has failed to achieve its primary goal of reestablishing a puppet government that served its interests.
Iran’s ambassador and chargé d’affaires to the UN has stressed that any arrangements for the Gaza Strip’s future must fully respect Palestinian rights and self-determination, denouncing the United States and the Israeli regime for the current situation affecting the Strait of Hormuz.
Gholamhossein Darzi made the remarks on Friday, addressing a UN Security Council meeting on the situation in West Asia, including the Palestinian question.
He noted that Gaza remained devastated and continued to be subject to military aggression, despite the announcement of a ceasefire last year.
The ceasefire was announced last October as part of a United States-proposed plan to bring an end to two years of Israeli genocide, supposedly.
The Israeli regime has, however, killed more than 1,400 Palestinians during attacks across the territory ever since, in addition to the tens of thousands it had already killed throughout the genocide that began on October 7, 2023.
Darzi called for a permanent end to the Israeli aggression, lifting of the Israeli blockade on the coastal sliver, and realization of a lasting ceasefire in the territory.
He called for unconditional and complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from the territory as well as immediate and sustained delivery of humanitarian aid and deployment of relief personnel.
The diplomat called accountability for serious violations of international law a legal obligation, condemning the regime for committing genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.
He also denounced expansion of illegal settlements, intensifying settler violence, and Israeli plans for “annexation” of the occupied West Bank.
Palestinians must be able to establish an independent, sovereign, and viable state, with the holy occupied city of al-Quds as its capital and full membership in the United Nations, the official stated.
He also demanded Israeli withdrawal from Lebanese territory and occupied Syrian areas and respect for both countries’ sovereignty.
Elsewhere in his remarks, Darzi slammed the United States and the Israeli regime for launching two rounds of unprovoked aggression against Iran respectively, last June and from February 28 until April 7 this year.
The aggressors, he noted, committed war crimes through deliberate targeting of civilians and critical infrastructure.
He also attributed the situation affecting the Strait of Hormuz to the American-Israeli atrocities, including an American naval blockade.
“Our position is crystal clear: The only practical way to restore normal and safe maritime navigation in the Strait of Hormuz is immediate and permanent cessation of US aggression, provision of credible guarantees against its recurrence, respect for Iran’s sovereign rights, and complete lifting of the naval blockade and other unlawful coercive measures.”
Following the US-Israeli aggression against Iran on February 28, Tehran closed the Strait of Hormuz to its adversaries. The key waterway has remained largely closed ever since, driving up fuel prices worldwide and increasing the cost of living for millions of people.
Tehran has made it clear that it will not reopen the strait until Washington meets its demands, including a permanent end to the war.
The Russian soldiers are believed to belong to the 38th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade, which is operating in the area. Kravchuk alleged that orders of this nature within the brigade are issued at the initiative of its commander, Colonel Valery Kazak.
BEIRUT – The number of books destroyed by Israeli bombings of libraries, as well as religious and cultural institutions since October 2023, has exceeded 3 million copies, founder and coordinator of the National Network for the Protection of Libraries, Archives, and Cultural Heritage in Lebanon Hadi Bekdash told Sputnik on Saturday.
“There are reports of the burning of more than 700,000 books belonging to Lebanese and Arab publishers, as well as more than 3 million books from homes, libraries, religious centers, family collections, researchers’ libraries, and universities, publishers, cultural institutions, and private collections since 2023,” Bekdash said.
In 2026, practically confirmed information appeared about the destruction of dozens of public and hundreds of private libraries during the conflict with Israel, he added.
These data do not reflect the full scale of losses, since Lebanon still does not have a unified national database of destroyed libraries, archives, and book collections, the coordinator said.
Bekdash added that it will be possible to finally assess the damage only after conducting a nationwide inventory of lost and damaged collections.
A national campaign, A Million Books for Lebanon, is currently underway in the country, aimed at restoring destroyed and damaged libraries.
Amid blackouts, artillery fire and the onslaught of Russian drone attacks, the Richelievsky in Kherson provides a refuge for those with nowhere else to go
There is one important rule in the Richelievsky, Kherson’s last functioning hotel: close the curtains before dusk. Less than a kilometre away lies the Dnipro, the river that has formed the frontline since Ukrainian forces liberated Kherson in November 2022; Moscow’s troops are on the opposite bank.
In a city where Russian drone operators hunt civilians in what is now widely known as the “human safari”, even a sliver of light escaping through a window may be enough to reveal someone’s location after dark.
Hotel manager Yevhen Emtsov, 46, in the building’s former conference room
A former Cornell student’s lawsuit accusing members of a fraternity of sexual assault stirred anger and debate at the university and on college campuses nationwide.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi delivered a sharp rebuke to Israeli President Isaac Herzog during a diplomatic meeting in Baku, calling the Palestinian cause “the greatest historical injustice of this century” and demanding that “Israel” halt its expansion in the occupied West Bank, according to statements released Friday by Beijing’s Foreign Ministry.
The bilateral discussions took place on the sidelines of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) summit held in the Azerbaijani capital.
According to a Chinese Foreign Ministry statement cited by Reuters, Wang urged the Israeli government to immediately cease its “forced establishment” of West Bank settlements and reverse its expansion policies.
He emphasized that Beijing’s long-standing position remains rooted in resolving the core conflict through a “two-state solution,” calling for the full reopening of access routes to the Gaza Strip to relieve ongoing humanitarian suffering.
Summit walkout and diplomatic tension
The direct exchange between Beijing and Israeli leadership unfolded against a backdrop of heightened diplomatic friction at the summit.
Earlier in the proceedings, several delegations representing Arab and Islamic nations walked out of the CICA conference hall during Herzog’s address in protest against Israeli aggression and continued settlement expansion in the West Bank.
Despite the firm pushback from Beijing, Herzog emphasized what he described as Israeli security imperatives during the meeting, pointing to strategic threats posed by regional groups while highlighting the importance of maintaining economic and trade ties between China and the occupation.
China, which has historically supported the Palestinian cause and recognized Palestinian statehood since 1988, has increasingly positioned itself as an active diplomatic mediator in the region. Wang’s remarks signal Beijing’s continued insistence that the Palestinian cause cannot be stabilized without addressing Palestinian sovereignty and halting unilateral territorial changes on the ground.
A study by University of Maryland researcher Shibley Telhami points to a major shift in US public opinion, with sympathy for Palestinians surpassing support for “Israel” and growing numbers of Americans viewing the occupation as responsible for genocide.
Drawing on Gallup data, Telhami noted that sympathy for “Israel” among the US public has fallen from around 50% to 36%, while sympathy for Palestinians has risen to 41%.
Among Democrats, support for “Israel” has plunged from more than 50% in 2001 to just 17% today, while sympathy for Palestinians has climbed to 65%, according to the researcher.
Telhami’s Critical Issues Poll at the University of Maryland also found that more than 60% of respondents believe US military and diplomatic support enables “Israel” to carry out its actions.
Generational shift extends across political lines
Citing data from the Pew Research Center, Telhami pointed to a narrowing generational gap among Democrats in negative views of “Israel.” The figures showed that 71% of younger Democrats and 66% of older Democrats held negative views of the occupation.
One of the most significant changes, however, has emerged among young Republicans under the age of 35. According to the cited polling, the share of young Republicans expressing negative views of “Israel” rose from 35% to 57%.
Only 22% of young Republicans agreed that “Israel’s” actions in Gaza were “justified as self-defense,” compared with 52% of their older counterparts.
Telhami highlighted findings indicating that 80% of academics since October 7, 2023, and 42% of the general US public feel they must exercise self-censorship or caution when discussing the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, fearing accusations linked to their criticism.
The findings point to growing public criticism of “Israel” and US support for it, alongside continued concerns about the social and professional consequences of expressing such views.
I am back in NYC at the invitation of the Russian delegation to the United Nations. Unlike my previous appearance before the full UN Security Council, this was an Arria session. An Arria-formula meeting is an informal meeting called by one or more Security Council members to hear from people who normally can’t address the Council. These include NGOs, civil-society figures, experts, victims and witnesses, and non-state actors. It isn’t a formal Council meeting and has no basis in the Council’s rules of procedure.
All fifteen members of the Security Council were represented. Their response was quite revealing (I will reveal that below). Here was my statement:
Chair, Excellencies, distinguished delegates, thank you for the opportunity to address you.
My name is Larry Johnson. I served as an officer in the Central Intelligence Agency and later in the State Department’s Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism. I spent more than two decades working with United States Military Special Operations Forces. I come to this Council not as a spokesman for any government, but as someone who has spent a career studying how wars are fought and how civilians suffer in them and how hostilities are accompanied by disinformation campaigns.
For more than four years this Council has heard that Russia is waging a war against Ukraine and is targeting civilians. You do not need to come to the Security Council to hear this narrative, it is all over media and internet. I ask you to test that claim against the evidence.
Today we heard horrific stories of civilians targeted, of prisoners of war being tortured, and civilians held against their will by Ukrainian armed forces.
Ask yourselves a couple of questions: why are the civilians dying in Russia from drone attacks discounted and why are the civilians that were killed in Ukraine before February 2022 ignored? Based on my experience, the crisis in Ukraine has been accompanied by a sophisticated disinformation campaign designed to place all blame on Russia while exonerating Ukraine.
Begin with the scale of the fighting. By the Ukrainian government’s own figures, Russia has fired well over approximately two and a half million tons of munitions. This includes one hundred thousand glide bombs, attack drones, missiles and millions of artillery rounds since February 2022.
Now consider the human toll. The United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine has verified 16,431 civilian deaths through the middle of this year. Every one of those deaths is a tragedy, and I do not minimize any of them. However, the ratio of civilian deaths to munitions expended is extraordinarily low for a war of this intensity.
Compare those numbers with what the United States did in the Second World War, a war my country rightly regarded as just. Allied bombers dropped some 2.7 million tons of bombs on Europe and killed between half a million and three-quarters of a million civilians in Europe.
In the Pacific, the United States dropped about 160,000 tons of bombs on the Japanese home islands. In all, American air attacks on Japan killed somewhere between 330,000 and half a million civilians.
Put the figures side by side. In total, the United States killed somewhere between half a million and more than a million civilians in the Second World War. The verified toll in Ukraine, after more than four years, is a small fraction of that.
These numbers do not happen by accident. The record of Russia in Ukraine is consistent with a policy of not targeting civilians. These facts contradict the claim that Russia is waging a campaign of extermination against Ukraine’s civilian population.
The same standard must apply to Ukraine.
The killing of civilians in this conflict did not begin in February 2022. From 2014 through 2021, the OHCHR recorded at least 3,404 civilian deaths in the Donbass. From 2018 through 2021, the OHCHR found that 81 percent of civilian casualties from Ukrainian shelling, small-arms fire and drone attacks occurred in areas held by the Donetsk and Luhansk authorities. Those victims are forgotten by the world media and by the United Nations. Few call for any investigation or accountability.
Since February 2022, according to figures the Russian Foreign Ministry presented to the Human Rights Council last month, Ukrainian strikes have killed more than 9,000 civilians in the territories under Russian control and wounded more than 25,500. This Council has rarely discussed those victims. They deserve the same attention and the same investigation as every civilian killed on the other side of the line.
Today we heard some of the circumstances of their deaths. I hope that the United Nations will include those numbers in their reports in order to give an unbiased record of events…. At least 12,404 civilians have been killed by Ukrainian Armed Forces since 2014.
Thus, we come to the simple fact that the number of civilians killed on both sides of the front line are not that different even if we take numbers offered by OHCHR at their face value –12,404 compared to 16,431. And I know that the Government of Russia strongly challenges them, citing in particular the questionable OHCHR claim that Russia was responsible for Bucha.
Why is the focus exclusively on Russia while we hear nothing about Ukrainian Armed Forces committing crimes against civilians?
I am not asking this Council to excuse any unlawful act. Where a strike violates the principles of distinction, proportionality and precaution, it should be investigated, whoever carries it out. I am asking the Council to apply a single standard. The nations that sit in judgment of Russia should measure Russia’s conduct against the evidence and against their own history, not against a narrative.
False accusations and biased reports are not the most effective way to protect civilians in Ukraine. The key to protecting civilians is a negotiated end to this war. I urge the members of this Council to put their full weight behind that goal.
Thank you.
The biggest shock came from the US representative. Unlike my previous appearance before the Security Council when the US representative was aggressive and dismissive of my remarks, the guy sitting in the US chair today spoke as if the US had no role whatsoever in the war raging between Russia and Ukraine. He was quite subdued. A complete change in tone and attitude. This told me there is a definite change in the US policy towards Russia.
The Europeans on the other hand were out of their fucking minds. The representatives of Denmark, Latvia, France and Greece were aggressive and rude. They are boiling for a fight. The purpose of the meeting was to present evidence of Ukrainian attacks on civilians in territory now occupied by Russia. Instead of dealing with the facts, the European Lilliputians howled at the Russians.
Even the British representative took a low key approach. That also was surprising. The remaining eight members of the Security Council made measured, neutral remarks. My commentary was in support of Rodion Miroshnik, the Russian Ambassador tasked with investigating attacks on civilians. Rodion is a good man and an honest investigator. All in all, a fascinating day.
The Russian Embassy in Paris has accused France of “piracy” after its naval forces seized an oil tanker in international waters near Madagascar, rejecting claims that the operation complied with international maritime law.
French President Emmanuel Macron announced the detention of the DF Peak on Monday, saying the vessel was suspected of sailing under a false flag and involvement in illegal fuel transportation.
The tanker was intercepted 450 nautical miles south of Reunion, a French island territory east of Madagascar, Macron said.
According to MarineTraffic, the DF Peak sails under Benin’s flag. Macron did not identify the owner but described the seizure as part of France’s campaign to “fight the ghost fleet wherever it may be in the world.”
The Russian Embassy called the operation a “flagrant violation of international law,” dismissing France’s references to maritime regulations and “international sanctions” as a “fig leaf” concealing “outright piracy and robbery.”
The embassy denounced the sanctions as illegitimate unilateral measures and said the French authorities failed to notify Russian diplomats of the seizure. It added that officials are checking whether any Russian nationals were aboard.
Western governments have used the term ‘shadow fleet’ to describe vessels that allegedly help Russia circumvent sanctions on oil exports. Moscow rejects the designation, arguing that it has no basis in international maritime law.
France previously detained the Tagor tanker in the Atlantic in June, and British forces seized the Smyrtos in the English Channel later that month. Moscow condemned both operations as piracy.
In July, the EU adopted a mechanism allowing member states to sell oil and other cargo confiscated from sanctioned vessels. President Vladimir Putin subsequently warned that Russia could retaliate against ships carrying Western cargo.
The latest seizure comes days after Putin and US President Donald Trump agreed to expand Russian diesel supplies to American and global markets in an effort to ease soaring fuel prices.
Washington subsequently issued a temporary sanctions waiver covering Russian diesel trade until April 7, 2027. Trump announced initial deliveries of more than 300,000 tons, followed by another 500,000 tons in November, and 1 million tons thereafter.
The suspect was identified as 36-year-old Leonid Ryzhikov, a Russian citizen from St. Petersburg who served in the 2nd Battalion of Russia's 1009th Motorized Rifle Regiment.
What Israel has done, is doing, to Gaza has not sprung ex nihilo from October 7.
Genocide is not a situational counter-response to aggression. It’s a coming-out event of sorts.
Differently put: There are no legitimate antecedents to genocide. Genocide is not a “war crime” to which a set of mitigating or exculpating legal defenses can attach.
Genocide is a stand-alone indefensible crime—“the blackest of all crimes”—for which there are no extenuating circumstances and to which no traditional legal defenses attach.
Ethnocide, depopulation, domicide and daily mass murder can never be explained away or exculpated using argument from law, ethics or history.
In essence, talk to the hand about October 7, 2023; because the face isn’t listening. Just as there are no legal or moral extenuating circumstances for genocide, so it is that there are no historical defenses for this “blackest of all crimes,” for genocide.
To assert that you are just, justified or even coherent as you carry out that which cannot be just or justified—this is to embody a most grotesque incoherence and contradiction.
At minimum, Israel deserves—and has yet to receive—the unanimous revulsion and isolation reserved for entities whose existence is a confidence trick and a fraud upon us all.
Reality is truth, past and present. The reality of genocide gives rise to irrefutable truths. From the facts of this Twenty-First Century Genocide; certain truths immemorial and irrefutable that traverse time have emerged. Truths about Israel.
Through Gaza, the world has come to know Israel’s ways with the Palestinians, with their lands and homesteads—down to what Israeli terrorists habitually do to the intimate bits-and-bobs that make up a household.
Through Gaza, we have come to know Israel’s ways across the Levant and beyond. They unground and salt the earth forever. They uproot ancient communities and their olive groves. For fun. They deform babies and the baby faces of children for life.
The reality on the ground is of genocide ongoing, of daily extermination. In aggregate, a “child has been killed in Gaza every 71 minutes for three years.” This extermination campaign is not only of children—the one segment of Palestinian society which American conservatives are comfortable defending—but of adults, young and old: admirable, valuable adults. Adult lives matter, yes?
Hasbara and official myth-history aside, because of Gaza and the Ghazzawi you don’t have to know much history at all to arrive at the truth about Israel.
Because of the Palestinians of Gaza, the living, the martyred and those who still resist; the truth about Israel is now ahistoric.
To arrive at that truth about Israel, you don’t have to know much about the genesis of the so-called “conflict” between Israelis and Palestinians in historic Palestine. I hazard that you need to know hardly a thing about this history to arrive at the truth about the lived reality of Palestinians.
You are what you do.
We know the Real Israel through the actions of real Israelis in Gaza. We know how Israel operates and how a preponderance of its people thinks. These realizations came out of the Gaza genocide, which has shown the world in cruel relief how Israel acts and, by extension, what Israel is.
Since October of 2023, the world knows in detail what the untouchable Israel—state and civil society—has done and continues to do to the Strip, to the West Bank and in South Lebanon.
But what have the Ghazzawi, the living and the martyred, accomplished? A great deal. In a manner, Palestine and the Palestinians have won.
Gaza has exposed Israel for the morally and militarily corrupt force that it is. The Genocide of Gaza has, very plainly, invalidated Israel and validated the Palestinian cause.
When you are in the writhing coils of a boa constrictor; it is small comfort to know, as Palestinians have always known, that, while outwardly captive, they are, nevertheless, truly liberated from the illiberal political propaganda that grips the West.
So, they need to know, too, that they have shown good people around the world the way. For once and for all, Israel’s televised genocide had corroborated the lived reality of the Palestinians; their reasons for rage and their rights to resistance and recompense.
Palestinians had been telling us for decades that they have been set upon by murderers and thieves. Palestinians have told us they are being killed and robbed as a matter of course. Their lived reality has been irrefutably affirmed, and universally so.
“It’s complicated,” Israel’s supporters keep countering. “Study up before you open your mouth.” The opposite is true. It’s absurdly simple.
A moral, sentient human being need know nothing much about the history of the region to arrive at this conclusion.
Israel has had the nerve to play its genocide of the Palestinians of Gaza to a packed house: to the world.
Most galling of all: In the course of this very public genocide, Israel has engaged in the mother of all performative contradictions: denying genocide, while publicly committing genocide, effectively asserting a birthright to commit genocide.
Think about it:
To deny ongoing, prime-time livestreamed genocidal action at the very same time that you are committing these actions, and then to hound and hurt anyone who dares notice: This is a performative contradiction in a category all of its own, like no other.
Caught in the protracted act of genocide, the guilty party, Israel, has continued to cavalierly claim for itself and be granted the right to keep killing and deceiving without being considered and treated as a killer and con-artist.
In essence, Israel exists among nations us as a privileged, protected, well-funded aberration, carrying out unspeakable evil with universal blessings and absolution.
I belabor the most galling reality, as it really gets me: At the same time that Israel and its cringing Western admirers have killed and deceived; they have instructed The World to deny Israel’s genocide, then deny Israel’s deception about its genocide, and finally to justify both or fear defenestration, cancellation, banishment, arrest and worse.
To no avail. Human action is the undeniable key to man-made reality. Israel and the US have acted; they’ve revealed themselves. They’ve been exposed.
“Just as you can identify a tree by its fruit, so you can identify people by their actions,” said Jesus (New Living Translation). As Matthew 7:20 reads, “Therefore by their fruits you will know them.”
With the exception of the flint-hearted ruling political elites—the wholesale slaughter carried out by Israel in Gaza has stirred the hearts of ordinary people across the world. A collective conscience developed around Palestine. Minds not AI became engaged. They said, “We see you, Israel. We revile you. We reject you.”
This is what October 7 will forever mark and signify: The triumph of the Palestinians over the alternate reality mass-marketed to the World by Israel and our ruling elites.
Ilana Mercer, a widely published paleolibertarian author, essayist and theorist, has been writing up an anti-war, anti-woke storm since 1998, starting in Canada. On arriving in the US, in 2002, her weekly column was right away syndicated. Mercer’s national syndication fell through shortly after due to writing in strident opposition to the war in Iraq. ILANA is described as “a system-builder. Distilled, her modus operandi has been to methodically apply first principles to the day’s events.” She’s Jewish, grew up in Israel ages five to nineteen, and left, at 19, decades back, never to return. She had refused to serve in the IDF, Israel’s compulsory military. Ilana’s focus since October of 2023 has been the genocide.
Along Gaza’s Netzarim Corridor, Israeli soldiers concealed themselves inside Palestinian homes and established invisible kill zones. Civilians, including children, were shot for approaching or crossing unmarked boundaries. Military records then counted the dead as terrorists “eliminated.”
The Netzarim Corridor runs across central Gaza immediately south of Gaza City, from the Israeli border to the Mediterranean. Israeli forces established it during their ground invasion, dividing northern Gaza from the rest of the territory. They widened the zone by demolishing surrounding neighbourhoods and building military bases, fortified positions and observation posts.
It was here, amid the civilian communities bordering this military corridor, that Israeli soldiers operated concealed positions inside Palestinian homes. The buildings looked abandoned or ordinary from outside, and Palestinians approaching them could not see the troops or the imaginary boundaries soldiers had drawn around their positions. Crossing one of those invisible lines could mean death.
Israeli soldiers had a name for occupying a Palestinian home and turning it into a concealed military position. Almenat Kash, Hebrew for “Straw Widow.”
Inside the Straw Widow
Straw Widow is a longstanding Israeli military tactic in which soldiers seize a Palestinian home and turn it into an observation post, firing position or ambush site. Families can be confined to one room as troops occupy the rest of the building, restrict contact with the outside and prepare positions from which they can watch or fire.
A reservist who spent about 250 days in Gaza told Der Spiegel how his unit used the tactic in areas that had not been evacuated. Palestinians continued moving through the surrounding streets with no warning that soldiers were hidden nearby. When they approached, the troops attacked them. Those who stepped forward to help were often attacked too.
The military report would record seven terrorists eliminated.
“But no,” the soldier said. “It’s just seven people who crossed an intersection.”
The report did more than conceal how they died. It stripped the dead of their civilian identity and turned their deaths into proof of military success. “We don’t kill, we eliminate,” the reservist explained. “That’s how we’ve always put it.”
Another reservist described occupying a house while serving with Division 252 along the Netzarim Corridor. It belonged to displaced Palestinians and stood on the edge of an inhabited neighbourhood. Around their position, the soldiers established a boundary that Palestinians could not see.
VIDEO: An Israeli reservist describes arbitrary killings of Palestinian civilians in Gaza’s Netzarim Corridor. (Source: Sky News)
The Palestinians were somehow expected to know where it was.
“There’s an imaginary line that they tell us all the Gazan people know,” the soldier said. “But how can they know?”
He recalled one man crossing the boundary and being shot. Another approached the body and was detained. Hours later, the order changed again. Anyone crossing the invisible line was to be shot on sight.
The person approaching might be “a teenager riding his bicycle.” The command made no distinction. “Everyone that comes inside needs to die.”
Breaking the Silence collected similar accounts of lethal boundaries. One captain described people crossing a line as “sentenced to death.” Another reservist described the order in three words, “Adult, male, kill.”
Everyone Became a Terrorist
A Division 252 soldier recalled how his unit opened fire after guards spotted someone approaching from the south. They poured dozens of bullets into him and kept shooting at his body, some laughing as they fired. Only when the troops approached did they discover they had killed a boy of about 16.
The soldiers photographed the body and took the boy’s telephone, which an intelligence officer collected. Hours later, they were told he was not a Hamas operative. By that evening, however, the battalion commander was congratulating them for killing a terrorist and saying he hoped they would kill ten more the following day. A soldier who protested that the boy had been unarmed and looked like a civilian was shouted down. The commander’s answer left no room for what they had discovered. Anyone crossing the line was a terrorist. No exceptions. No civilians.
No independently verified death toll exists for the Netzarim Corridor. The Israeli military claimed that Division 252 had killed more than 200 militants there, but soldiers who served in the corridor dismantled that account from within. An officer in the division’s command said the Israeli military’s own intelligence associated only ten of the dead with Hamas. Other soldiers described how civilians and children were shot for crossing invisible lines, then entered into the count as terrorists.
Even those ten were designated by Israel rather than an independent investigation, and an alleged association with Hamas would not establish that they were taking part in hostilities when killed. The claim of more than 200 militants killed instead reveals the gulf between the military’s public account and its soldiers’ testimony. Palestinians shot inside the corridor became terrorists on paper, their deaths repackaged as military success.
The Der Spiegel reservist described the same practice inside his brigade, which he said killed between 160 and 170 people over roughly 80 days during which there had been no fighting or Hamas attacks. Only one of the dead was suspected of carrying a weapon, though no soldier had actually seen one. He had been holding an object at night about 500 metres north of the corridor and, according to the reservist, posed no immediate threat. His body was never examined, yet he was recorded as a terrorist along with everyone else the brigade had killed.
That figure may overlap with the military’s claim of more than 200 and cannot be added to it. The accounts converge on how the dead were classified. Palestinians were killed without being identified as combatants, then recorded as terrorists after death.
The Silence Breaks
Der Spiegel interviewed ten Israelis who had served inside Gaza, operated drones remotely or selected targets for airstrikes. Breaking the Silence helped the reporters contact some of them. Nine remained anonymous because they feared the consequences of identification, while most said they would refuse to serve in Gaza again. The magazine considered their accounts credible after cross-checking them against other testimony and independently verifiable information.
Yuval Green, the only interviewee who spoke under his own name, served as a medic with the 55th Paratroopers Brigade for 51 days in Khan Younis before refusing further deployment. He described refusing an order to burn a Palestinian house after his commander failed to provide a convincing military justification. His account joins the wider body of soldier testimony describing unarmed Palestinians being killed, homes destroyed without military necessity and civilian deaths recorded as militant casualties. Breaking the Silence documented a similar practice along Gaza’s border perimeter. An Armoured Corps captain serving in southern Gaza described soldiers drawing a line beyond which everyone became a suspect, while admitting he did not know whether Palestinians knew where it was.
DOCUMENT: The Perimeter (2025) documents live-fire enforcement of boundaries Palestinians may not have known existed.(Source: breakingthesilence.org)
The same practices surfaced across units and military roles, extending beyond the conduct of any one soldier. Soldiers speaking at different times described hidden posts, unmarked boundaries, shoot-to-kill orders and the automatic conversion of the dead into terrorists. Some admitted participating. Others stood guard while it happened. Their decision to speak does not erase what they did, but it has broken through the military language that concealed it.
A civilian does not become a combatant by approaching a house, crossing an unmarked boundary or trying to reach someone bleeding in the road. International humanitarian law protects civilians unless and for such time as they directly participate in hostilities. Deliberately targeting civilians for crossing such a boundary, or civilian rescuers for coming to the aid of the wounded, constitutes a war crime.
Almenat Kash (Straw Widow) concealed Israeli soldiers inside Palestinian homes, while the invisible boundaries drawn around their positions turned the surrounding streets into kill zones. Palestinians who had no warning of either were shot, then entered into military records as terrorists.
Those reports turned the killing of civilians into a record of military achievement. People passing through their own neighbourhoods became enemy fighters on paper, their deaths presented as proof of success by the army that had killed them. Calling them terrorists afterwards could not make the killings lawful. It served to conceal the crime.
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