The new documentary compiles footage of war crimes committed and posted online by Israeli soldiers in Gaza
News Desk OCT 4, 2024
Palestinian victims of Israel's military campaign in Gaza (Photo credit: Euro Med Human Rights)
Al Jazeera has released a new documentary, available on YouTube, detailing
Israeli war crimes and human rights violations in Gaza, based on videos
filmed and posted on social media by soldiers themselves.
“We live in an era of technology, and this has been described as the first
livestreamed genocide in history,” Palestinian novelist Susan Abulhawa told
Al Jazeera’s investigative unit (I-Unit).
Since the start of Israel’s extermination campaign in Gaza last October, Israeli
soldiers have posted thousands of videos and photos on Instagram,
Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube.
Rodney Dixon, an international law expert featured in the film, says the videos
are “a treasure trove which you very seldom come across … something which
I think prosecutors will be licking their lips at.”
The film also includes information collected by Al Jazeera journalists working
on the ground in Gaza, as well as Israeli military drone footage. It is unclear
how Al Jazeera obtained the drone footage.
The videos show evidence of the Israeli army’s murder of unarmed civilians,
wanton destruction, torture of detainees, and use of human shields in Gaza.
Many videos showed Israeli soldiers using explosives to demolish residential
buildings and homes.
“The fact that they’ve been able to rig these buildings up with explosives
shows very clearly that there’s no current threat from those buildings,”
Charlie Herbert, a retired major general in the British Army and researcher
for the project, told Al Jazeera.
In one video, a French-Israeli soldier films a detainee being pulled from
the back of a truck and says, “Look, I’m going to show you his back.
You’re going to laugh at this. He was tortured.”
“They took my son, the eldest, who had just been married,” a Palestinian man,
Abu Amer, explained to Al Jazeera. “He was tortured. I could hear his screams
as they were suffocating him and beating him in the adjacent room.
There was nothing we could do with the rifles pointed at our heads.
We could not make a move.”
A Palestinian from Gaza, Fadi Bakr, told Al Jazeera he was forced to lie
on a decomposing corpse by a soldier who threatened to execute him.
Bakr was later sent to the notorious Sde Teiman detention center in
southern Israel, where he saw guards using a dog to rape a young male
inmate.
Footage gathered by Al Jazeera Arabic showed Israeli soldiers forcing a
detainee to inspect empty buildings while being monitored by a drone.
Separate footage shows bloodied detainees being fitted with cameras so
they can enter potentially booby-trapped buildings before Israeli soldiers.
The Al Jazeera investigation also showed a video placed online by a soldier
called Shalom Gilbert, a member of the 202 Paratroopers Battalion.
The video shows three unarmed men being killed by snipers.
Since 7 October, Israel’s military campaign to destroy Gaza and ethnically
cleanse its 2.3 million inhabitants has killed over 41,700 people, the majority
women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
In July, researchers published an article discussing the possible death toll in
Gaza, in which they estimated at least 186,000 deaths could be attributable
to the current conflict in Gaza.
Source: https://thecradle.co/articles/investigation-reveals-israeli-troops-
committing-first-ever-live-streamed-genocide
---------------
HORROR: Israeli troops live streamed war crimes and
genocidal acts, documentary reveals
The Qatar-funded 24/7 English-language media network Al Jazeera recently uploaded on
YouTube a documentary detailing the war crimes and human rights violations committed by
the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) in Gaza.
The investigation team even found that the IDF posted all of its violent actions "real-time" since
the start of Israel's extermination campaign on the enclave – be it videos or photos – on
Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and YouTube by its own soldiers.
"We live in an era of technology, and this has been described as the first live-streamed
genocide in history," Palestinian novelist Susan Abulhawa told Al Jazeera's investigative
unit (I-Unit).
The I-Unit's new documentary investigates Israeli war crimes primarily through the medium of
the evidence Israeli soldiers themselves have provided. International law expert Rodney Dixon,
who was featured in the film, says that the videos are "a treasure trove which you very seldom
come across – something which I think prosecutors will be
licking their lips at."
The almost 1.5-hour video titled "Investigating war crimes in Gaza," also includes information
collected by Al Jazeera journalists working at ground zero. It also has Israeli military drone
footage. The videos show evidence of IDF's murder of unarmed civilians, wanton destruction,
torture of detainees and use of human shields in Gaza. According to the I-Unit, all may be
violations of international humanitarian law (IHL) and war crimes under the Rome Statute of
the International Criminal Court (ICC).
However, how the media outlet obtained the drone
videos was not indicated.
Moreover, some of the videos showed Israeli soldiers using explosives to flatten residential
buildings and houses.
"The fact that they've been able to rig these buildings up with explosives shows very clearly
that there's no current threat from those buildings," Charlie Herbert, a retired major general in
the
British Army and researcher for the project, told the news outlet.
According to Al Jazeera, Western journalists have portrayed the war on Gaza as complex and
nuanced but IDF's social media posts suggested they regarded it as anything but.
So, they decided
to investigate these posts.
"It expected to have to dedicate considerable resources to geolocation – the use of satellite
maps and other sources to identify specific locations – and to the use of facial recognition
software to scan the internet to identify the soldiers featured in the photos and videos," the
probe team said. "What it found was that, for the most part, soldiers posted material in their
own names on publicly accessible platforms and often gave details of when and where the
incidents depicted took
place."
So the I-Unit compiled a database of more than 2,500 social media accounts, which posted
related videos and photos. The behavior displayed in the posts ranged from crass jokes and
soldiers rifling through women's underwear drawers to what appears to be the murder of
unarmed
civilians, the unit indicated.
Gadhan Commando: IDF's most destructive military unit
According to the documentary, the 8219 Combat Engineering Battalion or the Gadhan
Commando, appeared to have the most prominent videos posted online.
It claimed to have destroyed hundreds of buildings in Gaza City and then progressed to the
south of the Strip between Dec. 28 and June 9. It actually destroyed Khirbet Khuza'a, a town
of 13,000 people close to the fence separating Gaza from Israel.
"We … destroyed a whole village as revenge for what they did to Kibbutz Nir Oz on 7/10,"
wrote Captain Chai Roe Cohen of the 8219 battalion's C Company in an Instagram post on
Jan. 7. (Related: Human rights activist Dan Kovalik "grills" Sen. John Fetterman in "ambush
interview" for favoring Israel's genocide in Gaza, Lebanon.)
The I-Unit also looked into a video posted by a soldier called Shalom Gilbert, a member of the
202 Paratroopers Battalion, which showed three unarmed men being killed by snipers.
“Just because a civilian is walking in an area where combat is going on does not make them
fair game … If they get involved in hostilities at a particular moment, yes, they lose their civilian
status. They can be targeted. But then you have to show the evidence that they are presenting
a threat to you … It's potentially a matter that the ICC would want to look at,” said Dixon.
But human rights activists are not letting this pass and assured that this will be looked into by
the ICC.
"The revenge rhetoric that we've heard from some Israeli soldiers … is disturbing.
Atrocities don’t justify atrocities," Bill Van Esveld, the associate director for the Middle East
and North Africa at Human Rights Watch told Al Jazeera.
Dixon said that the ICC will look for those who are high up the chain of command.
The good thing is that the pieces of evidence are coming directly from commanders about
the orders that they gave and how they command and control the troops would be vital
evidence.
Watch the full documentary on Israel's war crimes in Gaza below.
Head over to Genocide.news for stories related to this.
Sources for this article include:
https://www.naturalnews.com/2024-10-10-israeli-troops-live-streamed-war-
