[News] Israeli snipers ‘shoot Palestinians for sport’

[Anti-Imperialist News]

 Israeli snipers ‘shoot Palestinians for sport’

Eyewitness accounts reveal Israeli snipers are systematically targeting
unarmed civilians, including children, using tactics that point to
deliberate genocidal intent and a chilling policy of terror designed to
annihilate a people, not just wage war.

Robert Inlakesh <https://thecradle.co/authors/robert-inlakesh>

NOV 25, 2024 -
https://thecradle.co/articles/israeli-snipers-shoot-palestinians-for-sport
Photo Credit: The Cradle

Israel's attempts to excuse the mass murder of civilians in Gaza as
"collateral damage" fall apart in the face of mounting evidence that it
employs deliberate sniper attacks. The targeted killing of unarmed people –
using quadcopter drones and professional snipers – has restricted access to
essential medical care, food, and water, exposing a chilling reality behind
the occupation army’s actions.

The International Criminal Court’s (ICC) arrest warrants
<https://thecradle.co/articles/netanyahu-wanted-a-landmark-legal-moment-in-the-palestinian-struggle>
for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defense
Minister Yoav Gallant are further testament to this not being a
conventional war; it is a systematic targeting of civilians that points
directly to genocidal intent.

Over the past year, debates have raged over what constitutes an
“acceptable” level of collateral damage in Gaza. In July, the West Point US
Military Academy's Modern War Institute even published
<https://mwi.westpoint.edu/minimizing-collateral-damage-with-the-surgical-application-of-force-applying-lessons-from-the-post-9-11-wars-to-israels-war-against-hamas/>
a piece that argued for a more surgical approach to be taken by the
Israelis.

Similar discussions that also surround what constitutes a “disproportionate
use of force” are all predicated on Tel Aviv’s approach being one of a
conventional war. However, if Israel’s intention is not to wage war against
Hamas and is instead to intentionally commit genocide
<https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192/192-20231228-app-01-00-en.pdf>
and ethnic cleansing
<https://www.hrw.org/report/2024/11/14/hopeless-starving-and-besieged/israels-forced-displacement-palestinians-gaza>,
these conversations prove meaningless. And no clearer evidence exists than
the cold-blooded targeting of civilians by sniper fire.

*Sniping civilians on live TV *

Though there have been instances when sniper attacks on civilians captured
the international media's attention, this grim element of Israel's military
strategy is largely ignored, likely because of the damning implications.

The first major case to break headlines in the western media was the murder
of two Christian women at Gaza City’s Holy Family Church on 16 December
2023. The incident even received condemnation from the Pope
<https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/16/middleeast/idf-sniper-gaza-church-deaths-intl-hnk/index.html>
over the murder of the Palestinian Catholic mother and her daughter, who
were deliberately killed while seeking refuge inside the church compound.

But today, these kinds of shootings are so commonplace that they even occur
during live TV interviews with western news outlets. For example, in
January, British broadcaster ITV captured the moment when 51-year-old Ramzi
Abu Sahloul was shot through the chest
<https://www.pbs.org/video/war-in-the-holy-land-1706138139/>, only moments
after he had spoken on air. Sahloul was part of a group of civilians who
were fleeing to Rafah in Gaza’s south while holding white flags on the
orders of the Israeli military.

Another innocent civilian murdered while fleeing and with a white flag was
Hala Khreis; she was shot and fatally wounded while holding her grandson's
hand as they were walking. The incident was also caught on camera. A CNN
investigation
<https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2024/01/25/palestinians-gaza-shooting-investigation-ward-intl-ldn-vpx.cnn>
was able to prove that Israeli soldiers stationed nearby were responsible.

*Intimidation by assassination *

Palestinian correspondent Motasem Dalloul
<https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/6-author/motasem-dalloul/>, who is based
in northern Gaza, testifies to *The Cradle* that his own son Yahya was
murdered by an Israeli sniper on 29 May, after which the soldiers ran over
his child's body with a tank.

“I took my sons to our destroyed house, in Al-Sabra neighborhood, in order
to pick up some clothes from under the rubble. When we were there, I saw my
son fall to the ground and he started bleeding from his head. I got close
to him and found that his head had exploded.”

He explains that although he couldn’t see the Israeli soldiers, he knew
that they were positioned nearby with sniper weapons and states that when
he approached little Yahya’s body, he was struck by the fact that he was
motionless. He adds:

“Israeli tanks began shooting and firing everywhere. I knew that my son was
dead … so I had to leave him on the ground and flee with my other sons to
safety. I couldn’t return back to this place for 10 days, where I later
found that an Israeli tank had run over his body and dismembered it, we
could only collect some of his flesh and bones, which had been smashed by
the Israeli tanks, and we put them in a piece of fabric, like a shirt, and
took them, burying them in a makeshift cemetery.”

During Dalloul’s conversation with *The Cradle*, bombs exploding in the
background are heard as he recounts:

“I think the reason Israeli occupation [word muffled by the sound of
explosions] killed my son was to frighten the rest of us and warn us not to
return to this area … as that area was later on destroyed and all the
buildings were erased, turning it into a military buffer zone. This put
much pressure on the residents of Gaza City who do not have homes and a lot
of these displaced people were murdered.”

*Psychological warfare and denial of medical care*

The calculated targeting of civilians is not limited to sniper fire. On 20
September, a UN special committee reported to the General Assembly that
there has also been a “deliberate denial of healthcare access by Israeli
snipers <https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/n24/271/19/pdf/n2427119.pdf>”
to lactating and pregnant Palestinian women.

After countless testimonies of deliberate shootings committed against
civilians have been emerging, in December 2023, the UN Office of the High
Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) issued a press release urging
accountability
<https://www.un.org/unispal/document/unlawful-killings-in-gaza-city-ohchr-press-release/>
and an investigation. The press release also highlighted the execution of
11 men in front of their families in the Remal Neighbourhood of Gaza City.

Yassin, a young man from Jabalia Refugee Camp, describes to *The Cradle*
how he was shot from a quadcopter drone in mid-November of 2023, managing
to survive by mere chance. Yassin says that he was traveling on foot, using
Salah al-Deen Road between Jabalia and Khan Younis, after receiving
evacuation orders from the occupation army to move south.

While he was fleeing, an armed clash suddenly erupted within his visual
range:

“I picked up my clothes and phone and ran from the place to escape this
clash. There was a hill of sand in front of me, I jumped off it, and some
of my clothes fell. Then I found the ambulance that the enemy [Israel] had
stopped, remaining on the road.”

Scared, he said he heard calls in Arabic for him to stop running, then “I
heard the sound of the bullet, so I asked in a loud voice ‘Who was shot?’
After 10 meters, I realized this bullet had exploded inside my liver, and I
was the answer to my own question. This bullet penetrated my right lung,
then the diaphragm, then exploded in the liver.”

Yassin says that the only reason he survived was because a relative
happened to be driving a nearby ambulance and acted quickly to save his
life. Yassin’s recovery has been a long and grueling journey spanning
several months, and he continues to suffer from his injuries despite
evacuating across the Rafah Crossing into Egypt.

*A policy of deliberate targeting *

American surgeon Mark Perlmutter, who traveled to Gaza in order to treat
wounded Palestinians during the war, has also drawn specific attention to
the intentional targeting of children by Israeli sniper fire. “No child
gets shot twice by mistake,
<https://www.france24.com/en/tv-shows/t%C3%AAte-%C3%A0-t%C3%AAte/20241029-us-doctor-claims-israeli-snipers-target-child-in-gaza-no-child-gets-shot-twice-by-mistakea>”
he told *France 24.* Perlmutter has burst into tears during several
interviews while describing how scores of children had died in front of his
eyes.

Perlmutter’s accounts align with the recent testimony of British doctor
Nizam Mamode, who described to UK Members of Parliament how drones would
deliberately shoot children “day after day
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/gaza-war-british-surgeon-tells-mps-account-nasser-hospital>”
in Gaza. Such accounts have been emerging from foreign physicians
throughout the war, with nine other on-the-ground doctors
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/02/gaza-palestinian-children-killed-idf-israel-war>
providing accounts of the calculated targeting of children to *The Guardian*
earlier this year.

*The Cradle* also received testimony from a Palestinian man from northern
Gaza whose brother was shot by an Israeli sniper in October during Israel’s
re-invasion. As he tried to drag his brother to safety, he was repeatedly
targeted by snipers and eventually had to watch his brother slowly die from
his wounds.

He explains that they fled their homes to Gaza City, but he and his brother
decided to return when the fighting was less intense, noting that the
shooting erupted out of nowhere when they were in the Jabalia area. He then
saw his brother collapse and bleed everywhere, noting that the bullet hit
him in the middle of his body.

*Twisted tactics *

The accounts provided to *The Cradle* are but a few in a long list of
similar horrors that emerge on a daily basis from the Gaza Strip. In April,
Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor released a report
<https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6271/Israeli-army-broadcasts-intimidating-sounds-to-lure,-kill,-and-forcibly-displace-civilians-in-the-Nuseirat-camp>that
pointed out Israel’s use of intimidating sounds to scare and lure civilians
into kill zones. In the Nuseirat Refugee Camp, drones were recorded playing
the sounds of babies crying in order to draw civilians out of their homes
and into the streets so that they could be fired upon.

Throughout the writing of this piece, over a dozen eyewitnesses to
shootings – including journalists and doctors in Gaza – were consulted. All
confirmed that Israeli snipers deliberately target civilians without any
justification to instill fear that prevents people from moving freely.

A Palestinian doctor from northern Gaza, who requested anonymity, tells *The
Cradle*, “They are shooting civilians for sport, and this is clearly
deliberate; this must be the policy of the army.”
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