[News] Israeli soldiers confirm Palestinian civilians murdered 'without restraint' in Gaza 'free for all'

[Anti-Imperialist News]

  Israeli soldiers confirm Palestinian civilians murdered 'without
  restraint' in Gaza 'free for all'

A new film shows that Israeli troops were encouraged to exterminate 
Palestinians, including women and children, by their politicians and 
Jewish religious leaders

News Desk <https://thecradle.co/authors/news-desk-9>

NOV 10, 2025 - 
https://thecradle.co/articles/israeli-soldiers-confirm-palestinian-civilians-murdered-without-restraint-in-gaza-free-for-all


(Photo credit: Omar al-Qattaa, AFP)

In a new documentary film, Israeli soldiers have described a 
“free-for-all” in Gaza, in which they killed civilians “without 
restraint” with the encouragement of politicians and rabbis, /The 
Guardian/ reported 
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/nov/10/israeli-soldiers-breaking-ranks-gaza-civilians-human-shields>on 
10 November.

“If you want to shoot without restraint, you can,” stated Daniel, the 
commander of an Israeli tank unit.

He and other soldiers gave testimony about killings they perpetrated 
during combat tours in Gaza for the film ‘Breaking Ranks: Inside 
Israel’s War,’ which will be broadcast in the UK on ITV on Monday night.

The soldiers who agreed to talk confirmed they routinely used 
Palestinians as human shields and opened fire unprovoked on civilians 
seeking aid at militarized distribution points set up by the 
US-Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).

Captain Yotam Vilk, an Israeli armored corps officer, said that in basic 
training, they were taught to only fire at a target that has the means, 
shows intent, and has the ability to cause harm.

But in Gaza, “there’s no such thing as ‘means, intent and ability,’” 
Vilk stated in the film.

“No soldier ever mentions ‘means, intent, and ability.’ It’s just a 
suspicion of walking where it’s not allowed. A man aged between 20 and 
40,” he explained.

Another soldier, identified in the film as Eli, says individual 
commanders had the freedom to determine who was killed and who was 
allowed to remain alive.

“Life and death aren’t determined by procedures or opening fire 
regulations. It’s the conscience of the commander on the ground that 
decides,” Eli said.

“If they’re walking too fast, they’re suspicious. If they’re walking too 
slow, they’re suspicious. They’re plotting something. If three men are 
walking and one of them lags behind, it’s a two-to-one infantry 
formation – it’s a military formation,” he added.

Eli describes an incident in which a senior officer ordered a tank to 
destroy a residential building, crushing civilians to death inside, 
because a man was hanging laundry on the roof.

“The officer decided that he was a spotter. He’s not a spotter. He’s 
hanging his laundry. You can see that he’s hanging laundry,” he said.

“Now, it’s not as if this man had binoculars or weapons. The closest 
military force was 600–700 meters away. So, unless he had eagle eyes, 
how could he possibly be a spotter? And the tank fired a shell. The 
building half collapsed. And the result was many dead and wounded.”

/The Guardian/ notes 
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2025/aug/21/revealed-israeli-militarys-own-data-indicates-civilian-death-rate-of-83-in-gaza-war>that 
according to the Israeli military’s own intelligence data, 83 percent of 
those killed in Gaza were civilians, a historic high for modern 
conflicts. More than 69,000 Palestinians have been killed since the war 
started, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, with tens of thousands 
more likely not counted as they remain buried under the rubble of 
destroyed buildings.

The Israeli military publicly claims its forces seek to protect 
civilians. However, some of the soldiers interviewed for the film said 
they were influenced by genocidal language used by Israeli politicians 
and religious leaders who claimed that no Palestinians in Gaza were 
innocent after the Hamas attack of 7 October 2023.

For example, a UN commission pointed 
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/16/israel-committed-genocide-in-gaza-says-un-inquiry>to 
comments made by Israeli President Isaac Herzog, who claimed after 7 
October that, “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible. It 
is not true, this rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved, it’s 
absolutely not true.”

Roughly 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals were killed in the Hamas 
attack. Israel blamed all these deaths on Hamas; however, the military 
itself killed hundreds with attack helicopters, drones, and tanks, per a 
special order known as the Hannibal Directive 
<https://thecradle.co/articles/ex-israeli-war-chief-confirms-issuing-hannibal-directive-to-kill-own-civilians-soldiers-on-7-oct>.

The order was given for Israeli pilots to fire on their own civilians to 
prevent them from being taken to Gaza as captives that Hamas could use 
to liberate Palestinians in a prisoner exchange.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly referred 
<https://www.npr.org/2023/11/07/1211133201/netanyahus-references-to-violent-biblical-passages-raise-alarm-among-critics>to 
Palestinians in Gaza as “Amalek,” citing a story from Jewish scripture 
in which the Hebrews were ordered to exterminate the entire Amalekite 
nation, killing every man, woman, and child – even babies.

Daniel, the tank unit commander, said that this type of rhetoric 
influenced the behavior of soldiers in his unit. “You hear that all the 
time, so you start to believe it,” he stated.

Jewish rabbis in the Israeli army also advised soldiers to exterminate 
Palestinians in Gaza.

“One time, the brigade rabbi sat down next to me and spent half an hour 
explaining why we must be just like they were on 7 October. That we must 
take revenge on all of them, including civilians. That we shouldn’t 
discriminate, and that this is the only way,” said Major Neta Caspin.

Rabbi Avraham Zarbiv, who participated with his unit in the genocide in 
Gaza, stated in the film that, “Everything there is one big terrorist 
infrastructure.”

Zarbiv personally drove military bulldozers and boasted about destroying 
Gaza, stating that the army spent “hundreds of thousands of shekels to 
destroy the Gaza Strip. We changed the conduct of an entire army.”

The soldiers speaking in Breaking Ranks also confirmed their use of 
Palestinians as human shields, known as “Mosquitos,” to clear tunnels 
and homes where booby traps may be present. That way, a Palestinian 
would be killed rather than an Israeli soldier.

“You send the human shield underground. As he walks down the tunnel, he 
maps it all for you. He has an iPhone in his vest, and as he walks, it 
sends back GPS information,” said Daniel, the tank commander.

“The commanders saw how it works. And the practice spread like wildfire. 
After about a week, every company was operating its own mosquito.”

A private contractor, identified as Sam, confirmed that Israeli soldiers 
opened fire on and killed unarmed civilians seeking food at GHF 
distribution sites.

He described witnessing Israeli soldiers murder two Palestinian men.

“You could just see two soldiers run after them. They drop onto their 
knees, and they just take two shots, and you could just see … two heads 
snap backwards and just drop,” Sam explained.

In another case, he saw a tank destroy “a normal car … just four normal 
people sat inside it.”

At least 1,889 Palestinian civilians were killed by Israeli soldiers 
while seeking food in Gaza between 27 May and 18 August 2025, according 
to UN figures.

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