[News] The Gaza family torn apart by IDF snipers from Chicago and Munich

[Anti-Imperialist News]

theguardian.com 
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/09/the-gaza-family-torn-apart-by-idf-snipers-from-chicago-and-munich> 



  The Gaza family torn apart by IDF snipers from Chicago and Munich

Hoda Osman, Emma Graham-Harrison
September 9, 2025
------------------------------------------------------------------------

A sniper aims his weapon through a window

Raab and Graetz’s location has been traced from photos and videos taken 
by Israeli soldiers showing the two snipers aiming their weapons through 
a window and a hole in the wall. Photograph: YouTube

Daniel Raab shows no hesitation as he watches footage of 19-year-old 
Salem Doghmosh crumpling to the ground beside his brother in a street in 
northern Gaza <https://www.theguardian.com/world/gaza>.

“That was my first elimination,” he says. The video, shot by a drone, 
lasts just a few seconds. The Palestinian teenager appears to be unarmed 
when he is shot in the head.

Raab, a former varsity basketball player from a Chicago suburb who 
became an Israeli sniper, concedes he knew that. He says he shot Salem 
simply because he tried to retrieve the body of his beloved older 
brother Mohammed.

“It’s hard for me to understand why he [did that] and it also doesn’t 
really interest me,” Raab says in a video interview posted on X. “I 
mean, what was so important about that corpse?”

A five-month investigation by the Guardian, Arab Reporters for 
Investigative Journalism (ARIJ) and Paper Trail Media, Der Spiegel and 
ZDF has identified six people shot by Israeli snipers on 22 November 
2023. And through interviews with survivors, witnesses and relatives, 
reviews of death certificates, medical records and geolocated images we 
revealed how a family from Gaza City’s Tal al-Hawa neighbourhood was 
torn apart in a few hours by men who grew up in Naperville, Illinois and 
Munich, Germany.

Israeli snipers killed four members of the Doghmosh family that day, and 
injured two others. Their story illuminates patterns of killing by 
Israeli troops, who have repeatedly treated unarmed men between 18 and 
40 in Gaza as targets.

Two pictures from above. The first shows a figure lying the ground. The 
second has two figures on the ground next to each other
Family members say they recognised Salem Doghmosh, who was shot dead as 
he tried to retrieve the body of his brother Mohammed. Photograph: YouTube

The mass slaughter 
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2025/aug/21/revealed-israeli-militarys-own-data-indicates-civilian-death-rate-of-83-in-gaza-war> 
of tens of thousands of civilians is one factor cited by scholars 
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/01/israel-committing-genocide-in-gaza-worlds-top-scholars-on-the-say>,lawyers 
<https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx274gj54xpo> andrights groups 
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/28/israel-committing-genocide-in-gaza-say-israel-based-human-rights-groups> 
who say Israel is committing genocide.

“They’re thinking: ‘Oh I don’t think [I’ll get shot] because I’m wearing 
civilian clothes and I am not carrying a weapon and all that, but they 
were wrong,” said Raab, who majored in biology at the University of 
Illinois before joining the Israel Defense Forces. “That’s what you have 
snipers for.”

After Salem was shot, his father, Montasser, 51, rushed to the site, and 
tried to collect his sons’ bodies for burial, but was also fatally 
injured by a sniper.

The need for a dignified funeral for loved ones is a core human 
instinct, protected in law and explored in art for millennia. It is at 
the emotional heart of Homer’s Iliad, one of the earliest surviving 
works of literature.

But on that day, Raab treated love and grief as cause to kill. “They 
just kept on coming to try and take these bodies,” he said.

The video of Salem’s killing, and footage of other attacks on unarmed 
Palestinians, was posted online five months after his death, part of a 
montage made by a soldier called Shalom Gilbert to celebrate a 
deployment in Gaza.

Raab later said he and another sniper carried out three of those 
killings, in an interview carried out under deceptive circumstances by a 
team led by the Palestinian journalist and activist Younis Tirawi.

Raab was approached by a Hebrew speaker who claimed he wanted to write 
about the squad’s experiences and to commemorate fallen soldiers, Tirawi 
said. Raab was promised anonymity, but Tirawi posted extracts of the 
interview online, justifying the decision by saying it was in the public 
interest, given the scale of civilian killings.

Raab did not name his partner, who was later identified from photos as 
Daniel Graetz.

Raab and Graetz did not respond to requests for comment on the 
shootings, sent over several months by journalists working on the 
investigation.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Doghmosh family’s tragedy unfolded on a short stretch of Moneer 
al-Rayyes Street in Gaza City, near the Barcelona Garden park.

Residents knew Israeli forces were in the area, but on the morning of 22 
November 2023 the sound of someone chopping wood in the street reassured 
locals there wasn’t active combat in the area. It was a false sense of 
security.

When Mohammed Doghmosh set off towards the park with a cousin, Raab and 
Graetz were already in place.

The men were part of a sniper team whose members called themselves 
/refaim/, or ghost. They had no connection to an elite official special 
forces unit also known as Refaim.

Many members of the unit were dual nationals, and photos and videos of 
their operations posted online have helped human rights organisations 
alert prosecutors in Belgium 
<https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/en/2024/10/18/prosecutor_s-office-opens-investigation-into-brussels-man-servin/> 
and France <https://www.ynetnews.com/article/ayfgx91kx> to suspected war 
crimes by unit members.

Raab and Graetz’s location has been traced from photos and videos taken 
by Israeli soldiers showing the two snipers aiming their weapons through 
a window and a hole in the wall. Using satellite imagery, the 
investigative team geolocated that site to a six-storey building about 
400 metres from the killings.

The position gave a clear view of Moneer al-Rayyes Street. A Palestinian 
journalist working on the investigation visited the buildings and found 
further evidence of the “ghost” snipers’ presence: graffiti showing the 
number 9 with devil’s horns and a tail – the squad’s unofficial logo.

Footage from inside shows graffiti with devil horns, the squad’s 
unofficial logo.

The reporter, who also interviewed the Doghmosh family, asked not to be 
named because Israel has killed at least 189 journalists in Gaza.

Mohammed, who was 26 when he was killed, had a high school diploma and 
supported the family by gathering waste metal and plastic for resale. 
Salem had dropped out after 10th grade and joined him.

Fayza Doghmosh recognised her two sons – Salem’s olive-green shirt, 
Mohammed’s black clothes – when she was shown Gilbert’s footage. She 
cried uncontrollably as she watched, 18 months after her boys were killed.

Mohammed, who loved chicken wings and helped his mother knead dough for 
family bread each day, was the first to head out. He picked up his 
cousin Youssef* at his home nearby, and the two men headed out.

His last moments may have been filmed by Israeli forces. Gilbert’s 
montage includes two grainy videos of targeted killings. Youssef says he 
recognises himself, walking with his hands in his pockets beside 
Mohammed, his lifelong friend.

Thermal image picture of two figures
Youssef says he recognises himself, walking with his hands in his 
pockets beside Mohammed moments before he was shot dead. Photograph: 
YouTube

Raab describes that video as Graetz’s “second elimination”, in their 
first days in Tal al-Hawa. Graetz, who grew up in Munich, can be seen in 
Gilbert’s video, and his identity was confirmed by facial recognition 
technology and interviews with former classmates.

Aspects of the video raise questions about whether it shows this 
shooting, however. Weapons experts who examined it were divided over 
whether a projectile visible in several frames was a bullet from a 
sniper rifle. The images show a man hit in the back, while Youssef says 
Mohammed was shot from the front.

But if what Raab and Mohammed’s relatives say is true, Graetz appears to 
have killed Mohammed because he was in the wrong place at the wrong 
time. Neither man was carrying a weapon.

In November 2023 Israeli forces operating in the area decided that 
section of Moneer al-Rayyes Street was off-limits to civilians, without 
notifying Palestinians. Raab described it as a “combat zone” where any 
man of military age was “marked for death”.

Palestinians walk amid rubble of destroyed buildings
Palestinians walk amid the rubble of destroyed buildings in Gaza City’s 
Tal al-Hawa district on 26 November 2023, on the third day of a truce 
between Israel and Hamas. Photograph: Omar El-Qattaa/AFP/Getty Images

Establishing an invisible “security perimeter” then shooting civilians 
who cross it has become common practice in Gaza, Israeli soldiers 
<https://www.breakingthesilence.org.il/inside/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Perimeter_English-2.pdf> 
have testified 
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2025/aug/21/revealed-israeli-militarys-own-data-indicates-civilian-death-rate-of-83-in-gaza-war>.

When asked how his squad decided whether to shoot unarmed Palestinians, 
Raab said: “Its a question of distance. There is a line that we define. 
They don’t know where this line is, but we do.”

The Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology examined the 
videos containing the most critical statements and found “no indication” 
to suggest the content had been altered.

After Mohammed was killed, Youssef ran to tell his brothers, 
inadvertently sealing Salem’s fate. Raab describes on camera how he shot 
the teenager when he came to collect Mohammed’s body.

The recovery of dead bodies is protected under international law. The 
Israeli military’s own regulations also stipulate that people collecting 
bodies are not legitimate targets, according to former soldiers and Asa 
Kasher, who co-authored the Israeli Defense Forces’ ethics code.

“If you see someone recovering a body or helping a wounded person, 
that’s a rescue operation, it should be respected,” Kasher said. 
“Someone like that should not be shot.”

The next victim was Salem and Mohammed’s father, Montasser. “My boys,” 
was all he could say when he saw them lying dead in the street. He tried 
to approach them and was shot.

Then, snipers targeted a cousin, Khalil*, who raced to help Montasser. 
“I had taken about eight to 10 steps carrying him when I was shot and it 
felt like my arm was blown off,” said Khalil, who managed to stagger out 
of range before losing consciousness.

The two men were taken to hospital, but Montasser died the next day. The 
family decided they could not risk more loss, and the brothers’ bodies 
were left in the street until a ceasefire began on 24 November.

“Anyone who came close got shot,” said Khalil. He still struggles with 
the damage from bullets that struck his torso just below his armpit, 
with such force he initially thought his arm had been severed. “If I 
walk a little, I get tired. If I work, I get tired.”

There is no video of his shooting but Raab describes someone from his 
squad hitting a Palestinian near the brothers’ bodies, causing a severe 
arm injury. “It really knocked away his arm, and we assumed he wouldn’t 
survive,” he said.

The attacks match a pattern described by a former Israeli reservist, who 
told the Guardian that soldiers he served with in Gaza repeatedly shot 
unarmed Palestinians trying to collect bodies.

“It’s something I saw myself,” he said, adding that these killings often 
came after a first unarmed individual was targeted for crossing an 
invisible “security perimeter”.

“Once he has been declared an enemy before he has been shot, then the 
assumption is that everyone going to collect him is his co-conspirator,” 
added the former reservist, who refused to return to Gaza on the grounds 
that the war had become “immoral”.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mohammed, Salem and Montasser were not the only members of their wider 
family shot near Barcelona Garden that November day.

Mohammed Farid, 47, a distant cousin of the Doghmosh brothers, lived on 
Moneer al-Rayyes Street. He had evacuated his family to a less exposed 
building earlier in November but wanted to check if their home had been 
damaged. Walking back he bumped into another cousin, Jamal*, finishing a 
similar errand, and they continued together.

As they reached the corner of Jamal’s street, a few metres from his 
home, Farid was shot. Jamal’s wife, Amal*, watched in horror as Farid 
crumpled to the ground and her own husband raced for cover.

In the Gilbert video, there is a third clip showing a killing, which 
Raab also identifies as the work of his partner, Graetz.

Black and white image of a figure in the crosshairs
Witnesses including family members say this footage shows Mohammed Farid 
moments before he was shot dead. Photograph: YouTube

Footage shows two men walking away from the camera down a street filled 
with rubble. Neither appears to be carrying a weapon. A shot rings out, 
one man falls to the ground and the other scrambles to get out of the 
line of fire.

Witnesses including Farid’s immediate family and his cousin Jamal 
identify the victim as Farid, citing his distinctive durag-style head 
covering. He was taken to hospital, but declared dead within half an hour.

Raab says Israeli snipers shot eight people in two days near the 
Barcelona Garden park. Six of them were most likely from the Doghmosh 
family. Mohammed and Salem, their father, Montasser, and Mohammed Farid 
were killed, and two cousins were injured. There were also two 
unidentified bodies in the area at the time, witnesses and survivors say.

In total, Raab says his “team” had killed 105 people by the time his 
deployment in Gaza ended. “That’s really impressive,” he said of the toll.

The Israeli military did not respond to specific questions about the 
killings of the Doghmosh family or rules of engagement, including the 
shooting of civilians recovering bodies. A spokesperson said its forces 
operated “in strict accordance with its rules of engagement and 
international law, taking feasible precautions to mitigate civilian harm”.

International law protects unarmed individuals and the collection of 
bodies. The shootings on Moneer al-Rayyes Street appeared to violate 
that, experts said. “The available evidence points to a war crime,” said 
Tom Dannenbaum, a professor of international law at Stanford law school.

Nearly two years after the shootings, surviving Doghmosh family members 
have more hope in divine justice than human courts. Fayza remembers 
standing by her house when they brought the bodies of her two sons to 
her. Of Raab, she says: “Even if I forgive him, God will not.”

/* The names of survivors and witnesses have been changed due to 
security concerns/

/Reporting team: Maria Retter, Daniel Laufer, Frederik Obermaier, Maria 
Cristoph (Paper Trail Media)/

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