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<h1 class="page__title title balance-text" id="page-title">Israel
intentionally killed civilians after soldier’s capture in Gaza —
Amnesty</h1>
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<p class="node__submitted">
<span class="field field-author"><a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/people/rania-khalek"
typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel"
datatype="">Rania Khalek</a></span> <span class="field
field-blog"></span>
<span class="field field-publication-date"><span
class="date-display-single" property="dc:date"
datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2015-07-30T09:13:13+00:00">30
July 2015<br>
<b><small><small><small><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/rania-khalek/israel-intentionally-killed-civilians-after-soldiers-capture-gaza-amnesty">https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/rania-khalek/israel-intentionally-killed-civilians-after-soldiers-capture-gaza-amnesty</a></small></small></small></b><br>
</span></span> </p>
</header>
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<p>A joint <a href="https://blackfriday.amnesty.org">investigation</a>
by Amnesty International and Forensic Architecture found “strong
evidence” that the Israeli army carried out war crimes in an
attempt to kill an Israeli soldier captured in Gaza last summer
and as revenge for his capture.</p>
<p>On 1 August 2014 — a day Palestinians have come to know as Black
Friday — the Israeli army initiated its deadliest act of butchery
during its 51-day war on Gaza, bombing men, women and children in
an effort to kill one of its own soldiers in <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/rafah">Rafah</a>,
Gaza’s southernmost city. </p>
<p>When the dust settled, anywhere between 135 to more than 200
Palestinian civilians were dead, including 75 children. With the
morgues full to capacity, medical workers were forced to store the
corpses of small children in <a
href="http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/gazans-forced-keep-dead-bodies-vegetable-refrigerators-1006544969">vegetable
refrigerators</a> and <a
href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2714575/Humanitarian-crisis-Gaza-half-million-homeless.html">ice
cream coolers</a> to accommodate the high volume of dead bodies,
producing some of the most haunting images produced by the 51-day
offensive. </p>
<p>Using eyewitness testimony, satellite images and multimedia
documentation of the carnage, researchers at Forensic
Architecture, based in Goldsmiths, University of London,
reconstructed the Black Friday attacks. This allowed them to
determine that the Israeli attacks were aimed at locations
believed to be harboring the soldier Hadar Goldin, leading Amnesty
to conclude that the Israelis were trying to kill Goldin with no
regard for the harm inflicted on civilians. </p>
<p>“The ferocity of the attack on Rafah shows the extreme measures
Israeli forces were prepared to take to prevent the capture alive
of one soldier — scores of Palestinian civilian lives were
sacrificed for this single aim,” said Philip Luther, director of
Amnesty’s Middle East and North Africa program. </p>
<p>Based on statements made by Israeli officials and soldiers,
Amnesty also concluded that the attacks were partly motivated by
vengeance for the capture.</p>
<h2>Hannibal</h2>
<p>Just before a temporary three-day humanitarian ceasefire
negotiated by Egypt and the United States went into effect on the
morning of 1 August, a unit of soldiers from the Israeli army’s <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/givati-brigade">Givati
Brigade</a> conducted a tunnel incursion southeast of Rafah on
the order of its commander <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/ofer-winter">Ofer
Winter</a>, an ultranationalist religious Zionist who <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israeli-commander-declares-holy-war-palestinians">exhorted
his troops to holy war</a> in Gaza. </p>
<p>It was there that they encountered a team of Palestinian
resistance fighters and exchanged gunfire. Two Israeli soldiers
and one Palestinian were killed in the ensuing firefight, while
another, Goldin, went missing. It was later determined that Goldin
died in the gunfight, but in the immediate aftermath the Israeli
army operated under the assumption that he had been captured
alive, putting into motion a bloodbath of epic proportions.</p>
<p>Goldin’s alleged capture led to the implementation of the <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/hannibal-directive">Hannibal
Directive</a>, a classified Israeli military protocol
authorizing firepower to prevent a captured Israeli soldier from
being taken alive, even if it means killing the soldier and
hundreds of civilians in the process. </p>
<p>Hannibal was crafted in the 1980s to deny Palestinian or other
Arab resistance groups a bargaining chip down the line while
relieving Israeli leaders of the political fallout from having to
make concessions — such as prisoner swaps — to secure a captive’s
release.</p>
<p>On Ofer Winter’s command, Israel unleashed a torrential downpour
of at least 2,000 bombs, missiles and shells on 1 August alone.
Half of the explosives were fired within the initial three hours
of the operation on an area bustling with civilians who had just
returned home for what they believed was a ceasefire. </p>
<h2>No escape</h2>
<p>“I would not be exaggerating if I told you that around 50 to 60
shells were falling every minute,” Rafah resident Saleh Abu Mohsen
told Amnesty.</p>
<p>“People were running away from their homes in terror. It was a
scene reminiscent of 1948 [the 1948 ethnic cleansing of more than
750,000 Palestinians, known as the Nakba], which we had only seen
on TV,” he said, adding, “People were barefoot, women were running
with their heads uncovered, it was a very difficult scene.”</p>
<p>The carpet-bombing began just before 10am, sending
Palestinians bolting for safety in all directions, but to no
avail. Israeli missiles decapitated fleeing civilians as they ran
in the streets and shredded vehicles attempting to evacuate the
wounded to Rafah’s al-Najjar Hospital. </p>
<p>The most lethal Black Friday attack occurred in Rafah’s eastern
al-Tannur neighborhood, where the Israeli army dropped two one-ton
MK-84/GBU-31 bunker buster bombs designed to penetrate underground
command centers onto a single-story building, leaving a massive
crater and a wide radius of destruction. </p>
<p>Though the building was empty, at least 18 people were killed in
the streets as they dodged an assortment of artillery, helicopter
and drone fire hunting them. It was the single deadliest attack on
Black Friday. </p>
<p>Among those killed in the maelstrom was Mohammed Anas Mohammed
Arafat, just 55-days-old. The infant was impaled while in his
mother’s arms as she fled their home with her four children.</p>
<p>“He died in my hands… My son got hit in the head and was injured
in the face and his face split open,” Shirin Jamal Arafat told
Amnesty. </p>
<p>The attack appeared to be aimed at a tunnel shaft inside the
building, where the Israeli army believed Goldin was possibly
being held. </p>
<h2>Killing the wounded </h2>
<p>In the earliest hours of the attack, “the Israeli army appeared
to fire at moving vehicles without distinction,” particularly
ambulances moving toward al-Najjar Hospital. The Israeli attacks
on ambulances were likely an attempt to prevent Goldin’s captors
from getting him medical treatment. </p>
<p>Residents of the Musabbeh neighborhood gathered at the nearby
mosque in the afternoon, following Israeli orders to evacuate. An
eyewitness told Amnesty that he watched from his rooftop as a
drone missile struck Suleiman Muhawish al-Hashash and his
daughter, who were passing by the mosque on foot looking for a
ride to safety.</p>
<p>When people inside the mosque came out to help, a second missile
attacked. “Then a third missile hit the door of the mosque,
injuring Youssef Ahmed Sheikh al-Eid, Dua Sheikh al-Eid and her
three children, all under four years of age,” the witness told
Amnesty.</p>
<p>Three ambulances were dispatched to the scene. The first to
arrive scooped up the wounded but was struck by a missile fired
from a drone.</p>
<p>The missile caused an explosion that burned all eight people
— including three medics, an elderly man, a woman and three
children — before the ambulance could make it back to the
hospital. </p>
<p>Jaber Darabih, a paramedic from the second ambulance to arrive,
which was also attacked, later learned that his son, a volunteer
medic named Youssef Darabih, was among the dead. Their bodies were
so badly torched, they “had no parts — no legs, no hands … So we
took them out and put them inside plastic bags and brought them to
the Abu Youssef al-Najjar Hospital and put them in the
refrigerator,” Jaber told Amnesty.</p>
<p>Those who made it to the hospital alive on Black Friday poured
into al-Najjar Hospital, the medical facility nearest to the site
of Goldin’s capture.</p>
<p>The hospital was completely overwhelmed and unequipped to deal
with the severity and volume of injuries. To make matters worse,
the Israeli military repeatedly attacked in and around the
hospital, blowing out windows, injuring medical staff and patients
and ultimately forcing a frantic evacuation that sent patients
fleeing with intravenous drips in hand. </p>
<p>Ashraf Hijazi, a doctor at the hospital, recalled to Amnesty that
“some had plaster casts, with drips in their chests and stomachs.
I saw a young boy in a plaster cast crawling trying to flee by
dragging himself along.” </p>
<p>Amnesty concluded that the Israeli army was attacking the
hospital just in case Goldin had been wounded and his captors were
seeking medical help. </p>
<h2>“Gloves off” policy</h2>
<p>The Black Friday attacks, though lessening in ferocity, carried
over into 2 August. </p>
<p>Rasha Abu Taha, who was pregnant during the attack, told Amnesty
that on Black Friday over 25 family members had gathered at her
in-laws’ house in the al-Shabora refugee camp. The following day,
after an intense night of attacks, Abu Taha was preparing lunch as
the children played and snapped photos when “suddenly the ceiling
fell on us.”</p>
<p>Abu Taha rushed to rescue all the children she could, including
her daughter, nephew and two nieces. Her sons, 12-year-old
Mohammed and 10-year-old Youssef, and her nephew, 8-month-old
Rizq, were killed.</p>
<p>“They brought Youssef out on a blanket without a head nor arms,
only the lower part of his body,” Abu Taha told Amnesty. </p>
<p>While the Israeli army claims to have fired on “suspicious”
persons and structures containing tunnel shafts that were possibly
harboring Goldin, Amnesty concluded that in some cases, the motive
was revenge (<a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/charlotte-silver/israeli-army-commander-recorded-ordering-attack-gaza-clinic">revenge</a>
as a motive was not uncommon last summer).</p>
<p>“Public statements by Israeli army commanders and soldiers after
the conflict provide compelling reasons to conclude that some
attacks that killed civilians and destroyed homes and property
were intentionally carried out and motivated by a desire for
revenge — to teach a lesson to, or punish, the population of Rafah
for the capture of Lieutenant Goldin,” Amnesty found.</p>
<p>Revenge appears to have motivated the ferocious destruction of
the Tabet Zare neighborhood, where an Israeli ground operation
plowed through buildings with D-9 bulldozers and sprayed homes
with Israeli tank fire. </p>
<p>“The motto guiding lots of people was, ‘let’s show them’,” an
Israeli officer told Breaking the Silence, an organization of
Israeli soldiers who have served in the occupied West Bank and
Gaza.</p>
<p>Other soldiers declared to the media that their intention during
the operation was “to settle accounts” or to “extract a price,”
according to Amnesty. </p>
<p>Givati Brigade commander Ofer Winter <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/rania-khalek/israeli-officer-admits-ordering-lethal-strike-own-soldier-during-gaza-massacre">bragged</a>
to one of Israel’s most widely circulated newspapers, “We shredded
them,” adding, ”Anyone who abducts should know that he will pay a
price.”</p>
<p>“They simply messed with the wrong brigade,” Winter declared.
apparently with pride.</p>
<p>The fact that the implementation of the Hannibal Directive
continued even after a death certificate was issued for Hadar
Goldin on 2 August suggests revenge was indeed a guiding principle
in Rafah.</p>
<p>“Under the veil of the Hannibal Directive, the Israeli army
enacted a ‘gloves off’ policy,” concluded Amnesty, “whereby it
struck general targets from its ‘target banks’ — a continuously
updated list of targets prepared by the military intelligence
— that were not previously authorized because they were determined
to involve too high levels of collateral damage.”</p>
<p>Amnesty goes on to note that those responsible for
these atrocities are unlikely to face repercussions for what
amount to war crimes due to “the pervasive climate of impunity
that has existed for decades” in regard to Israeli brutality.</p>
<p>Indeed, only three Israeli soldiers who participated in the
51-day slaughter have been indicted by Israeli military
prosecutors for alleged looting during the ground invasion.
Meanwhile, an Israeli military investigation ruled that the
overwhelming firepower unleashed on Black Friday day was <a
href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.651743">proportionate</a>.
<br>
</p>
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