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(LifeSiteNews) — A new documentary provides a thorough display of apparent war crimes committed by the Israeli army, their leadership, and accomplices—including the Biden Administration—over the last year of the IDF’s executing a “live stream genocide” in Gaza.
Drawing from a database of over 2,500 social media posts from Israeli soldiers themselves, numerous witness accounts, and other sources in the public record, the producers of the film document evidence of numerous atrocities including:
- an apparent widely executed policy of Israeli snipers shooting Palestinian children,
- the Israeli army’s targeted killing of journalists and their families,
- unspeakable incidents of humiliation, torture, and rape of Palestinian detainees,
- highly violent attacks upon every hospital in Gaza and their personnel, shutting down over half of them altogether,
- Israel’s deliberate assassination of aid workers as part of an overall strategy to impose starvation upon the population of over 2 million people (1M children), 90% of whom have been displaced from their homes,
- dozens of cases of Palestinians being used by the Israel army as human shields, and
- the deliberate targeting of civilians and the destruction of civilian infrastructure including the controlled demolition of many buildings along with the looting, pillaging and destruction of Palestinian homes by Israeli soldiers.
And with exuberant glee such apparent crimes are posted online by Israeli belligerents and complemented with enthusiastic celebrations by their fellow citizens singing and dancing in night clubs and producing mocking social media videos which are shared thousands of times.
Produced by Al Jazeera and titled Investigating war crimes in Gaza, the film also presents public statements by Israeli leaders expressing a genocidal intent for their nations’ attack on the strip which has been besieged for decades and suffered under blockade for the last 17 years.
Our @AJIunit investigation exposes war crimes in Gaza through the medium of photos and videos posted online by Israeli soldiers themselves during the year-long conflict.
Watch the full film here. #GazaCrimes pic.twitter.com/0eVaGTsZcv
— Al Jazeera Investigations (@AJIunit) October 3, 2024
LifeSiteNews co-founder Steve Jalsevac called the video “a very well done and believable work of high-quality journalism” which “convincingly reveals the extreme barbarity and cruelty of the IDF (Israeli army) and the unimaginable suffering numerous innocent Palestinians are enduring from their assault.”
The Israeli soldiers “completely ignore all international laws and war standards and ALL human rights,” Jalsevac lamented. “They truly view all Palestinians as nothing more than animals and celebrate the killing, torture and severe abuses of prisoners.”
“The video provides substantial evidence that the IDF considers it can do whatever it wants to other humans and not be held accountable by anyone,” he said. “Israel is a unique developed country in that respect. I don’t know of any other nation that has been able to get away with such ongoing barbarity.”
AI technology accelerates ‘mass assassination factory’ rapidly killing thousands of civilians, mostly children and women
Utilizing several expert analysts and witnesses from the fields of human rights advocacy, journalism, security, military, international relations, and international law, the film provides explanations regarding many different dimensions of these apparent war crimes.
A representative of Human Rights Watch named Bill Van Esveld discussed how Israel uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to target Palestinians. An April report from Israeli magazine +972 revealed that an AI system called “Lavender” served to identify “tens of thousands of Gazans as suspects for assassination.” And according to Israeli military sources, the reason these systems are being used is “they wanted a tempo of attacks that was faster than could be humanly sustained.”
Another AI system called “Where’s Daddy?” will track such targets by surveillance systems, including mobile phones, “and when [the phone] arrives at the location that’s been determined to be your residence, then there will be a ping to the guy who can target your house and bring it down,” Van Esveld explained. And the relevance of the name of the system presumes the target’s family, consisting of mainly women and children, will be present and also destroyed.
With an official policy by the Israeli army allowing “15 or 20” civilians to be killed for every alleged “junior Hamas that Lavender marked,” another Israeli military source told +972 that he or she “had personally authorized the bombing of ‘hundreds’ of private homes of alleged junior operatives marked by Lavender, with many of these attacks killing civilians and entire families as ‘collateral damage.’”
Another piece in +972 explains how these systems have created “a mass assassination factory” in Gaza rapidly killing thousands of civilians, most of whom are women, children and the elderly.
Following forced march of civilians, Israeli soldiers gleefully loot, pillage and ransack their homes
Amid witness accounts of blown-up homes and families, with footage of some still alive seeking to be rescued from underneath the rubble, the documentary also reveals forced marches of civilians from northern Gaza to the south, monitored by Israeli soldiers, with all, including the elderly and small children, forced to wave a white flag in one hand and display their IDs in the other as they walked. If they dropped one, it was forbidden for them to stop in order to bend down and retrieve the items.
According to a witness report from Youmna Elsayed, an Al Jazeera correspondent from the Strip, the bodies of those killed along the road were left for the marchers to see. “I made my children promise me they would not look at the ground at all. Not once. I just instructed them to look straight.”
The soldiers would then, on occasion, name one person to come out of the line, and “they would make them strip completely to their underwear in front of everyone” Elsayed explained, with the documentary showing footage of men fitting such a description, blindfolded, kneeling on the ground at the feet of Israeli soldiers.
With much of the north vacated, video after video, taken by Israeli soldiers themselves, and posted on social media for the gleeful revelry of family and friends, shows them looting, pillaging, ransacking and destroying the homes and apartments of these civilians. They exuberantly destroyed appliances, smashed furniture, and then exhibited what one analyst referred to as a “strange obsession” many Israeli soldiers have “for women’s underwear,” by prancing about modeling it themselves as one of their comrades records it on their phone.
As with many such scenes throughout the documentary, Al Jazeera identifies most of these soldiers by name as such information was available on the social media accounts themselves.
International Law Expert Rodney Dixon comments in the film that the International Criminal Court (ICC) enjoys “jurisdiction to look at precisely these allegations where civilian property has been targeted and where civilian property is being looted.” And with identities of these individuals being provided, “charges could be brought against them” and their commanders.
IDF soldiers celebrate mass demolitions, ‘We have become addicted to explosions’
Perhaps the highest degree of revelry from the Israeli soldiers is seen clearest in many different videos displaying the controlled demolition of very many large buildings in Gaza, “often set to music.”
With enormous blocks and universities being destroyed in like manner, retired Major General of the British Army, Charlie Herbert, observed, “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.”
Van Esveld confirmed, “There’s no justification for destroying a structure if the enemy isn’t in it.”
The translation of one celebratory exclamation by a soldier in the immediate aftermath of one such controlled demolition of a large building makes explicit the motives behind these apparent war crimes. He yells, “So they (the Palestinians) will have nowhere to come back to!”
Andreas Krieg, a security analyst at King’s College in London, reported that an IDF officer told him the saturating destruction of such civilian infrastructure was “an act of punishment” against the civilian population and a company of Israeli soldiers that spent two weeks destroying every building in the town of Khirbet Khuza’a (pop. 13,000) sang a tune calling it their “revenge” for the October 7, 2023 attack.
READ: Israel used ‘Hannibal Directive’ to kill its own people on October 7, local media reports
The documentary states that “by June 27, 72% of buildings in Northern Gaza had been damaged or destroyed and 51% in Southern Gaza.”
Van Esveld clarified “the large-scale, unnecessary destruction of civilian property is prohibited in the Geneva Conventions. It’s prohibited under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. You can’t go around wantonly, unnecessarily destroying civilian property. It’s banned. And if you do enough of it, it’s a war crime.”
The battalion that destroyed Khirbet Khuza’a along with hundreds of buildings in Gaza City is commanded by Lt. Col Meir Duvdevani whose words addressing his unit at the end of this operation were recorded by one of his troops and posted to Facebook: “We have stopped counting the number of buildings the battalion blew up. There is no precedent for this in the whole history of the Israeli army. We have become addicted to explosions.”
Providing an assessment of such documentation, Dixon said, the ICC “will look for those who are higher up the chain of command, and evidence coming directly from commanders about the orders that they gave, and the way in which they command and control their troops, would be vital evidence.”
IDF soldiers’ amusement over widespread humiliation, torture and sadistic rape of Palestinian detainees
The film also documents shocking incidents of humiliation and torture which were proudly uploaded to social media by the very Israeli soldiers committing these apparent crimes.
“The things that are really shocking to me is the repeated posting of videos of detainee humiliation,” Van Esveld said. “Naked Palestinian detainees with headbands and zip ties on their arms being paraded around, insulted, mistreated in many cases. These are really blatant violations of international law, and yet they keep being posted by the perpetrators (themselves). It’s really astonishing.”
READ: Israeli soldiers celebrate the ‘torturing, humiliating, and mocking’ of Palestinians on social media
Images include a man’s back with the Israeli star of David cut into his flesh, a blindfolded man crying and being dragged across the rough ground shirtless and another being repeatedly called a “son of a whore” by an Israeli soldier who laughs and brags to his comrades about torturing him.
Other witness accounts include testimonies of a father enduring the screams of his son being tortured in a next room, a young man being forced to lie on a “nearly decomposed” corpse while being threatened with immediate death, and a most heinous case of a bound detainee at Sde Teiman Detention Center in the Negev desert being “literally” raped by a dog trained for that purpose.
READ: Israel sodomizes and kills Palestinian detainees, Candace Owens calls out silent Christians
Also included was a report from the Israeli press in July which revealed that a Palestinian detainee had been admitted to the hospital after he “suffered from a ruptured bowel, a severe injury to his anus, lung damage and broken ribs.”
A second report in Hebrew from a self-identified Israeli broadcaster states the Israeli torturers inserted “a telephone device” into the rectum of the victim along with “additional accessories” and called it.
At this time apparent video footage of such abuse at Sde Teiman, was released by Israeli Channel 12 showing a Palestinian being selected from around thirty others who were all lying on the floor with their hands bound and eyes covered and taken behind riot shields where the apparent abuse occurred.
Though reports of such torture have been common for quite a long time, further corroboration came from a June article in the New York Times which reported on a detained Palestinian at Sde Teiman who had his rectum penetrated with a metal stick by Israeli soldiers causing tremendous bleeding and leaving him in “unbearable pain.”
“Those who are captured in armed conflict, whether they are civilians or fighters, have to be treated humanely,” clarified Dixon. “They certainly cannot be beaten and tortured and raped. That’s absolutely fundamental in humanitarian law.”
Such prohibitions also apply to the use of Palestinian detainees or prisoners as human shields.
Irony: Israelis guilty of routinely using Palestinian civilians, even children, as human shields. No such evidence even against Hamas
As an apparent alibi for the astronomical death tolls of Palestinian civilians over several decades, Israeli messaging in the Western media has consistently repeated the claim that Palestinians use their civilians as human shields. The documentary observes “this claim goes entirely unchallenged in the West,” and yet, “there is no evidence to support it.”
“We don’t have evidence that Palestinian armed groups are hiding right next to civilians and not allowing the civilians to leave,” explained Van Esveld. “An element of human shielding is that you either don’t tell them that you’re right there or they know you’re there, but you don’t allow them to leave.”
Furthermore, with Palestinian civilians being one of the main targets of the Israeli army, it wouldn’t make any sense for Hamas or anyone else to use them as human shields, observed one analyst. “There wouldn’t be a purpose in using a civilian as a human shield because the civilian himself is a target.”
Providing footage and photos to demonstrate the point, the film’s narrator reports “Israel has regularly been condemned for using human shields by the UN and numerous international and Israeli human rights organizations.”
In 2005, the Guardian reported how the Israeli high court sought to put the practice to an end ruling “that the (Israeli) army’s long-standing practice of using Palestinian civilians as human shields in combat is illegal under international law” and must come to an end.
The original case had been filed by “human rights organizations that said the army routinely forced Palestinian civilians into dangerous situations as a means to protect soldiers. Some of the most common methods were to force Palestinians into buildings to see if they were booby-trapped, or to enter the hideouts of wanted men and tell them to surrender. Soldiers also forced civilians to stand in front of them when on patrol.”
So insistent upon maintaining the practice of using Palestinians, including children, as human shields, the Israeli military even sought to appeal the decision of their nation’s high court at the time in order to continue practicing this international war crime.
READ: Netanyahu utilizes ‘big lie’ tactic in address to US Congress, receives 58 standing ovations
In regard to the current conflict, reports of such continued criminality include a harrowing account of the Israeli army forcing Palestinian men to stand as human shields while “the soldiers took cover behind them during a firefight with Palestinian resistance fighters.” Other reports from this past summer reveal at least one injured Palestinian man being strapped to the hood of an Army vehicle in the West Bank for the same purpose.
“Since the beginning of this ground invasion, we have documented dozens of cases where civilians were actually used as human shields by the Israeli army, forcing them to enter combat zones or enter buildings that they think are, for example, booby-trapped or where they think that there might be armed members of Palestinian factions inside one area or another,” explains Maha Hussaini from Euro-Med Monitor. “And this is being used on a daily basis.”
Al Jazeera a highly credentialed news network, Western legacy media ‘skewed by a systemic and institutional bias’ toward Israel
While some Western influencers may challenge the credibility of the Al Jazeera news network, in 2018 the National Press Club came to their defense highlighting their winning “several Emmys, a Peabody and the Overseas Press Association’s Edward R. Murrow award,” along with many other honors over the years. “The accolades received by Al Jazeera from respected American professional organizations attest to the quality of their news coverage.”
Additionally, even The New York Times editorial board affirmed in 2017 that the network’s “reporting hews to international journalistic standards and provides a unique view on events in the Middle East.”
The current unprecedented Israeli assault on the people and civil infrastructure of Gaza has also elevated the degree to which many Western media organizations’ heavy bias towards Israel has been clearly exposed.
Last February, several employees at CNN told The Guardian that there was a “growing [internal] backlash against the leadership’s pro-Israel slant” in its war coverage which is “skewed by a systemic and institutional bias” toward Israel and thus amounts to “journalistic malpractice.” Similar internal disquiet over the BBC’s “skewed” coverage happened in January.
And while CNN is happy to employ an anchor like Wolf Blitzer, who is a former employee of AIPAC, a flagship of the Israel lobby, Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch also has a tight attachment to Israel, including a close family relationship with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, perhaps due in part to his mother reportedly being an Orthodox Jew.
In fact, Jewish scholar Norman Finkelstein has stated that the “ethnic element” relating to “a large Jewish presence” in the Western mainstream media and a resulting “sense of Jewish ethnic solidarity [with Israel]… plays a role” in the presentation of a broad media bias in favor of the Jewish state.
As it stands, prior to his being fired by Murdoch’s Fox News, Tucker Carlson, the most popular cable news host in history, was feared as being “a Big Problem for pro-Israel Conservatives” and “a threat to the pro-Israel community” due to “his lack of enthusiasm for the Jewish state,” not to mention his overt opposition to the neocon supported war in Ukraine, all of which may have contributed to his ouster.
Additionally, Investigating war crimes in Gaza was primarily produced by western professionals including Richard Sanders a British journalist who has made around 60 films for British television, including the BBC and Channel 4. It also highlights several analysts from the West, including Dixon, Herbert and Krieg from the U.K., and Van Esveld from the U.S.
‘Double war crime,’ Israelis ‘using starvation as a weapon of war’
The documentary also covers Israel’s severe restriction of supplies and aid to the Strip, along with its multiple missile attacks upon aid workers, at a time when hundreds of thousands of people are facing a real threat of starvation.
At least some of these attacks happened after these workers gave the Israeli army their exact coordinates with other detailed information regarding their movements for the purpose of ensuring their safety.
“So our assessment is very clearly that the Israeli authorities are using starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza,” explained Van Esveld. “It’s a double war crime. You have collective punishment of the civilian population, and you specifically have the use of starvation as a weapon of war.”
Massive numbers of children sniper-shot ‘in the head and chest’ by Israeli soldiers
Adding to the evidence of war crimes is footage provided by Israeli soldiers themselves of their committing murder by apparently sniper-shooting unarmed civilians. Indeed, these videos corroborate a July letter addressed to Joe Biden from 45 American physicians, surgeons and nurses who have volunteered in Gaza since October of last year. At that time, they wrote “every one of us on a daily basis treated pre-teen children who were shot in the head and chest.”
In a CBS interview, one signatory, Dr. Mark Perlmutter from North Carolina, testified that all of the disasters he has seen over thirty years and 40 medical mission trips, combined, did not “equal the level of carnage” he saw “against civilians in just my first week in Gaza.” His testimony includes seeing scores of children “incinerated,” “shredded,” “missing body parts,” and “being crushed by buildings,” with other testimonies documenting the starvation of at least 37 children.
Though massacres by the Israeli army against this decimated people have been routine occurrences for decades, reliable reports of Palestinian deaths since October 7 of last year includes at least 43,362 (42,603 in Gaza, 69% children and women) with 10,000 more buried under the rubble (est. 4,900 women and children), and at least 759 in the West Bank (~165 children), with 500,000 facing catastrophic levels of food insecurity.
Additionally, 101,700 Palestinians are reported as injured, “with over 10,000 children losing at least one leg.”
‘The West cannot hide’ nor ‘claim ignorance’ in the face of ‘the first live stream genocide in history’
Susan Abulhawa, a Palestinian American writer, who also heads a children’s organization, discusses in the film how she has interviewed many kids in Gaza. Having lived for almost a year in a “heightened fight or flight mode that just never subsides,” she said, “some of them told me that they just want to die. But they want to die in one piece. They’re scared of being shredded.”
“The West cannot hide. They cannot claim ignorance. Nobody can say they didn’t know,” she said. “We live in an era of technology, and this has been described as the first live-stream genocide in history, and I believe that to be true.”
“Palestinians are aware that they have been abandoned. That the world that speaks of human rights and international law is lying. That those concepts are meant for white people or for Westerners. That accountability is not meant to hold their oppressors to account. That they have been really kind of discarded like rubbish,” she lamented.
“The West has spent decades creating this ‘rules-based order’ and it’s finally been laid bare as a big sham, as just a way to further Western interests. This is the jungle. Is this the new order where it’s just out in the open that those with power can do whatever they want?”
INFOGRAPHIC | De-Gaza: 365 days of devastation
Key statistics on the toll of Israeli genocide on Gaza’s population and infrastructure pic.twitter.com/ZBIDe3ngdA
— Euro-Med Monitor (@EuroMedHR) October 7, 2024
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Help bring aid trucks into Gaza: LifeFunder