Palestine

She stands in front of the cameras. Her eyes are red, her voice cracked. The tears flow freely, but she doesn’t try to wipe them away or stop them. The anchor asks her to talk about him. He’s used to asking such questions. She’s not used to answering them. Still, she emphasizes that she wasn’t surprised. “Since October 7, we’ve been living in fear. Every knock on the door, every phone call,” she says.

And then she decides to break the script. Instead of talking about what a wonderful person he was, instead of saying there was no one else like him, she chooses to say something else entirely.

“From the moment he finished high school, he’s been fighting, nonstop. He was already exhausted. They’re all exhausted. Mentally, they’re completely drained,” she says. “This has to stop.”

That moment came last week, a day after her son, Staff Sgt. Niv Radia, was killed along with six other soldiers by an explosive device in southern Gaza.

Speaking on Israel’s most-watched news channel, Radia’s mother, Alexandra, managed to shock many — perhaps even shake the foundations of public discourse. It was a rare moment in which the wall the army has tried to build between the public and the daily toll on combat soldiers began to crack.

The voices of reservists are often heard. They speak out about the impact on their businesses, their families, and the inequality they feel compared to segments of the population that don’t serve. But the voices of active-duty soldiers, those doing the daily fighting for nearly 21 months now, remain largely unheard and unknown to the Israeli public.

Even when journalists are embedded with IDF combat units, what they see isn’t the day-to-day reality — it’s a carefully orchestrated performance. Soldiers interviewed are handpicked by commanders and IDF spokespersons and thoroughly briefed on what they can and cannot say. And so, reporters return with the same clichés: “This is a generation of lions,” they declare. “Morale is sky-high.”

But active-duty army soldiers who spoke to Haaretz in recent months paint a very different picture — one that bears little resemblance to the official narrative.

They describe mounting exhaustion, severe physical and psychological strain, and a constant fear that they’ll be the next to have their names released as fallen.

Most refused to be quoted on the record. Five agreed to speak. They had just one request: “You sent us to war — now listen to what we have to say.”

• All names in this article have been changed.

Yonatan, 21, Kfir Brigade

“It happened a little after we entered Jabalya last November. During the day, the heat was unbearable — at night, we froze. Sand and dust clung constantly to my skin. We hardly saw any people, just dogs roaming everywhere. They were looking for food — anything, even rotting scraps. Our company commander warned us that anyone who so much as petted them would ‘face a court-martial and end up in jail.’ But I didn’t care. When no one was looking, I’d sneak them slices of sausage.

“A few days later, we were positioned near a house when a pack of dogs came close, barking nonstop. Our deputy commander got annoyed and decided to shoot one of them. The dog howled in pain — then fell silent. The others scattered, but he kept going, aiming down his sights and shooting another dog, then a few more. ‘They need to learn not to come near us. These are terrorists’ dogs — probably rabid,’ he said with a grin. I was furious, but I didn’t say a word. That night, I was ashamed of myself for not speaking up, for not trying to stop him.

“The next morning, we were sent on another house-clearing mission. We scanned the building with a drone and didn’t see anything, so we went in. Two minutes later, there was an explosion. The blast threw me through the air, and I couldn’t understand what had happened. Suddenly, I realized my mouth was full of blood. I thought I was wounded, but I wasn’t — it was the blood of my best friend in the unit. He kept calling my name, begging me to help, but I didn’t know what to do. I froze.

“Eventually the medics arrived and evacuated him. For days after, I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat — everything tasted like blood. We just kept going, clearing houses like nothing had happened, like everything was normal. Afterward, we were sent out of Gaza for a little while to ‘refresh,’ but I couldn’t do anything. I felt like someone had taken part of my soul.

“One morning the commander told us we were going back home to rest and everyone was excited — but I felt nothing. I felt dead, empty, completely numb. Right before sunset, the commander told me I had to guard the equipment at 2 A.M. I stood there for a few minutes before I felt like I couldn’t breathe — everything was closing in on me. I ran off to wash my face. When I came back, my officer was waiting. ‘Aren’t you ashamed of abandoning your post?’ he yelled. Then he told me I’d face disciplinary charges the next day.

“By morning, I was standing trial in front of the battalion commander. He asked if I had anything to say, but no words came out. ‘You’re getting 28 days of confinement,’ he said.

“I didn’t know what to do. When no one was looking, I grabbed my things and ran. Within hours I was sitting on the sand at Gordon Beach in Tel Aviv, still in uniform. I changed into civilian clothes and just sat there, feeling the cool breeze. I opened my phone and scrolled through messages with the friend who’d been injured. I wanted to send him something — even though he was unconscious — but I couldn’t figure out what to say. The hours passed and I had no idea what to do. Go back to base? Go to my parents? And what would I even tell them? Lie and say they let us out? Tell the truth? I had no clue.

“They taught us how to charge forward, how to fix a jammed weapon, how to bandage a wounded friend. But no one taught me what to do after you taste your best friend’s blood."

Or, 20, Paratroopers Reconnaissance Unit

“My breaking point didn’t come in Lebanon or Khan Yunis — it happened in Tel Aviv. After ages without being home, they finally gave us 48 hours leave. It was a week after my birthday, and my parents wanted to celebrate with a big family dinner. I just wanted to stay home and sleep — but I didn’t want to disappoint them.

“When we got to the restaurant, everyone hugged and kissed me and asked how things were. All I could manage was a vague ‘fine.’

“I ordered shrimp pasta. When it arrived, I felt everything rise up inside me — like I was going to throw up. I rushed to the bathroom and vomited harder than I ever had in my life. Then I splashed water on my face and looked in the mirror — I looked awful, like I’d aged ten years. When I came back, my grandmother looked at me and asked, ‘Are you okay? You’re white as a ghost.’ I didn't know what to say. I just wanted to disappear.

“Meanwhile, everyone kept eating. The smells overwhelmed me — I thought I was going to throw up again. ‘Why aren’t you eating?’ they asked over and over. I couldn’t answer. The smell was driving me mad — I couldn’t get it out of my body. At first, I didn’t understand what was happening — and then it hit me: it was the smell of corpses.

“A few days earlier, we’d approached the rubble of a house in Khan Yunis that had been bombed by the air force. In the debris — what was once walls — we suddenly found five, maybe six bodies. There were flies everywhere, and I think dogs had torn at the flesh. There was barely anything left. Two of them were small children — I saw their bones. It was horrible, unforgettable, something that still haunts my nights. But more than anything, I remember the smell — it took over my body, clung to my clothes. Even after I sprayed myself with deodorant nonstop that night, it wouldn’t leave me.

“After the restaurant we went home, and I went straight to my room without saying a word. I didn’t want to leave until Sunday, but my friends insisted we go to a party in Tel Aviv. We drank endlessly — all night. I tried to smile, tried to laugh. ‘What’s up with you?’ they asked. ‘Nothing, nothing,’ I replied. Around 1 A.M., the DJ played some track I didn’t know with pounding bass. It felt like everything was closing in — like I couldn’t breathe. I ran to the bathroom. It smelled like sewage and it reminded me of Gaza.

“In the stall, I tried to calm my breathing, but nothing helped. My heart was pounding out of control. I left the club without saying anything to my friends, grabbed a taxi that cost me something like 300 shekels, went home and crashed. I stayed in bed all weekend, until it was time to go back.

“Sunday morning, I reported for duty in the Gaza border area. We packed the gear and loaded up quickly onto the Humvees that took us back in. I wanted to jump off. I wanted to run — but I didn't have the guts. So I kept going. Another week of explosions. Another week of socks glued to my skin, of heat I can’t even describe. A living nightmare. I just want it to be over already — please. I’m exhausted as if I’m 80 years old.”

Omer, 21, Givati Brigade

“Sometimes when I think about it, it’s hard to believe this war has been going on for only 20 months — it feels like 10 years. I was there from the start, when they rushed us to the kibbutzim in the Gaza border region just hours after it all began. I still haven’t been able to process what I saw there. Burned-out cars, people screaming, gunfire, explosions. What I remember most is the smell of corpses in Kfar Aza — the smell of death, like a steak forgotten on the grill.

“But honestly, there are a lot of things I don’t remember at all — entire hours wiped from my memory. What did I even do there? I have no idea. And there was no time to think about it anyway. Right after October 7 we started preparing to go into Gaza. We were in a kind of high — we wanted it so badly. Now it just seems so stupid to me. I’ve lost track of how many people I knew who’ve been killed — from my battalion, my brigade, my school, my neighborhood. I don’t have the strength to hear about one more. It breaks me.

“They didn’t even let me attend most of the funerals. They said we were needed — that they couldn’t let everyone go. And the ones I did attend — they were awful. How can you sit there and listen to the battalion commander recite clichés about friends of mine he didn’t even know, about fighters he never cared about?

“People think soldiers die in battle, but the truth is, lots of them died for no reason — because of officers’ negligence, or because there weren’t enough munitions to bomb a building before sending us into it. Then the media says he died from an explosive device and everyone thinks it makes sense. It feels like no one cares. How many more friends do I have to bury before people wake up?

“All of us have wills saved in our phones — in the notes app. Sometimes at night we talk about what our funerals will be like, try to guess how many people will come, if our ex will cry. ‘Do you think Tuna [an Israeli rapper] would agree to sing at my funeral if I put it in my will?’ a friend once asked me. ‘If I die, promise me you’ll tell my mom I didn’t suffer — that it wasn’t hard for me,’ another friend said. Two weeks later he was wounded by an anti-tank missile.

“And if that’s not enough, now they’re forcing us to do another four months of reserve duty. No one asks if we want to or if we even can. ‘There’s nothing we can do — we’re short on soldiers,’ the officers say. And if anyone complains, they threaten him with jail — call him a traitor, a coward. So most of us stay quiet. Sometimes we cry to our moms on the phone, or to a friend we feel safe with. But even that doesn’t always help. It’s just shit. I’ve had enough. I can’t do it anymore.

“In high school I was sure that right after the army I’d take the psychometric exam and go study medicine — like I always dreamed. But now? I just want to run away. Travel. Rest. Do drugs. Forget. I don’t know what will be left of me. I already know I’m not the same person I was — that’s for sure."

Yair, 21, Nahal Reconnaissance Unit

“There were ten of us. It was 2 A.M., maybe 3. Just a routine ambush in the northern part of Gaza, I think near Beit Lahia. I suddenly woke up in a panic and realized everyone was asleep — even the officer. I woke him up, and he freaked out, started yelling at the whole team like a madman. It was surreal — I think he forgot that yelling like that could expose our position, but no one dared say anything.

“‘You bunch of idiots,’ he screamed. ‘You want to die out here? What are you, brain-dead?’ He completely lost it — like something had been building inside him for months and just exploded. The next day, he pulled me aside and made me swear not to tell anyone outside the unit that he had fallen asleep.

“It wasn’t the first time something like that happened and honestly, any soldier who’s served in Gaza knows it. You don’t sleep during the day and then you’re sent on night missions — we’re just collapsing. It might sound weird to admit, but it’s kind of a miracle Hamas hasn’t taken advantage of it more.

“Every time there’s some serious incident in the news, people criticize us — ‘How could this happen?’ they ask. But what do you expect when we’ve been fighting for months and barely get to go home?

“People who’ve never been here think the hard part is just the big events — when soldiers are killed or wounded. But the struggle is also in the small stuff, the things no one talks about on the news. Do you know what it’s like to walk around for days with a ceramic vest glued to your back? What it means not to take off your boots for ten days straight? To lie in the dirt covering your team and not be able to keep your eyes open? To be packed so tight together that even the people you love drive you crazy?

“I remember once a guy on our team kept humming a song that got stuck in his head. It pushed me over the edge and I threw a can of tuna at him. ‘What the hell’s wrong with you?’ he shouted. We almost got into a fight. If the others hadn’t stepped in, I don’t know how it would’ve ended. I apologized, but I’m still ashamed I did that.

“The worst part is it doesn’t just happen with the guys in the unit — it happens with my family too, with my girlfriend. A few months ago, I came home and just started yelling at her — for no reason, just because she moved one of my shirts. She started crying and walked out. I begged her to forgive me. I didn’t know what to do. I started crying too and she hugged me. I don’t think I’ve ever cried like that before.

“Later we tried to have sex and I just couldn’t. Nothing worked. She tried to calm me down, but I went into this spiral — convinced this was how it would be from now on, that the war had broken me. That she would leave me.

“Lately, my hair has even started falling out from the stress. I keep touching it, pulling it without even realizing. It’s destroying me. I keep telling myself I have no right to cry — that I’m lucky compared to others. One of our squads was completely wiped out. I’m alive. I wasn’t hit by a missile or an explosive device.

“But still, it’s hard. I don’t know if I’ll ever recover. I just want everything to be normal again — like it used to be.”

Uri, 22, Yahalom combat engineering unit

“At some point, I just stopped believing in what we’re doing. During the first year, I was all in — totally committed to every mission. I really believed we were part of something historic, that we were protecting Israeli civilians, that we were helping to rescue the hostages.

“But little by little, I started to doubt it. After you hear about another hostage killed because of an airstrike, after you attend yet another funeral for a friend — it just starts to fade.

“I can’t go on another mission. I can’t go back to the same areas we’ve already been through a million times, investigate another tunnel shaft, enter another building that might be booby-trapped. And for what? Anyone with half a brain can see this war is continuing for political reasons. There’s no reason to keep going. We’re not achieving anything — we’re just risking our lives over and over again.

“Even the commanders don’t know how to explain it anymore, how to convince us to keep at it. Except for the religious guys, no one understands what we’re doing. No one believes we’re helping to bring the hostages home. If anything, we’re putting them in more danger.

“Every time I got close to a tunnel shaft, that thought would hit me. What if the intel is wrong? What if there are hostages down there? What if the terrorists hear us and kill them? And if that happens — how could I live with myself? How could I go on?

“The officers will call it a mistake and say that’s just war — and I’ll have to live with the guilt and shame. No one’s going to help me. Just like no one’s helping my wounded friends. Some of them the commanders didn’t even bother to visit. They were just left on their own.

“Luckily, I’m about to be discharged. But what about the rest of them? I look at the younger soldiers in my unit and I can’t help but wonder — who will live and who will come home in a coffin? It’s awful, but that’s our reality. This has to stop. We can’t bring back the ones we’ve lost, but there are still so many more we can save.

“When will you understand that it’s time to end this? When there are 900 dead? A thousand? Please — stop. Speak out. Protest. Don’t let all this death keep going.”

User Thisisme8719 summed up this article well:

Haaretz published accounts of the trauma, exhaustion, anger, and inability to adjust to civilian life, from a few IOF soldiers who served in Gaza. What traumatized them? Being participants in genocide? Being part of the same military as people posting their war crimes on Tik Tok? That their airforce dropped bunker busters in densely populated refugee camps and "safe" zones? That their fellow soldiers sniped children, grandmothers, and people carrying white flags? That people's homes, the hospitals and clinics where people are treated, even water treatment facilities, were destroyed? Nah.

Anybody who has been paying attention to the oppression of Palestinians is unlikely to sympathize much with these leathernecks, but it is a useful reminder that even oppressors are still human and have human weaknesses: they wake up, they breathe, they eat, they shit, they fuck, they eat some more, maybe they fuck again depending on how late it is and how much they ate, they sleep, they age, but most importantly, they feel all sorts of emotions, no matter how hard the military tried to tear those out.

He is obsessed with protecting Raed, who has suffered from malnutrition and whose immune system is fragile.

“He’s not allowed to leave the tent. One scrape could mean evacuation. And I will not live through that humiliation again. I just want him safe.”

Yousef himself now exhibits symptoms of post-traumatic stress syndrome, a common affliction for those exposed to extreme trauma, torture and mental torment, as he has been.

“When I see a bed, I see scattered limbs,” Yousef told The Electronic Intifada. “I hate the dark. I can’t sleep without noise. I see my wife’s face mutilated. I wake, gasping, clinging to my son.”

To make a little money, he has opened a small solar panel charging station in Jabaliya, where he and his family are determined to stay.

Yousef proved a lifeline for my father, as he and those like him have been for so many others.

His quick thinking and training saved my father from lethal danger. My father had passed out, and suffered shrapnel wounds, but it could have been much worse if Yousef had not pressed the damp gauze against his face and kept his airways open.

The bond between my father and Yousef remains untouched by the distance now dividing them.

Yousef has endured the unimaginable, yet he never lost his humanity nor the instinct to save others.

Hamas expressed satisfaction with the wording of the new proposal for a Gaza cease-fire deal and noted that mediators are making great efforts to reach an agreement between the parties, according to the Saudi Asharq News.

According to the report, Hamas is expected to submit its official response to the proposal by Friday evening. However, the report also says that the […] group continues to take issue with several points of the proposal. Its primary concerns are related to the entry of humanitarian aid to the Strip and the withdrawal of the IDF from areas in the Gaza Strip, which the proposal mentions without indicating specific dates or including maps.

The report further states that Hamas says it is treating the proposal with "responsibility" and is willing to demonstrate flexibility provided that Palestinian interests are met.

As well:

The proposed cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas would see the […] group release 10 of the remaining living hostages and return the bodies of 18 deceased hostages it holds in five stages over a 60-day period, according to a report from The New York Times.

Citing Israeli and Palestinian officials briefed on the evolving agreement, the newspaper states this marks a significant shift from an earlier American proposal in May. That plan called for all hostages to be freed within the first seven days of a cease-fire.

The officials spoke anonymously due to the sensitive nature of the diplomacy.

A 37-year-old […] from a West Bank settlement, previously charged with murdering his mother and committed to a psychiatric hospital pending trial, was arrested Wednesday on suspicion of killing a fellow patient in his 60s.

A postmortem examination at the National Institute of Forensic Medicine determined that the victim had been beaten to death. On Thursday, the Jerusalem Magistrate's Court extended the suspect's detention by eight days.

The suspect, who has been held in custody pending trial, was recently transferred to Jerusalem's Kfar Shaul Mental Health Center for evaluation. Police say [that] he allegedly assaulted the fellow patient in a corridor and was later captured on security cameras attempting to climb the facility's fences in an effort to escape.

According to the indictment for his mother's murder, the suspect suffocated her with a pillow and then tried to stage the scene to cover up the crime. Police initially believed [that] her death was from natural causes, but the suspect later confessed.

"The defendant held a folding knife and climbed on top of [his mother], who tried to reach for another knife to defend herself. After deliberation, the defendant decided to suffocate her using a pillow," the indictment states.

"To complete the act, he pressed his foot on her neck and continued choking her for approximately four more minutes until she died."

(Thanks to Rima Hassan)

July 2, 2025

We, ministers and Knesset members, call for the immediate initiation of sovereignty and the application of Israeli law over Judea and Samaria.

This is a demand to approve a government decision to begin sovereignty, and to do so before the end of the Knesset’s summer session.

After the historic achievements of the State of Israel under the leadership of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in confronting the threats from Iran and terrorism, it is necessary to complete the Zionist vision, eliminate hopes for the establishment of a Palestinian state, and secure a promising future in the heart of our homeland.

Strategic cooperation and support from the United States and President Donald Trump demonstrate a willingness to assist Israel in securing its security and asserting its rights.

The July 1, 2025 Supreme Court ruling proves that the absence of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria is what creates legal and security risks for Israel. The time for sovereignty has come!

Signatories :

Amir Ohana – Speaker of the Knesset
Yariv Levin – Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Justice
Israel Katz – Minister of National Security
Yoav Kisch – Minister of Education
Miri Regev – Minister of Transportation and Road Safety
Eli Cohen – Minister of Foreign Affairs
Miki Zohar – Minister of Culture and Sports
Nir Barkat – Minister of Economy and Industry
Avi Dichter – Minister of Agriculture and Food Security
Shlomo Karhi – Minister of Communications
Haim Katz – Minister of Tourism and former Minister of Housing and Construction
Gila Gamliel – Minister of Innovation, Science, and Technology
Amichai Shikli – Minister of Diaspora Affairs and the Fight Against Antisemitism
Idit Silman – Minister of Environmental Protection
Mai Golan – Minister for the Advancement of the Status of Women
Dudi Amsalem – Minister in the Ministry of Justice, Minister for Regional Cooperation, and Minister for Government-Knesset Relations

Israel Police and the Shin Bet security service announced that a couple in their 30s from the central Israeli city of Raanana was arrested on suspicion of spying for Iran.

According to the statement, detectives searched their apartment on Monday, seized phones, computers and electronic devices and discovered correspondence suspected to be between the couple and their operator.

A hearing took place Tuesday morning to address a request to extend their detention.

Over 20 Israelis have been arrested over the past few months on suspicion of committing security offenses for Iran.

The State Prosecutor's Office announced Sunday that a 30-year-old Israeli, Dennis Lyakhov, a resident of the central city of Rishon Letzion, was charged with offenses against national security, including contact with an Iranian agent and providing intelligence to an enemy state.

Anybody who collaborates with a foreign power to undermine an apartheid régime is all right in my book.

In the Netzarim Corridor area of central Gaza, the U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation operates a food distribution center, the only one serving the north and central parts of the Strip.

In recent weeks, thousands have gathered around it, many remaining there for days, hoping to return home with food for their families. Some have built makeshift shelters from scraps to shield themselves from the heat; others use the sacks meant to carry food as head coverings. They lie under the sun for days, hoping to reach the food in time, despite the clear danger posed by Israeli warning fire.

All experts and humanitarian organizations warned Israel that the plan to introduce the foundation would lead to disaster, as it violates every humanitarian principle developed over decades of aid distribution to civilian populations in conflict zones.

The first principle is that food should reach the people, not the other way around. But Israel, the United States and the organizations that established the GHF ignored all warnings, and so far, hundreds have been killed around the aid centers.

After the prime minister and defense minister dismissed the Haaretz investigation into the killing of civilians near aid centers as a "blood libel" and denied any problem, the military yesterday acknowledged "tragic incidents," even placing new signs and fences along the routes to aid facilities.

But for Abd al-Karim al-Kahlut, a 35-year-old father of two young daughters from Gaza City, it is already too late.

Al-Kahlut embodies the desperation and cruelty facing the residents of the Gaza Strip.

A metalworker by trade, before the war, he had purchased equipment to open his own workshop. Even during the war, he continued to work.

"He built a business and it was going well, until the crossings were shut down and he couldn't continue," said his brother Safwat, who fled Gaza with his family.

During the war, Abd al-Karim's home was destroyed, and he moved in with his brother's family. Safwat said he sent money to his brother from abroad, but it wasn't enough. In order to access money sent from outside Gaza, Abd al-Karim had to forfeit a large percentage to various middlemen, and whatever was left quickly lost its value.

"There was a time when 100 shekels covered everything you needed. Now it barely buys a kilo and a half of flour," the brother said.

According to Safwat, his brother had visited the GHF food distribution site in Netzarim twice in the past two weeks. The last time was Wednesday, when he arrived along with thousands of other desperate residents. As on most days over the past month, gunfire was opened on those waiting in the sand — apparently to drive them back. Abd al-Karim didn't manage to get food and was wounded by the gunfire.

Safwat said his brother returned home with a gunshot wound to his buttocks, which at first didn't seem serious. But after a few hours, according to his family, he began to feel pain and went to Shifa Hospital.

"The doctors told him it was superficial and sent him home. In Gaza today, unless your legs or arms have been blown off, no one pays attention," Safwat said. "He came home, but then his whole body started to hurt, and he couldn't stand on his feet."

Safwat adds that another brother later took Abd al-Karim back to the hospital, where doctors discovered a bullet inside his body. He underwent surgery successfully. In any decent hospital, in a functioning environment, he would undoubtedly have recovered in a matter of days and returned to his family. But after a year and a half of war, Shifa is no longer a functioning hospital.

Like the rest of Gaza's hospitals, Shifa is facing levels of strain few hospitals in the world have ever had to endure. Hundreds of wounded and sick flood its wards every day. Many require complex treatment for shrapnel injuries, blast trauma, or gunshot wounds; others suffer from malnutrition, infectious diseases, or chronic illnesses worsened by dire living conditions.

One of the most critical problems hospitals face is access to CT scans. Only a few imaging machines remain in Gaza, and they have been running nearly nonstop for almost two years, poorly maintained and barely functional.

Patients in need of a CT scan are sometimes transferred dozens of kilometers just to be examined.

Abd al-Karim's condition didn't appear severe enough to justify precious minutes on the machine, so the doctors didn't perform a scan. "There's one machine and a lot of wounded," his brother explains. Meanwhile, he was suffering from internal bleeding that the doctors failed to detect, and a day after the surgery, he died from his wounds.

"In Gaza today, the problem isn't who dies," Safwat adds. "We say those who die are finally at peace. The real problem is those who are left with the pain."

Now the family is worried about their father, who suffers from heart disease and needs medication. "His medicine ran out a long time ago, and he could die at any moment — he can't strain himself at all. Now we're afraid for him, because the grief over his son is weighing on his heart," Safwat said.

"What hurts me most is the little girls, ages 3 and 5. Every time I think of them, I cry. What will they do without a father? How will they manage? Gaza isn't like Israel or France, where there's a government that takes care of you. Here, if you don't have a father, you're nothing. Every night they used to fall asleep in his arms — and now, from yesterday until the end of their lives, they have no father. What will they do? How can you explain that to them?"

(Emphasis original.)

Mattan here. I'm writing to you with urgency–and with hope. The Israeli war machine is escalating. What began as a genocidal campaign in Gaza spiraled into a full-blown regional assault. As Israel expanded its assault into Iran, it became clear to us all: this government has no intention of stopping its endless wars, not just on the Palestinian people but throughout the Middle East. It's not about hostages. It's not about defense. It's about annihilation–and political survival.

But there is another force at work. A growing refusal movement from within Israeli society is threatening the very foundation of this war effort. And with your support, we've been helping lead it. Following the ceasefire with Iran, the mainstream Israeli media is covering the "return to normalcy". But there is nothing normal, not just about the regional assault on Iran, but about the continuation of the genocide in Gaza as well.

And as Israel continues to try to normalize a life of endless warfare and instability, we continue to escalate our tactics and efforts. We need to be ready to support new movements, spontaneous refusers, and civil resistance across the country's streets that are already emerging as the public grows evermore tired from endless warfare.

That is why we are building a new ecosystem of refusal, but we cannot do it without your help. We've raised 60% of our $30,000 goal so far, and we urgently need our supporters across the world to help us close the gap so that we can effectively resist the Israeli war machine.

Over the past month, we've brought you inside the growing infrastructure of resistance we've built, together, in the heart of a militarized state.

We told you how our new initiative, Hitnagdut, is transforming spontaneous dissent into organized refusal, equipping activists with the training, support, and resources they need to grow into a sustained anti-war force.

We told you how Soldiers for Hostages, the movement of reservists publicly refusing to serve, was incubated through RSN support, and how it's now grown into the most visible and politically disruptive refuser initiative in Israel today. Over 325 soldiers have already signed on. And that number is only rising.

And we told you about the emotional toll of refusal, how RSN is building the support structures that keep activists from burning out, breaking down, or giving up.

This isn't just about ending this war. It's about stopping the next one, ending the occupation and bringing freedom, equality and justice to everyone from the river to the sea. Right now, RSN is one of the only international organizations in the world positioned to stop the war machine from within. And we are being stretched to our limits. We've raised 60% of our $30,000 goal.

But we are facing exponential growth in need. More reservists. More youth. More calls for help. And more groups asking us to support their refusal. We have the experience. We have the infrastructure. We just need the resources.

The Israeli government is afraid. They are arresting, fining, and jailing public refusers at a level we haven't seen in decades. But the cracks are already there, and they're widening. Refusal is not just spreading. It's becoming contagious.

Let's keep pushing. Let's reach our $30,000 goal. Let's turn this moment into a movement that can't be stopped.

In solidarity,

Mattan Helman
Executive Director
Refuser Solidarity Network

(Taken from an email sent to me by the Refuser Solidarity Network. Emphasis original.)

The mayor of the southern […] city of Arad announced on Friday his intention to ban the sale of Haaretz in the city, following an exposé featuring Israeli soldiers who testified that they received orders to shoot unarmed civilians in Gaza to keep them away from food distribution hubs, despite posing no threat.

The report, authored by Nir Hasson, Yaniv Kubovich and Bar Peleg, sparked global outrage. The IDF responded by saying "lessons have been learned," while denying the allegations.

The mayor of Arad, Yair Maayan, shared Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz’s response to the investigation, calling the report a “blood libel.”

Maayan wrote: “Again, Haaretz libeled the country in the service of the terrorists […] They invent a false blood libel against IDF soldiers, providing antisemitic material to the entire world with false libel. Israel’s enemies are distributing the slanderous Haaretz libel worldwide. I wish them to end up like the spies who slandered the land of Israel. Heaven will make them pay for it in kind. We will forbid bringing the newspaper that abets terrorists into the city of Arad.”

Haaretz editor Aluf Benn responded to Maayan’s announcement, saying, “We will continue to loyally serve our readers in Arad, just like everywhere else.”

Maayan has been Arad's mayor on behalf of the Likud party since March 2024. Previously, he served as director general of the Authority for Regulating Bedouin Communities in the Negev, as well as director general of the Jerusalem municipality and of the National Infrastructures Ministry.

During Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's first term (1996–1999), Maayan was an adviser for settlement affairs at the Prime Minister's Office. He established the Kedem Premilitary Academy at the West Bank Nokdim settlement, where he lived from 1994 to 2016.

Maayan provided no evidence or detailed response to refute the IDF soldiers' testimonies in the Haaretz report about the shooting near Gaza aid.

In Friday’s post, he also falsely claimed that Haaretz described Hamas’ élite Nukhba militants — “who murdered babies, raped and shot young women, murdered women and the elderly” — as “freedom fighters.”

Earlier in June, a panel of three High Court justices issued a conditional injunction, instructing the Israeli government to explain why it should not annul its November decision to sever commercial ties with Haaretz.

The petitions — now consolidated into a single hearing — were filed by Haaretz Group and the Journalists Association on behalf of the Haaretz–TheMarker journalists' union. They seek to annul the government's decision and prior instructions from the ministries' directors-general.

In April 2025, Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara ruled that the directors general of the ministries acted unlawfully in halting commercial relations with Haaretz. Deputy attorney generals ordered ministers and directors general to reconsider their instructions on the matter.

The IDF said overnight into Monday that dozens of […] settlers rioted in front of a military base in the central West Bank in protest of the shooting of a 14-year-old, whose shooting is under investigation by the military to determine whether he was shot by an Israeli soldier.

According to a military source, several rioters attempted to break into the base.

"Dozens of Israeli civilians gathered at the entrance of the Binyamin Regional Brigade Headquarters. The gathering became violent and some of the civilians at the scene attacked the security forces, sprayed pepper spray at them, and vandalized military vehicles," the IDF said in its statement.

It added that it is aware of a report of one Israeli "who was injured" at the riot.

Israeli border police attempted to disperse the crowd with stun grenades, who had gathered in front of the IDF's Binyamin Brigade headquarters. The source added that dozens of settlers threw stones, spat and used pepper spray on Israeli forces.

Earlier Saturday, the IDF said it is investigating whether a 14-year-old boy who was shot in the West Bank over the weekend was injured by soldiers.

The army said that while the soldiers came under attack in the West Bank by settlers, a platoon commander was caught up in another disturbance by Jews near the settlement Kochav HaShachar, in which rocks were thrown at his vehicle. The officer said he believed the attackers were Palestinians and fired three shots into the air.

The IDF is investigating whether one of the bullets hit the 14-year-old, adding that in any case, he acted according to military procedures and open-fire instructions.

The army also said that the officer involved in the incident said dozens of Jewish rioters in about 10 vehicles passed him, hitting his vehicle while he was driving on the West Bank's Allon Road. Minutes later, when he reached the Kochav Hashahar area, masked settlers threw rocks at him.

The army said that one of the masked men told the officer, "I'll put a bullet in your head."

It added that local rescue services treated the injured 14-year-old at the scene, where it was determined that a rubber bullet had hit him. Only when he arrived at the hospital for treatment did it become clear that it was a [lethal] bullet. The army said [that] it would now examine the bullet to determine whether it was fired from the officer's weapon.

Meanwhile, an Israeli court ordered the release of three of the six detainees involved in the attack on a battalion commander and his soldiers. Still, the police requested a stay of execution on the decision. The remand of a minor was extended by 24 hours. The other two detainees will be brought to court on Monday for a hearing on extending their remands.

The incident was one of several outbreaks of rioting last Friday night by settlers across the West Bank. They followed several days of unrest in the area, beginning with riots by settlers in Kafr Malik last Wednesday, in which three Palestinians were killed by IDF gunfire. On Thursday, an outpost in the Tall Asur region (Hebrew: Baʻal Hatzor), located north of Ramallah, from which, according to the army, some of whose members later joined the rioting.

On Friday, the IDF dispatched a battalion commander and two soldiers after identifying an attempt by settlers to return to the outpost. The army said that about 70 settlers then arrived at the scene and began throwing stones at the soldiers, who tried to disperse them with riot-control equipment.

The rioters threw stones at the soldiers, assaulted and choked them, and punctured their vehicles' tires. The army said that some of the attackers also tried to run over the soldiers, in an incident that lasted about five hours. The IDF emphasized that at no point in this incident was live fire employed by troops.

The commander of Battalion 7114, which was attacked at the outpost, Lt. Col. (res.) G., said the attackers were "the same people who are documented in the arson attacks on Kafr Malik with weapons drawn." At this stage, there have been no arrests on suspicion of involvement in those disturbances.

In addition to the incidents near Kochav Hashachar and at the Baʻal Hatzor outpost, the words “revenge” were sprayed on a police station in Beit El, and other graffiti was found on an IDF vehicle. Friday afternoon, a military vehicle belonging to an air force officer was set on fire near Kochav Hashachar.

The IDF noted that there had been a 40 percent decrease in nationalist incidents in 2024 from the previous year, but the number of serious incidents increased from 54 to 83 cases in 2024.

When my neighbor told me an Iranian missile landed on our street in Bat Yam I was in disbelief. Only after checking the news and seeing our community in rubble did I start to comprehend the reality. When she was able to check on our apartments her words shook me even further: "I don't want you to see these photos, but let's just say we can't live there anymore."

My home was something I took immense pride in. A soft place to land in a world constantly in motion. I carefully chose my furniture, my rugs, even the way light came through the windows. That home, like so many others in Israel, is now gone. I'm exceptionally lucky that my brave neighbor risked her life to go back inside and save some of my documents — baby photos, IDs, the little things that tether you to your own existence. Many others weren't as fortunate. The army and government refused to help us rescue these last remnants of life from before the Iran-Israel war.

How is it that we, civilians, are constantly forced to put our own lives on the line to help one another and protect our communities? And yet simultaneously, our voices are ignored in political corridors. We, the "home front" are the backbone of society, and yet left invisible, treated as expendable, our suffering minimized perpetually.

Many friends are posting photos of what's left: shattered windows, crumbled storefronts, smoke-stained staircases. I see dreams flattened into dust — on both sides of the border. From people in Israel to those in Gaza and now Iran, the pain is everywhere, spiraling inward and outward. Homes are destroyed by bombs, by fear, by failure of leadership. And we're left to mourn, to scream into the void while the people in power treat war like a campaign strategy. They say the "home front" is part of the war. Well if that's true, then I ask: why has it been abandoned?

The truth is that our leaders are more interested in political theatrics than in genuine, compassionate leadership. I refuse to accept a future where accountability is a luxury. We deserve leadership that sees beyond power plays and recognizes that real security lies in social trust and community resilience.

It should be obvious that when a government builds its strength on the ruins of our homes, on the shattered dreams of our people, then it has truly lost — regardless of any military aims achieved or any nuclear facilities destroyed. But that concept doesn't seem to land in this Holy Land.

Even in the wake of October 7, it wasn't the government that stepped up. It was us — civilians. It was young people delivering aid across towns. It was volunteers running logistical coordination that the state should have handled. I was one of them, working tirelessly to ensure that those in immediate danger weren't alone. This shouldn't have been our job. But we did it anyway, because we care about each other. Because that's what community means.

There’s no world in which Israel’s war machine is sustainable: not morally, not economically, not environmentally. What we need is a national reckoning. We need accountability. And we need a seat at the table — not as victims, not as statistics, but as citizens with voices, ideas and the right to live a decent life without being collateral damage in someone else’s power game.

The compensation packages offered to those displaced by yet another volley of missiles are honestly insulting. They don't account for the actual cost of rebuilding a life. They certainly don't account for trauma, loss of income or the unquantifiable ache of seeing everything you've built wiped away overnight. What do you do when your house, your safe space, becomes a hole?

I don't want to suffer anymore because our world is run by man-children like Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. I don't want anyone — Israeli, Palestinian, Iranian — to bury their children because our leaders can't let go of their egos. This is my last straw. And I know I'm not alone.

I've spent the last few years working at the intersection of climate justice and peacebuilding. I believe in healing the earth alongside its people. Even before this war began, I was advocating for intersectional environmentalism across borders, for regional cooperation grounded in trust and survival. But now, from abroad — displaced by closed airspace and closed resources — I find myself writing not as an activist, but as someone who has just lost her home to a war I never asked for. A war that feels less like security and more like a personal price tag slapped on each one of us who still dares to hope for peace.

I wish this were exceptional. But in Israel, this is the pattern. Netanyahu manufactures conflict like clockwork — because chaos keeps him in office and the courtrooms at bay.

Meanwhile, the rest of us are just trying to live. My heart aches for the countless families forced to watch their lives unravel. Instead I envision a future where governments invest in rebuilding not just physical structures, but also trust and solidarity, the true infrastructure of peace. If we are to build a society that values justice, dignity and sustainability, we must begin by recognizing that every citizen has a stake in our collective future.

We must demand a voice at the decision-making table. To insist that our lived experiences, our tragic losses and our hard-won moments of communal solidarity inform the policies that shape our lives. I refuse to be cast aside as an afterthought.

If this horrific tragedy has taught me anything it's that we must reclaim our home — and not just its bricks and mortar, but its soul.

Critical aid and support to the people of Gaza—only translatable as this is yet another way we will annihilate you. Johnnie Moore is an Evangelical leader who began his career as Senior Vice President for Communications for Liberty University—the private Evangelical school founded by Jerry Falwell Sr. [https://electronicintifada.net/content/father-christian-zionism-leaves-building/6923] and went on to found the Kairo Company, a public relations firm based in Glendale, California. The group insists: We get the job done… Whatever it takes. If we’re harping on words, a pause for Kairos’ stated approach:

At least 34 Palestinians were killed across Gaza by Israeli strikes overnight into Saturday, health officials in the Strip say, as Palestinians face a growing humanitarian crisis in Gaza and cease-fire prospects inch closer.

The strikes began late Friday and continued into Saturday morning, among others killing 12 people at the Palestine Stadium in Gaza City, which was sheltering displaced people, and eight more living in apartments, according to staff at the Al-Shifa hospital where the bodies were brought.

Six other Palestinians were killed in southern Gaza when a strike hit their tent in Muwasi, once considered a safe zone by the IDF, according to the hospital.

The […] attacks came as U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday a cease-fire in Gaza could be imminent, telling reporters, "We think within the next week we're gonna get a cease-fire."

"I'm often asked — I think it's close," Trump said. "I just spoke with some of the people involved. It's a terrible situation."

Trump also emphasized the scope of U.S. humanitarian aid to Gaza, as the U.S.-led Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is responsible for the vast majority of aid in the territory. "We're supplying a lot of money and a lot of food to that area. We have to. In theory, we're not involved, but we're involved. People are dying," he said. "I look at those crowds of people with no food, no anything. We're the ones getting it there."

On Friday, Haaretz reported that […] soldiers who spoke with the newspaper said that the army has deliberately fired at Palestinians near aid distribution sites over the past month.

Six […] settlers were arrested overnight into Saturday after assaulting IDF reservists, including a battalion commander at the rank of lieutenant colonel, near the Palestinian village of Kafr Malik, according to a joint statement from the military and police.

The incident occurred days after three Palestinians, residents of the West Bank village, were killed by IDF gunfire.

Security officials told Haaretz they believe approximately 40 settlers entered a closed military zone near the village, north of Ramallah, from a newly established outpost in the Tall Asur region (Hebrew: Baʻal Hatzor).

According to a security source, the settlers threw stones at the soldiers, beat and choked them, and punctured the tires of army vehicles. The troops used crowd dispersal measures in an attempt to regain control, and one soldier fired three warning shots into the air.

On Wednesday, three Palestinians were killed and seven were wounded by Israeli army gunfire in Kafr Malik near Ramallah.

According to the IDF, dozens of settlers set fire to property in the village and threw stones at residents. Israeli forces who arrived at the scene said that several village residents fired at them and threw stones, prompting the soldiers to return fire, which killed three and wounded several others.

The IDF said five settlers were arrested and handed over to the police. All five were released the following morning after being cleared of any suspicion, according to the […] Police.

On Thursday, following the funerals of the Palestinians killed in Kafr Malik, dozens of settlers attacked residents of the nearby village of Turmus Ayya. Palestinians from neighboring villages arrived in an attempt to repel the attackers, who tried to enter homes and set fire to the fields.

"Dozens of young men stood on the road, forming a human wall," a Turmus Ayya resident told Haaretz, adding that the soldiers only fired warning shots into the air after the Palestinians began pushing the settlers back.

ETA:

Israel's Defense Minister Israel Katz said following Friday night's settler attack on IDF reservists that he "strongly condemns" the assault.

"I call on law enforcement authorities to act immediately, identify all those involved and bring them to justice, just as would have been done anywhere else," he said.

"Israel will not allow violence or the taking of the law into one's own hands," he added.

(Source.)

On Monday of this week, [the] Health Ministry in the Gaza Strip published an updated list of those killed in the war, a 1,227-page chart, arranged from youngest to oldest. The Arabic-language document includes the deceased person's full name, the names of the father and grandfather, date of birth and ID number.

Unlike previous lists, this compilation notes the precise age of children who were under the age of one year when they were killed. Mahmoud al-Maranakh and seven more children died on the same day they were born. Four more children were killed on the day after they entered the world, five others lived to the age of two days. Not until page 11, following 486 names, does the name appear of the first child who was more than six months old when he was killed.

The names of the children under the age of 18 cover 381 pages and amount to 17,121 children, all told. Of the total of 55,202 dead people, 9,126 were women.

Israeli spokespersons, journalists and influencers reject with knee-jerk disgust the data of the Palestinian Health Ministry, claiming that it's inflated and exaggerated. But more and more international experts are stating that not only is this list, with all the horror it embodies, reliable — but that it may even be very conservative in relation to reality.

Prof. Michael Spagat, an economist at Holloway College at the University of London, is a world-class expert on mortality in violent conflicts. He's written dozens of articles on the wars in Iraq, Syria and Kosovo, among others. This week he and a team of researchers published the most comprehensive study to date on the subject of mortality in the Gaza Strip.

With the aid of Palestinian political scientist Dr. Khalil Shikaki, the team surveyed 2,000 households in Gaza, comprising almost 10,000 people. They concluded that, as of January 2025, some 75,200 people died a violent death in Gaza during the war, the vast majority caused by Israeli munitions.

At that time, the Health Ministry in the Gaza Strip placed the number of those killed since the war's start at 45,660. In other words, the Health Ministry's data undercounted the true total by about 40 percent.

The study hasn't yet undergone peer review — it was published as a "preprint" — but its results are very similar to those of a study conducted by completely different methods and published last January by researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. That group also estimated the disparity between the Health Ministry data and the true figures to be about 40 percent.

Another report, published this week by Matthew Ghobrial Cockerill, a history doctoral student at the London School of Economics, carried out for the organization Action on Armed Violence, also cites larger numbers than those of the Gaza Health Ministry. Cockerill and his team examined the names of 1,000 children out of 3,000 that the Health Ministry erased from its lists, and concluded that, despite the erasure, solid evidence exists that most of those children were killed.

The study by Spagat and his colleagues also tries, for the first time, to answer the question of excess mortality in the Strip. In other words, how many people died from the indirect effects of war: hunger, cold, diseases that could not be treated because of the destruction of the health system, and other factors.

During the first year of the war, various estimates about the excess mortality rate were published by researchers and physicians, most of which turned out to be highly exaggerated. According to the new survey, the number of excess deaths until January stood at 8,540. That's a huge number by any standard, but low compared to the estimates that tens of thousands would die in Gaza due to hunger and disease.

Haaretz spoke to a number of experts on this subject. The conventional answer is that before the war, the health of the Gaza Strip's population and the condition of the health-care system there were relatively good, certainly compared to other places plagued with ongoing conflicts, such as Africa or Yemen. For example, the vaccination rate in Gaza was very high, in part thanks to a multi-year effort by UNRWA, the United Nations refugee agency.

Another explanation the researchers offer for what was previously a relatively low excess mortality rate is Gaza's social and communal structure. The family support networks proved their effectiveness in times of hunger and deprivation, and apparently saved many Gazans from death. Spagat also notes favorably the activity of the UN and the other aid organizations, which during the war's first year were successful in feeding the population and looking after the state of its health.

But all those protections, Spagat emphasizes, were effective only during that first year. During the past half-year, it's been evident that the Gazan population increasingly lacks the ability to protect itself against excess mortality.

For one, the displacement of 90 percent of the Strip's residents and the collapse of the health system led to a decline in the vaccination rate. Additionally, exposure to cold, heat, accidents, crowding and diseases in the tent cities in which the majority of Gaza's inhabitants now live has left them increasingly vulnerable.

The shortage of food and the neutralization of a large proportion of the UN's activity in Gaza, in the wake of the full siege of 78 days (March 2–May 19), and the partial siege that has continued for more than a month since then, are causing a deficiency of vitamins, minerals and proteins, affecting Gazans' immune systems. The ongoing destruction of the hospitals and the rest of the Strip's medical infrastructure has increased extensively since the resumption of hostilities.

The conclusion from these developments is that it's very likely that Gaza will continue to experience waves of excess mortality in the near future. "I would speculate that the ratio of nonviolent to violent deaths has gone up since [the January study]," Spagat says.

In the 'Africa league'

In the meantime, even without the anticipated future waves of excess mortality, the combination of casualties from violence and those who died from diseases and hunger led to the death of 83,740 people prior to January, taking into account the survey and the excess mortality. Since then, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, more than 10,000 people have been killed, and that doesn't include those in the category of excess mortality. The upshot is that even if the war hasn't yet crossed the line of 100,000 dead, it's very close.

These data, says Prof. Spagat, position the war in the Gaza Strip as one of the bloodiest conflicts of the 21st century. Even if the overall number of war victims in Syria, Ukraine and Sudan is higher in each case, Gaza is apparently in first place in terms of the ratio of combatants to noncombatants killed, as well as in terms of rate of death relative to population size.

According to the survey's data, which is consistent with those of the Palestinian Health Ministry, 56 percent of those killed have been either children up to the age of 18, or women. That's an exceptional figure when compared with almost every other conflict since World War II.

Data compiled and published by Spagat indicates that the proportion of women and children killed via a violent death in Gaza is more than double the proportion in almost every other recent conflict, including, for example, the civil wars in Kosovo (20 percent), northern Ethiopia (9 percent), Syria (20 percent), Colombia (21 percent), Iraq (17 percent) and Sudan (23 percent).

Another extreme datum found in the study is the proportion of those killed relative to the population. "I think we're probably at something like 4 percent of the population killed," Spagat says, adding, "I'm not sure that there's another case in the 21st century that's reached that high.

"I should have another look at the new data coming out of Sudan, and there's controversy regarding the Democratic Republic of Congo. But we are in the league of Africa, not the Middle East." That's not good company.

Despite these numbers, Spagat is in no hurry to employ the term "genocide," which has been adopted by a large part of the international community of conflict researchers about the war in Gaza. "I don't think this survey can give a verdict [on this question]," he says. It's still necessary to prove Israel's intention to perpetrate genocide, he adds, but "I think that South Africa had a pretty strong case to make" at the International Court of Justice.

The best scenario, he says, is that what's taking place in Gaza amounts to "only" ethnic cleansing.

In contrast to the richness of the data, offered by the official ministry lists and the research studies, that corroborate the numbers of the Gaza Health Ministry, the silence of official Israeli spokespeople about the number of those killed is striking. The October 7 war is the first in which the Israel Defense Forces has not provided estimates of the number of enemy civilians killed.

The only figure that the IDF Spokesperson's Unit and other official Israeli spokespersons repeat is of 20,000 terrorists from Hamas and other organizations who were killed. That figure is not backed up by a list of names or other proof or sourcing.

According to Spagat, there was an attempt to count the number of names of terrorists that were published by Israel. His team managed to arrive at a few hundred, but it's difficult to compile a list of even a thousand, he says.

Cockerill, too, maintains that that number is not credible. "Based on an overwhelmingly consistent historical pattern," he says, "we know that [in general,] at least twice as many combatants will be wounded as killed. So if Israel says 20,000 have been killed, we assume at least 40,000 have been injured, and it doesn't make sense that Hamas had 60,000 militants."

Cockerill says that Israel is “engineering the combatants figure” by two main means. “One is by redefining civilians who work for the government as combatants, the other is ‘kill zones,’” in which everyone who is killed is considered a combatant.

One way or the other, even if we accept the official figure, it still comes down to a ratio of four noncombatants killed for every Hamas militant. That's very far from the statements of Israeli spokespersons, who talk about a 1:1 proportion.

The recent research raises a question: If the number of dead is indeed significantly greater than what's reported by the Gaza Health Ministry, where are the bodies? The ministry's records are based primarily on bodies that have been brought to hospital morgues.

Spagat and other researchers think that thousands of people are still buried under the rubble of tens of thousands of buildings in the Strip, and therefore their names do not appear on the lists. Some people were close to the epicenter of explosions and nothing remains of them. But that cannot account fully for the disparity between the Health Ministry and the survey.

Another explanation suggested by Spagat is that families who lost loved ones simply buried them without bringing the bodies to the hospitals and without reporting the deaths to the Health Ministry. "Some families just don't want to report or are unable to report," Korkil avers. "Maybe the parents die, and the children, and an 8-year-old remains. How is the 8-year-old going to report this?"

'Can I die, please?'

At Nasser Hospital, in the city of Khan Yunis, the statistics take on real form. "You cope every day with cases of trauma, blast injuries and shrapnel," says Dr. Goher Rahbour, a British surgeon who returned home last week from a month at the Gaza hospital. "Every two or three days, there was a mass-casualty event, and then the ER was totally flooded, complete chaos."

One case that remains engraved indelibly in Rahbour’s memory is that of a 15-year-old boy whose entire family was killed and who had himself been wounded and left paralyzed. “He has shrapnel going through the spinal cord, so he is paraplegic, which means he’s got no sensation below the waist or the belly button.

“He’s lived in Gaza for 15 years, he knows what’s coming next, what’s waiting in Gaza for a 15-year-old boy in a wheelchair. No family, no physiotherapy, all these things that we take for granted.

“So he goes around in the hospital and says to us, ‘Can I die, please?’”

Even though Israel has for the past month been allowing the entry into Gaza of a limited supply of food via the UN and the Israeli-American Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the nutrition situation in the Strip continues to worsen. Last month, 5,452 children were hospitalized because of severe malnutrition, according to the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

“People are simply gaunt,” says Rahabour. “You can see the bones on their face, the bent appearance, the protruding jawbones. For a month, I haven’t seen fruits, vegetables, meat or fish here.

"They have formula which they can give to children from the age of six months to five years. So I asked what happens if a hungry child of seven arrives. Sorry, we have to say bye-bye and send them home to die."

Dr. Rahabour and other physicians in the Strip say that the general health situation of the population is deteriorating steadily, because of the hunger and displacement. "You see that the body has no wound-healing capabilities," says Dr. Victoria Rose, a British surgeon who was a volunteer in the Gaza Strip until three weeks ago.

"One of the first things you lose in malnutrition is your ability to fight infection," she adds. "The children have very little healing ability left, and they're living in tents. There's no sanitation, there's no sewage [treatment] or anything like that. Everything has been destroyed and clean water is running out. All of that combined means that you just can't get anything clean, so it can't heal without infection."

If the hunger itself were not enough, hundreds of people have been killed in recent weeks by Israeli gunfire while on their way to collect food from the distribution centers.

Two weeks after Goher Rahabour arrived at Nasser Hospital, on June 1, he observed that the profile of the wounds had changed. Instead of blast and detonation injuries, many more people began arriving with bullets in their body, after Israeli troops opened fire at the starved crowd.

On the first day, he recalls, 150 or 200 wounded people arrived, in addition to 30 dead. “With some of them you can see that they were shot while they lay on the ground, trying to evade being shot. Most of them were young men, but there was one woman in her early 30s, who was 24 weeks pregnant. The bullet went through the fetus. She survived but needed a hysterectomy, so no more children. When we opened the abdomen, we could see the hand and the formed foot of the dead fetus.

“I'm just staring, like what the hell, but the [Palestinian] anesthetist, gynecologist and scrub nurse are carrying on as though this is normal. It's because they've seen this again and again. You just become numb to it.

“It’s as if it’s just normal, you know?”

Israeli soldiers in Gaza told Haaretz that the army has deliberately fired at Palestinians near aid distribution sites over the past month.

Conversations with officers and soldiers reveal that commanders ordered troops to shoot at crowds to drive them away or disperse them, even though it was clear they posed no threat.

One soldier described the situation as a total breakdown of the Israel Defense Forces' ethical codes in Gaza.

According to the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza, 549 people have been killed near aid centers and in areas where residents were waiting for UN food trucks since May 27. Over 4,000 have been wounded, but the exact number of those killed or injured by IDF fire remains unclear.

(Why do the mainstream media keep saying that the health ministry is ‘Hamas-run’? Are they contractually obligated to say that?)

Haaretz has learned that the Military Advocate General has instructed the IDF General Staff's Fact-Finding Assessment Mechanism — a body tasked with reviewing incidents involving potential violations of the laws of war — to investigate suspected war crimes at these sites.

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) aid centers began operating in the Strip at the end of May. The circumstances of the foundation's establishment and its funding are murky: it is known to have been set up by Israel in coordination with U.S. evangelicals and private security contractors. Its current CEO is an evangelical leader close to U.S. President Donald Trump and […] Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The GHF operates four food distribution sites — three in southern Gaza and one in the center — known in the IDF as "rapid distribution centers" (Mahpazim). They are staffed by American and Palestinian workers and secured by the IDF from a distance of several hundred meters.

Thousands, and at times tens of thousands, of Gazans arrive daily to collect food from these sites.

Contrary to the foundation's initial promises, distribution is chaotic, with crowds rushing the piles of boxes. Since the rapid distribution centers opened, Haaretz has counted 19 shooting incidents near them. While the shooters' identities are not always clear, the IDF does not permit armed individuals in these humanitarian zones without its knowledge.

The distribution centers typically open for just one hour each morning. According to officers and soldiers who served in their areas, the IDF fires at people who arrive before opening hours to prevent them from approaching, or again after the centers close, to disperse them. Since some of the shooting incidents occurred at night — ahead of the opening — it's possible that some civilians couldn't see the boundaries of the designated area.

"It's a killing field," one soldier said. "Where I was stationed, between one and five people were killed every day. They're treated like a hostile force — no crowd-control measures, no tear gas — just live fire with everything imaginable: heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, mortars. Then, once the center opens, the shooting stops, and they know they can approach. Our form of communication is gunfire."

The soldier added, "We open fire early in the morning if someone tries to get in line from a few hundred meters away, and sometimes we just charge at them from close range. But there's no danger to the forces." According to him, "I'm not aware of a single instance of return fire. There's no enemy, no weapons." He also said the activity in his area of service is referred to as Operation Salted Fish — the name of the Israeli version of the children's game "Red light, green light".

IDF officers told Haaretz that the army does not allow the public in Israel or abroad to see footage of what takes place around the food distribution sites. According to them, the army is satisfied that the GHF's operations have prevented a total collapse of international legitimacy for continuing the war. They believe the IDF has managed to turn Gaza into a "backyard," especially since the war with Iran began.

"Gaza doesn't interest anyone anymore," said a reservist who completed another round of duty in the northern Strip this week. "It's become a place with its own set of rules. The loss of human life means nothing. It's not even an 'unfortunate incident,' like they used to say."

An officer serving in the security detail of a distribution center described the IDF's approach as deeply flawed: "Working with a civilian population when your only means of interaction is opening fire — that's highly problematic, to say the least," he told Haaretz. "It's neither ethically nor morally acceptable for people to have to reach, or fail to reach, a [humanitarian zone] under tank fire, snipers and mortar shells."

The officer explained that the security on the sites is organized into several tiers. Inside the distribution centers and the "corridor" leading to them are American workers, and the IDF is not permitted to operate in that space. A more external layer is made up of Palestinian supervisors, some of them armed and affiliated with the Abu Shabab militia.

The IDF's security perimeter includes tanks, snipers, and mortars whose purpose, according to the officer, is to protect those present and ensure the aid distribution can take place.

"At night, we open fire to signal to the population that this is a combat zone and they mustn't come near," the officer said. "Once," he recounted, "the mortars stopped firing, and we saw people starting to approach. So we resumed fire to make it clear they weren't allowed to. In the end, one of the shells landed on a group of people."

In other cases, he said, "We fired machine guns from tanks and threw grenades. There was one incident where a group of civilians was hit while advancing under the cover of fog. It wasn't intentional, but these things happen."

He noted that there were also casualties and injuries among IDF soldiers in these incidents. "A combat brigade doesn't have the tools to handle a civilian population in a war zone. Firing mortars to keep hungry people away is neither professional nor humane. I know there are Hamas operatives among them, but there are also people who simply want to receive aid. As a country, we have a responsibility to ensure that happens safely," the officer said.

The officer pointed to another issue with the distribution centers — their lack of consistency. Residents don't know when each center will open, which adds to the pressure on the sites and contributes to harm to civilians.

I don't know who's making the decisions, but we give instructions to the population and then either don't follow through with them or change them," he said.

"Earlier this month, there were cases where we were notified a message had gone out saying the center would open in the afternoon, and people showed up early in the morning to be first in line for food. Because they arrived too early, the distribution was canceled that day."

Contractors as sheriffs

According to accounts from commanders and fighters, the IDF was supposed to maintain a safe distance from Palestinian population areas and food distribution points. However, the actions of the forces on the ground do not align with the operational plans.

"Today, any private contractor working in Gaza with engineering equipment receives 5,000 [roughly $1,500] shekels for every house they demolish," said a veteran fighter. "They're making a fortune. From their perspective, any moment where they don't demolish houses is a loss of money, and the forces have to secure their work. The contractors, who act like a kind of sheriff, demolish wherever they want along the entire front."

As a result, the fighter added, the contractors' demolition campaign brings them, along with their relatively small security details, close to distribution points or along the routes used by aid trucks.

“In order [for the contractors] to protect themselves, a shooting incident breaks out, and people are killed,” he said. “These are areas where Palestinians are allowed to be — we’re the ones who moved closer and decided [they] endangered us. So, for a contractor to make another 5,000 shekels and take down a house, it’s deemed acceptable to kill people who are only looking for food.”

A senior officer whose name repeatedly comes up in testimonies about the shootings near aid sites is Brigadier General Yehuda Vach, commander of the IDF's Division 252. Haaretz previously reported how Vach turned the Netzarim corridor into a deadly route, endangered soldiers on the ground, and was suspected of ordering the destruction of a hospital in Gaza without authorization.

Now, an officer in the division says Vach decided to disperse gatherings of Palestinians waiting for UN aid trucks by opening fire. "This is Vach's policy," the officer said, "but many of the commanders and soldiers accepted it without question. [The Palestinians] are not supposed to be there, so the idea is to make sure they clear out, even if they're just there for food."

Vach's division is not the only one operating in the area, and it's possible that other officers also gave orders to fire at people seeking aid.

A reserve tank soldier who recently served with Division 252 in northern Gaza confirmed the reports and explained the IDF's "deterrence procedure" for dispersing civilians who gather in violation of military orders.

"The teenagers waiting for the trucks hide behind dirt mounds and rush them as they pass or stop at distribution points," he said. "We usually see them from hundreds of meters away; it's not a situation where they pose a threat to us."

In one incident, the soldier was instructed to fire a shell toward a crowd gathered near the coastline. "Technically, it's supposed to be warning fire — either to push people back or stop them from advancing," he said. "But lately, firing shells has just become standard practice. Every time we fire, there are casualties and deaths, and when someone asks why a shell is necessary, there's never a good answer. Sometimes, merely asking the question annoys the commanders."

In that case, some people began to flee after the shell was fired, and according to the soldier, other forces subsequently opened fire on them. "If it's meant to be a warning shot, and we see them running back to Gaza, why shoot at them?" he asked. "Sometimes we're told they're still hiding, and we need to fire in their direction because they haven't left. But it's obvious they can't leave if the moment they get up and run, we open fire."

The soldier said this has become routine. "You know it's not right. You feel it's not right — that the commanders here are taking the law into their own hands. But Gaza is a parallel universe. You move on quickly. The truth is, most people don't even stop to think about it."

Earlier this week, soldiers from Division 252 opened fire at an intersection where civilians were waiting for aid trucks. A commander on the ground gave the order to fire directly at the center of the junction, resulting in the deaths of eight civilians, including teenagers. The incident was brought to the attention of former Southern Command chief Maj. Gen. Yaron Finkelman, but so far, aside from a preliminary review, he has taken no action and has not demanded an explanation from Vach regarding the high number of fatalities in his sector.

"I was at a similar event. From what we heard, more than ten people were killed there," said another senior reserve officer commanding forces in the area. "When we asked why they opened fire, we were told it was an order from above and that the civilians had posed a threat to the troops. I can say with certainty that the people were not close to the forces and did not endanger them. It was pointless — they were just killed, for nothing. This thing called killing innocent people — it's been normalized. We were constantly told there are no noncombatants in Gaza, and apparently that message sank in among the troops."

A senior officer familiar with the fighting in Gaza believes this marks a further deterioration in the IDF's moral standards. "The power that senior field commanders wield in relation to General Staff leadership threatens the chain of command," he said.

According to him, "My greatest fear is that the shooting and harm to civilians in Gaza aren't the result of operational necessity or poor judgment, but rather the product of an ideology held by field commanders, which they pass down to the troops as an operational plan."

Shelling civilians

In recent weeks, the number of fatalities near food distribution areas has risen sharply — 57 on June 11, 59 on June 17, and around 50 on June 24, according to Gaza's Health Ministry. In response, a discussion was held at Southern Command, where it emerged that troops had begun dispersing crowds using artillery shells.

"They talk about using artillery on a junction full of civilians as if it's normal," said a military source who attended the meeting. "An entire conversation about whether it's right or wrong to use artillery, without even asking why that weapon was needed in the first place. What concerns everyone is whether it'll hurt our legitimacy to keep operating in Gaza. The moral aspect is practically nonexistent. No one stops to ask why dozens of civilians looking for food are being killed every day."

Another senior officer familiar with the fighting in Gaza said the normalization of killing civilians has often encouraged firing at them near the aid distribution centers.

"The fact that live fire is directed at a civilian population — whether with artillery, tanks, snipers, or drones — goes against everything the army is supposed to stand for," he said, criticizing the decisions made on the ground. "Why are people collecting food being killed just because they stepped out of line, or because some commander doesn't like that they're cutting in? Why have we reached a point where a teenager is willing to risk his life just to pull a sack of rice off a truck? And that's who we're firing artillery at?"

In addition to IDF fire, military sources say some of the fatalities near the aid distribution centers were caused by gunfire from militias that the army supports and arms. According to one officer, the IDF continues to back the Abu Shabab group and other factions.

"There are many groups that oppose Hamas — Abu Shabab went several steps further," he said. "They control territory that Hamas doesn't enter, and the IDF encourages that."

Another officer remarked, "I'm stationed there, and even I no longer know who's shooting at whom."

In a closed-door meeting this week with senior officials from the Military Advocate General's Office, held in light of the daily deaths of dozens of civilians near aid zones, the legal officials instructed that the incidents be investigated by the IDF General Staff's Fact-Finding Assessment Mechanism. This body, established after the Mavi Marmara flotilla incident, is tasked with examining cases where there is suspected violation of the laws of war, to fend off international demands to investigate IDF soldiers for alleged war crimes.

During the meeting, senior legal officials said global criticism over the killing of civilians is mounting. Senior officers in the IDF and Southern Command, however, claimed the cases are isolated and that the gunfire was directed at suspects who posed a threat to the troops.

A source who attended the meeting told Haaretz that representatives of the Military Advocate General's Office rejected the IDF's claims. According to them, the arguments do not hold up against the facts on the ground. "The claim that these are isolated cases doesn't align with incidents in which grenades were dropped from the air and mortars and artillery were fired at civilians," said one legal official. "This isn't about a few people being killed — we're talking about dozens of casualties every day."

Although the Military Advocate General instructed the Fact-Finding Assessment Mechanism to examine recent shooting incidents, these represent only a small portion of the cases in which hundreds of uninvolved civilians were killed.

Senior IDF officials expressed frustration that the Southern Command has failed to investigate these incidents thoroughly and is disregarding civilian deaths in Gaza. According to military sources, Southern Command chief Maj. Gen. Yaron Finkelman typically conducts only preliminary inquiries, relying mostly on the accounts of field commanders. He has not taken disciplinary action against officers whose soldiers harmed civilians, despite clear violations of IDF orders and the laws of war.

An IDF spokesperson responded: "Hamas is a brutal terrorist organization that starves the Gazan population and endangers them to maintain its rule in the Gaza Strip. Hamas does everything in its power to prevent the successful distribution of food in Gaza and to disrupt humanitarian aid. The IDF allows the American civil society organization (GHF) to operate independently and distribute aid to Gaza residents. The IDF operates near the new distribution areas to enable distribution while continuing operational activities in the Strip."

"As part of their operational conduct in the vicinity of the main access roads to the distribution centers, IDF forces are conducting systematic learning processes to improve their operational response in the area and minimize, as much as possible, potential friction between the population and IDF forces. Recently, forces worked to reorganize the area by placing new fences, signage, opening additional routes, and more. Following incidents where there were reports of harm to civilians arriving at distribution centers, in-depth investigations were conducted, and instructions were given to forces on the ground based on lessons learned. These incidents were referred for examination by the General Staff's debriefing mechanism."