THE FOGHORN OF WAR: Aid Workers In The Kill Zone

Geography is destiny

“It happens in war and we are thoroughly investigating it.”

That’s how Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissively explained away the deaths of seven World Central Kitchen aid workers laboring to feed Gaza’s famished population. You can watch his statement here, his ghoulish smirk on full display throughout the video. In it, he also referred to the airstrikes on three separate vehicles as a “tragic case of our forces unintentionally hitting innocent people.”

It’s quite a statement given the mounting numbers of Gazans killed in Israel’s war. The Gaza Health Ministry has thus far identified over 32k dead Gazans. Many more lie unaccounted for under rubble. And in mid-March, UNICEF tallied over 13k children killed … that’s children, folks … and that number has no doubt grown over the last two weeks. In fact, The Guardian reported today on doctors treating children as young as “seven or eight years-old” targeted by Israeli snipers. They, along with elderly Gazans, arrive at hospitals with a single wound from a “high-calibre bullet,” sometimes to the head and sometimes to the chest. Of course, the IDF told The Guardian it “‘completely rejects’ charge that its soldiers deliberately fired on any of the thousands of civilians killed in Israeli offensive.”

The denials keep on coming.

And so do the “wounded children, no surviving family.” There are so many of them that it’s become an acronym—WCNSF—so they can be more easily and effectively enumerated. These are children who’ve lost their ENTIRE FAMILY in an airstrike. Some of them are the only survivor pulled from the rubble of a felled home or apartment building. Despite the IDF’s denials, the BBC’s Orla Guerin’s recent report on the orphan phenomenon found that the IDF has produced an estimated 20k orphans. Add them to the growing cadre of child amputees and to the growing roster of Israeli-killed journalists who’ve died trying to report on a war Israel works hard to hide from the prying eyes of international news organizations. What you get when you tally it all up is a picture of “war” that looks more like a rolling massacre.

It’s a picture that came into clearer view on Sunday when Ha’aretz reported on the IDF’s expansive rules of engagement in the tiny strip of land. According to Ha’aretz, the IDF’s claim of over 9,000 “Hamas terrorists” killed is padded with the bodies of innocents, bystanders and, perhaps, just unarmed “civilians out looking for food.” That’s one possible explanation for the four unarmed men who were killed while walking near Khan Yunis. The IDF claimed they’d launched a rocket at Ashkelon. The evidence doesn’t bear that out. Instead, the official story was contradicted by a video shown by Al Jazeera (which is probably why the Knesset finally moved to ban them over the weekend) and corroborated to Ha’aretz by a “senior Israel Defense Forces officer” and an “intelligence officer who is familiar with the story.” Because the men were simply in one of the IDF’s “kill zones,” they forfeited their right to live. And they are not alone.

This is the “world’s most moral army at work,” delineating “combat zones” on the fly in which anyone who is not a member of the IDF is fair game. If you are Palestinian, it doesn’t matter what you’ve done or who you are. The key to your right to live is geography. If you cross an invisible line drawn by the IDF, you can be killed. And if you are killed within these evolving parameters, you will probably be deemed a Hamas militant regardless of whether or not were a combatant. Apparently, this is something of an open secret in the IDF … a secret that was discussed anonymously with Ha’aretz:

The number of dead Gazans is now estimated to be over 32,000. According to the army, some 9,000 of these are terrorists.

However, a host of reserve and standing army commanders who have talked to Haaretz cast doubt on the claim that all of these were terrorists. They imply that the definition of terrorist is open to a wide range of interpretation. It's quite possible that Palestinians who never held a gun in their lives were elevated to the rank of "terrorist" posthumously, at least by the IDF.

"In practice, a terrorist is anyone the IDF has killed in the areas in which its forces operate," says a reserve officer who has served in Gaza.

The army's figures are no secret. On the contrary, over time they have become a source of pride, perhaps the closest thing to a "victory image" Israel has achieved since the war began. But this image, says a senior officer in Southern Command who is very familiar with the issue, is not quite authentic.

"It's astonishing to hear the reports after every operation, regarding how many terrorists were killed," he says, explaining: "You don't need to be a genius to realize that you don't have hundreds or dozens of armed men running through the streets of Khan Yunis or Jabaliya, fighting the IDF."

Of course, the IDF denies the accusation. They told Ha’aretz:

"[T]he IDF is in the midst of a war against the Hamas terror organization and is acting to foil threats against its forces. The IDF constantly calls on civilians to evacuate intense combat zones and is investing efforts into allowing civilians to evacuate as safely as possible."

"In contrast to claims being made, the IDF has not defined 'kill zones.' Support for this comes from the fact that the IDF has arrested a large number of terrorists or suspected terrorists during the fighting, without inflicting damage in intense combat zones," continued the army.

But Har’aretz noted:

Indeed, there is no written order regarding a kill zone in the IDF's rule book. But this doesn't mean that the concept is unknown to soldiers. Evidence of this is the investigation of the incident in which the three hostages were killed.

As for the documented footage of the attack on the four unarmed Gazans, the IDF spokesperson responded that "the area documented in the footage is an active combat area in Khan Yunis, in which there was a significant evacuation of the civilian population. The forces there experienced many encounters with terrorists who fight and move in combat areas, while dressed as civilians, and camouflage combat gear in buildings and property that appear to be civilian."

"The incident documented in the footage was examined by the investigative apparatus of the General Staff, which is a body that is independent and responsible for examining exceptional incidents that happen in the course of combat," the army added.

It was an “investigation” of deaths in the hen house by the fox, and it’s the same type of investigation Netanyahu and the IDF promised today when these wide-open rules of engagement generated a public relations disaster.

Like the US military before it, the IDF will probably find a lower-level scapegoat to blame for the airstrikes on the World Central Kitchen’s aid workers. It’s far more convenient than examining the policies and practices that, according to Dr. Fozia Alvi, make what’s happening in Gaza “not a normal war.” A Canadian physician who “founded the US-based charity Humanity Auxilium,” Dr. Alvi left Gaza in late February after leading one of the first foreign efforts to treat sick and injured Gazans in Rafah. Reflecting further on what he’d seen, he told The Guardian:

“The war in Ukraine has killed 500 kids in two years and the war in Gaza has killed over 10,000 in less than five months. We have seen wars before but this is something that is a dark stain on our shared humanity.”

It’s a bloody stain that grows darker with each passing day.