“Investigating war crimes in Gaza” I Al Jazeera Investigations

Al Jazeera English: “Investigating war crimes in Gaza I Al Jazeera Investigations”

Excerpt from YouTube transcript:

The West cannot hide. They cannot claim ignorance. Nobody can say they didn’t know. We live in an era of technology, and this has been described as the first live stream genocide in history. I believe that to be true. They are conducting a genocide now with glee. They’re setting their activities to music and putting them on catchy reels on TikTok. Ordinary Israelis see what their military is doing and celebrate. It’s not just fringe elements who see this and think it’s a good thing. When a nation protects its home, it fights, and we will fight until we’ll break their backbone. It’s not true, this rhetoric about civilians not being aware, not involved. It’s absolutely not true. It’s an entire nation out there that is responsible.

Gaza becomes a strip in 1948 with the creation of the state of Israel. Three-quarters of a million people are driven from their homes in what Palestinians call the nakba or catastrophe. Close to a third of refugees end up in Gaza. In 1967, Gaza and the West Bank are occupied by the Israelis. After the Israelis withdraw settlements from Gaza in 2005, Hamas wins elections throughout the occupied territories. It advocates resistance to Israeli occupation and is prescribed as a terrorist organization in the west. When it takes control of Gaza in 2007, Israel imposes a blockade. In the years that follow, it carries out a number of attacks on Gaza, citing security requirements. Thousands of Palestinians are killed.

On October 7, 1200 Hamas fighters storm through the fence separating the Gaza Strip from Israel. The main goal was to bring the Palestinian cause on the table and to oblige all the politicians in the region and outside the region that no one can bypass the Palestinian cause. Without solving this, no one can enjoy security or stability. More than 1,000 Israelis are killed. More than 250 hostages are taken. The impact of October 7 is immense. It’s a society in complete trauma. We could never in our worst nightmare think that October 7 would happen. The aura of Israeli invincibility disappeared on October 7 last year. Israel has survived because neighbors have always believed that Israel was omnipotent, a country that cannot be defeated militarily. And then over a couple of hours, all of this fell apart. It immediately became clear to most Israelis that they’re not secure and the enemies around them are not deterred.

In this war, Israel is desperately now trying to restore the strategic posture of deterrence to make themselves feel safe. I think from the beginning, it was obvious that in order to restore deterrence, they would respond disproportionately. But we can’t escape that there was a strong element of avenging and revenging.

This investigation assembles evidence of war crimes committed during the year-long Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip and of complicity in those crimes. The evidence includes the voices of those who ordered the assault, those who supported it, those who enabled it – the United States stands with Israel; we will not ever fail to have their back – those who enjoyed it, and above all, those who inflicted it. Al Jazeera’s investigative unit has compiled a database of over 250,000 social media accounts containing photos and videos placed online by Israeli soldiers. It is a treasure trove which you very seldom come across. Prosecutors will be licking their lips at such evidence.

We knew that the retaliation was going to be so much bigger than this is a mild attack on Palestine Tower right in the middle of Gaza City. But we didn’t expect it to be what it has turned out to be. The fact that there are Israeli captives in the strip – wouldn’t that be a red line for Israel that it would be afraid for its captives? Even if Israel wanted to cross these red lines, we thought for sure that the world would stand and say no.

You wake up every morning thinking this could be your last day. You might be next. There have been journalists and human rights workers who have been directly killed during previous attacks. But this war, it was more like systematic attacks, systematic targeting of civilians, journalists, and human rights workers. So it’s been a struggle since the beginning of this war, realizing that what you’re doing is actually not only risking your own life but the life of your family and those taking shelter with you. Everyone who you could be around can be at risk.

So many times when I went after a bombing that just happened, I literally felt like I was standing over a mass grave – not just a grave of people who are dead, but people who are alive and they’re stuck there. You may be strong enough on your own to defend yourself, but as long as America exists, you will never ever have to. We will always be there by your side. Israel orders the 1.1 million residents of Northern Gaza to evacuate to the south of the Gaza River Valley. Many are unable or unwilling. Less than three weeks after October 7, 16% of the buildings in Northern Gaza have been damaged or destroyed.

An Israeli magazine later reveals that artificial intelligence is being used to identify targets. The Israeli Army has marked tens of thousands of Gazans as suspects for assassination. According to 972, acting members of the military report that AI was used basically to achieve a tempo of attacks faster than could be humanly sustained. How does the AI decide who is killable? It will look at everything that can be scraped about you from surveillance, spying, social media profile, and who your phone is near when you’re walking around. If your number out of 100 is above a certain threshold, then you can be attacked and killed. There’s another AI according to reporting in +972 Mag called “Where’s Daddy” which monitors the location of your smartphone. When it arrives at your residence, there will be a ping to the guy who can target your house and bring it down. Whoever came up with this name thought many of them would be fathers – hence, “Where’s Daddy.” When they reach their homes, Daddy’s home, and then the entire house and everybody in it could be blown up.

Hello, I’m Nick Clark. This is the news live from Doha. Our colleague from Al Jazeera Arabic has just learned that his wife and other members of his family have been killed in an airstrike. The entire team here in Doha is offering our sincere condolences.

The family of Wael Dhu, Al Jazeera’s Gaza bureau chief, is killed in a strike on the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, supposedly part of the safe zone south of the Gaza River Valley. The family had evacuated from the north of the strip. The attack resulted in the killing of Wael’s wife, his daughter Sham, his son Mahmud, his grandson Adam, and the injury of other family members.

For him to be targeted, for his family to be targeted, it’s very devastating for us as journalists. For us, it felt like that red line being crossed.

At the end of October, Yumna Elhad’s own family is still in Gaza City in the north of the strip. It was less than a week after the killing of Wael’s family when a call comes from a private number on my husband’s mobile phone. The officer identifies himself as an IDF officer. He says, “We know who you are. Take your family and leave your home; otherwise, your lives are in danger.”

So my husband was like, “So if you know who I am, then you know that the bombardments around my home are nonstop. How do you expect me to take my kids and leave my home in such a time and risk their lives?” He responded, “This is your problem. You need to figure it out.”

I can’t get over my 12-year-old Elen. When this happened, she screamed at me. She was like, “They’re going to kill us because of you. They’re going to kill us because of you.”

The destruction in Gaza sparks a TikTok craze in Israel. Civilians dress up as caricatures of Palestinians and mime to an Israeli song called “This Was My Home.” An influencer suggests Palestinians are faking their injuries. Another influencer taunts Palestinians for the loss of water and electricity. These videos are shared many thousands of times.

After three weeks of bombardment, Israeli ground troops enter Northern Gaza.

Everyone in the building was screaming. Everyone. It was like the kids were screaming. We’re hugging each other. We’re under the kitchen bar. We’re terrified. Then they decided to speak to us in their mics, and they said that we have five minutes to leave the building.

So we grabbed our children, got into our cars, and left. There’s a lot of gunfire ongoing now, an exchange of gunfire, bullets. We’ve just started heading out, and nothing feels safe at all. Nothing feels safe.

Thousands of other families are trying to flee Gaza City at the same time moving to the south. You had to do it on foot. No cars were allowed to drive in that area. Twenty-three-year-old freelance journalist Muhammad Alhu has already narrowly escaped death a number of times. He too is fleeing south.

We were asked to walk holding a white flag in one hand and raising the ID in the other hand, everyone including the children. They would stop people while they were walking, then they say, “This person wearing this color shirt, get out of the line,” and then they would make them strip completely to their underwear in front of everyone.

On the final stretch out of Gaza City, thousands wait to enter what the Israelis call a humanitarian corridor, supposedly a safe route to the south.

Those who were killed, everything was left on the ground for the people who were crossing to see. I made my children promise me that they would not look at the ground at all, not once. I just instructed them to look straight, do not look at the ground, do not look down.

As Palestinians flee, Israeli soldiers enter the homes they have left behind.

“I will burn their city to the ground, yeah, every rat hole that they hide in, and I will drop down enough explosives to scare God,” one soldier says.

Soldiers post thousands of photos and videos on social media. Al Jazeera’s investigative unit has identified many of them.

These videos don’t show a professional army—they show an army that at times appears to almost completely lack any self-discipline, to a point where one thinks it’s not just a personal lack of discipline but an institutional lack of discipline.

Under international law, you’re not allowed to destroy ordinary civilian property. There doesn’t appear to be any military objectives. It’s something of a scorched-earth policy where everything is destroyed, and it makes it very difficult to reconstruct civilian life thereafter.

Soldiers loot and pillage. The International Criminal Court has jurisdiction to look at precisely these allegations, where civilian property has been targeted and where civilian property is being looted.

Depending on that evidence, charges could be brought.

Many Israeli soldiers are dual nationals.

“I’m going through these terrorist houses looking for guns and explosives,” one soldier states. “Like we find money at every single house inside of Gaza. This is what I say every single unbelievable two or three drawers stuffed with the most exotic lingerie that you can imagine just pouring out of it. Part every single house stuffed to the brim. Look at that unbelievable,” he continues.

There seems to be this strange obsession amongst many Israeli soldiers for women’s underwear. I’m not sure if it’s intended to titillate or humiliate.

Sharing these kinds of images per se is not a crime, but it could be used as relevant evidence to show the mindset of the soldiers concerned and the discipline or lack thereof of those soldiers. It is strange; these videos seem to be quite popular inside Israel.

Lots of people say Israeli forces shouldn’t be allowed to take cameras and phones into combat. I am glad that they are allowed to because it allows the world to witness what’s happening…