Tag: friendly fire

Leaks reveal Israel killed 366 UN staffers, family members in Gaza: Report

Hundreds of UN staff members and their family members have been killed by the Israeli army in Gaza, according to an unreleased UN report obtained by the Drop Site news outlet on 24 July. 

At least 195 UN staff and 172 of their dependents had been killed by Israeli forces by the end of June, the unreleased UN report states. The UN defines dependents as persons belonging to a staff member’s family who are formally recognized as financially reliant on that staff member.

The UN Crisis Coordination Centre found that five UN Development Program dependents, four UNICEF dependents, three World Food Programme (WFP) dependents, two World Health Organization (WHO) dependents, and 158 UNRWA dependents have been killed by Israeli forces. 

It had been reported in May that Israel had killed 188 members of UNRWA. UNRWA regularly releases situation reports detailing Tel Aviv’s targeting of staff members and facilities. 

UNRWA facilities have been the sites of numerous massacres committed by Israeli troops. 

However, these are the first numbers indicating the extent to which Israel has targeted the families of UN staff members. 

According to Drop Site, the report was circulated internally at the start of this month. The UN did not respond to a request for comment.

Over the weekend, on 21 July, a UN convoy came under heavy fire by Israeli forces despite prior coordination with the army. 

An Israeli airstrike on the UNRWA-run Abu Oreiban school in central Gaza’s Nuseirat Camp a week earlier, on 14 July, killed at least 15 people, just a day after the strike on southern Gaza’s Al-Mawasi that killed at least 90 and injured hundreds on 13 July. 

Tel Aviv has accused UNRWA members of involvement in Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on 7 October but has yet to provide evidence for its claims. 

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Israeli outlet confirms IDF killed its own people on Oct. 7th

After nine months of an Israeli mass murder campaign in Gaza, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz has confirmed what my colleagues Ali Abunimah of Electronic Intifada (EI) and Max Blumenthal of the Grayzone reported back in October: that Israel invoked the Hannibal Directive and killed its own citizens on Oct. 7th.

According to one Israeli military source, Israeli forces were ordered to turn the boundary area around Gaza into a “killing zone” — thereby knowingly killing Israelis in that zone. Under the Hannibal doctrine, Israel’s aim was to kill its own people rather than let them be traded in a future exchange for Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli prisons. The Israeli military has suppressed this killing of its own people on Oct. 7th all while manufacturing support for its rampage in Gaza ever since.

The same establishment media outlets that have long ignored this aspect of Oct. 7th smeared my independent media colleagues at Grayzone and EI for reporting it. This includes two hit pieces in the Washington Post, and even more brazenly, three pieces in Haaretz — which is now acknowledging what it has repeatedly attacked Max and Grayzone for reporting.

I went on “Piers Morgan Uncensored” to debate this issue and related matters. I was joined by the veteran, courageous Israeli journalist Gideon Levy along with two other Israelis — one a former IDF spokesperson who was not keen on letting me speak.

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Israeli military investigation reveals many Oct. 7 Israeli casualties were caused by IDF rather than Hamas

Israel has used the events of October 7 to justify a lengthy and very bloody war in Gaza that has caused the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians. On that date, Hamas terrorists entered southern Israel, where they reportedly killed more than 1,100 people and took 251 hostages.

However, it turns out that some of the Israeli deaths on that day came not at the hands of Hamas but instead as the result of “friendly fire” from the Israeli military. This is something that Hamas has been claiming for some time now, and many media reports about it were quickly dismissed as “disinformation.”

Now, however, leaks from a report compiled by the Israeli military itself confirm that a lot of the October 7 casualties were the result of friendly fire.

According to Israeli broadcaster Channel 12, a military investigation revealed that “friendly fires led to the deaths and injuries of an unspecified number of Israeli soldiers”. In addition, IDF forces were deployed in a “chaotic” manner.

A full official report is expected to be released next month, and it will essentially be an official admission that numerous Israelis were killed by the IDF and not Hamas. The IDF has not denied the information that has been leaked so far despite being aggressive about denying other leaks and failures.

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USS Liberty Survivors Reunite and Call For a Congressional Investigation into the Deadly Attack on Their Ship

“If the truth about the attack on the USS Liberty isn’t told to the American public, our Republic will fall. When your own government sets you up to be murdered, this speaks to the influence the Zionist state of Israel has with our politicians. Not one president from LBJ to Biden has lifted a finger nor has the Congress.” – Phil Tourney, USS Liberty attack survivor.

Now is the best time for Americans to demand an open and honest congressional investigation of the June 8, 1967 unprovoked and deliberate attack on the USS Liberty by the Israeli military. The brutal assault that killed 34 American sailors and wounded 171 of their shipmates was then covered up by Commander-in-Chief President Lyndon B. Johnson, military leadership, and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara.Phillip F. Nelson, Ron…Best Price: $12.75Buy New $10.00(as of 07:20 UTC – Details)

Many survivors and other analysts now conclude the attack was a planned false flag intended to sink the ship and kill all aboard as a pretext to gain public support for the US to join Israel in its battle against Egypt during the Six Day War. This is when Israel captured Gaza, the West Bank and the Golan Heights.

Eleven USS Liberty survivors, their wives and children, widows and children of the crew and supporters of the cause for justice for the USS Liberty travelled from all over America to gather in Arlington, Virginia for their annual reunion on June 7-8. For the first time, Arlington National Cemetery granted the survivors’ request for a presentation by the Navy color guard, the playing of Taps, and a Navy chaplain to lead prayer at the solemn ceremony at the gravesite of the USS Liberty Navy crew blown to bits by a torpedo, and slaughtered with napalm, cannon and gunfire.

The Israeli government’s genocidal actions against the Palestinians in Gaza since October 7, and the US government’s funding of weapons and arms to commit these atrocities, are awakening many who previously were incapable of psychologically process that Israel, supposedly America’s ally, could plan and perpetrate a deadly attack on an American ship, and that the US government could be an accomplice to this abhorrent betrayal. Author James Bamford, keynote speaker at the reunion banquet, said the bloody assault marked the point when the Israeli lobby, principally AIPAC, went into high gear to influence and control the US government.

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Don’t Forget the USS Liberty’s Dead and Wounded

Reader’s celebrating and remembering veterans on Memorial Day and on D Day should not overlook the sacrifices of the dead and wounded on board the USS Liberty on June 8, 1967.

I am grateful to those that have read my previous stories about the sneak attack made on the USS Liberty by Israel, an attack which killed 34 and wounded 171 Americans. I am continually surprised at the number of people that are not aware of Israel’s duplicity and treachery visited on an unarmed, plainly marked and neutral ship of the United States while it operated in international waters.

The dead and wounded of the USS Liberty didn’t go down fighting in the sense that they were in a war with a known adversary. Yes, many went down fighting while defending their ship against a false-flag, intentional attack by their supposed ally, Israel.

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IDF Tanks Open Fire On Own Gaza HQ, Killing 5 Troops In Disastrous Friendly Fire Incident

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have just suffered their biggest ‘friendly fire’ disaster to date during military operations in northern Gaza. In a Wednesday incident, a pair of Israeli tanks targeted a building which was serving as a forward operating HQ for their own troops.

Five Israeli soldiers were confirmed killed in the incident which happened in Jabalia. An additional seven troops were wounded, with three listed in serious condition. 

Soon after it happened social media images from Israel showed that there was a significant medical evacuation underway, with military helicopters seen transporting wounded to hospitals inside Israel. 

The tanks had reportedly been taking heavy fire just before the friendly fire incident, with the Jerusalem Post providing the following details:

Tank Unit 82’s soldiers said that they saw a potential threat, the barrel of a weapon, emerge from the three floor battalion headquarters, which was only 10-20 meters away from them. The soldiers hit by the tank were from Unit 202 is a Haredi-integrated unit. 

It was unclear why they did not recognize the battalion headquarters. However, the IDF said that the tanks had taken over the junction in Jabalya around 9:00 am and that the Battalion headquarters deputy commander had only arrived many hours later.

On Thursday the IDF listed the young troop deaths – which included an officer with the rest being among enlisted ranks – as follows: Capt. Roy Beit Ya’akov, 22, from Eli; Staff Sgt. Gilad Arye Boim, 22, from Karnei Shomron in Samaria; Sgt. Daniel Chemu, 20, from Tiberias; Sgt. Ilan Cohen, 20, from Carmiel; and Staff Sgt. Betzalel David Shashuah, 21, from Tel Aviv.

While it’s still under investigation, another local media outlet reported the following:

The tank forces had arrived at the area in the morning, and several hours later, the paratroopers reached the area and established a post in the building. Later in the evening, another group of paratroopers reached the area and notified two of the tanks there that they were entering the building.

Likely this will further energize angry anti-Netanyahu protesters who say he has not done enough to actually get the Israeli hostages back, but instead has prioritized the brutal fight to eliminate Hamas.

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How Many Israelis Killed by ‘Friendly Fire’?

An elderly Israeli woman abducted by Hamas during the group’s October 7 attack was likely gunned down by an IDF aircraft, an internal military probe has found. To date, Tel Aviv has offered few details about other captives who may have been killed by friendly fire.

The 67-year-old grandmother, Efrat Katz, was taken hostage from the Nir Oz Kibbutz during Hamas’ surprise assault on Israel last year. Footage of her kidnapping showed the woman squeezed into the bed of a truck alongside her daughter and two grandchildren, a harrowing clip that would mark some of Katz’s final moments.The results of an internal Israeli military probe were published on April 5, acknowledging the IDF not only “failed to protect civilians” at the kibbutz, but had inadvertently contributed to the carnage.

“It appears that during the battles and the airstrikes, one of the combat helicopters that took part in the fighting fired at a vehicle that had terrorists in it, and, in retrospect, according to the evidence, it turned out that there were also hostages in it,” the investigation found. “As a result of the shooting, most of the terrorists manning the vehicles were killed, and apparently the late Efrat Katz.”

However, the probe concluded that because the hostages “could not be distinguished” from Palestinian fighters during the IDF counterattack, the helicopter crew was not at fault for Katz’s death. For the airmen, “the shooting was defined as shooting at a vehicle with terrorists,” the report continued.

According to Al Jazeera, Katz’s daughter and two grandchildren survived the attack, and were later freed following a prisoner exchange agreed with Hamas in November. The Palestinian armed group kidnapped more than 200 people on October 7 – among them Israeli soldiers and civilians in addition to foreign nationals – with around half of them released as part of last year’s deal.

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Shielding US Public From Israeli Reports of Friendly Fire on October 7

Since October, the Israeli press has uncovered damning evidence showing that an untold number of the Israeli victims during the October 7 Hamas attack were in fact killed by the IDF response.

While it is indisputable that the Hamas-led attackers were responsible for many Israeli civilian deaths that day, reports from Israel indicate that the IDF in multiple cases fired on and killed Israeli civilians. It’s an important issue that demands greater transparency—both in terms of the questions it raises about IDF policy, and in terms of the black-and-white narrative Israel has advanced about what happened on October 7, used to justify its ongoing assault on the Gaza Strip.

Indeed, IDF responsibility for Israeli deaths has been a repeated topic of discussion in the Israeli press, accompanied by demands for investigations. But the most US readers have gotten from their own press about the issue is a dismissive piece from the Washington Post about October 7 “truthers.”

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Russia Says Ukraine Shot Down Plane Carrying Ukrainian POWs

Russia said on Wednesday that Ukrainian forces shot down a Russian military transport plane over Russia’s Belgorod Oblast, killing all 74 people onboard, including 65 Ukrainian prisoners of war.

The Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement that its forces registered two anti-aircraft missiles fired from Ukraine’s Kharkiv Oblast, which borders Belgorod, that hit the IL-76 aircraft. The ministry claimed the POWs were being transported as part of a planned prisoner swap with Ukraine.

Ukraine has not officially confirmed or denied responsibility for the downing of the plane, but sources told Ukrainska Pravda that Ukrainian forces were responsible. The Ukrainian military also hinted it was behind the incident.

In response to the news, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said in a statement that it would “continue to destroy means of delivery and control the airspace to eliminate the terrorist threat, including on the Belgorod-Kharkiv front.”

Ukraine’s military intelligence acknowledged in a statement that a prisoner swap was scheduled to take place on Wednesday but said it had no information about who was onboard the downed Russian plane.

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Israeli army ordered mass Hannibal Directive on 7 Oct: Media

The Israeli military implemented the “Hannibal Directive” during Hamas’ attack on 7 October, killing some of its own civilians and soldiers to prevent Hamas from taking them as captives back to Gaza, according to an investigation by Israel’s leading newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth, which will be published in full on 12 January.

The Hebrew edition of the paper wrote on 11 January that “one of the revelations revealed in the investigation is that at noon on October 7, the IDF [Israeli army] ordered all of its combat units in practice to use the ‘Hannibal Procedure’ although without clearly mentioning this explicitly by name.”

The order was to stop “at all costs any attempt by Hamas terrorists to return to Gaza, that is, despite the fear that some of them have abductees,” the paper wrote.

The Times of Israel described how the Hannibal procedure, or directive, “allows soldiers to use potentially massive amounts of force to prevent a soldier from falling into the hands of the enemy. This includes the possibility of endangering the life of the soldier in question in order to prevent his capture.”

A previous Haaretz investigation of the directive concluded that “from the point of view of the army, a dead soldier is better than a captive soldier who himself suffers and forces the state to release thousands of captives in order to obtain his release.”

During the 7 October attack, Hamas and other Palestinians successfully took some 240 Israeli soldiers and civilians from the settlements (also known as kibbutzim) and military bases back to Gaza as captives. 

Hamas hoped to exchange them for the thousands of Palestinians, including women and children, held in Israeli prisons.

Hamas used the Toyota pick-up trucks and motorcycles with which they entered Israel, as well as cars stolen from the settlements, to take Israeli captives back to Gaza. Some were also taken to Gaza on foot and even in carts pulled by tractors by other Palestinians who crossed into Israel after the Hamas fighters breached the border fence.

According to Yediot Ahronoth, about a thousand “terrorists and infiltrators” were killed in the area between the settlements and the Gaza Strip.

But the paper added it is not clear at this time how many of the Israeli abductees were killed due to the activation of the Hannibal directive: 

“In the week after the attack, soldiers of elite units checked about 70 vehicles that were left in the area between the settlements and the Gaza Strip. These are vehicles that did not reach Gaza, because on the way they were shot by a combat helicopter, an anti-tank missile or a tank, and at least in some cases everyone in the vehicle was killed.”

As journalist Dan Cohen reported, the Israeli military killed Efrat Katz, age 68, as she was being taken from Kibbutz Nir Oz to Gaza on a cart pulled by a tractor on 7 October. Her daughter, Doron Katz-Asher, and two granddaughters, Raz, age 2, and Aviv, age 4, were also in the cart. 

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