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Sydney Morning Herald
4 hours ago
- Health
- Sydney Morning Herald
Israeli soldiers ordered to fire on Palestinians queuing for aid, say whistleblowers
Over the period in question, the Hamas-run health ministry says 549 people have been killed and 4000 have been wounded trying to pick up aid. 'A killing field' One soldier told Haaretz: 'It's a killing field. 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 centre 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 metres away, and sometimes we just charge at them from close range. But there's no danger to the forces.' Loading 'I'm not aware of a single instance of return fire. There's no enemy, no weapons,' they said. The aid distribution points at which the majority of the killings occurred are run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a controversial joint venture set up by Israel and the US to bypass the UN, which Israel has accused of working with Hamas. It now operates four 'rapid distribution' sites in Gaza – three in southern Gaza and one in the centre. They are staffed by private US and Palestinian workers but secured by the IDF from a distance of several hundred metres and only open for an hour at a time – a tactic that attracts crowds of thousands, sometimes tens of thousands, of people. An IDF officer told Haaretz that the military's security perimeters around distribution points included tanks, snipers and mortars, and they were designed to protect those present and ensure aid distribution could 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, 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.' 'There's no danger' According to the officers and soldiers who spoke to Haaretz, the IDF fires at people who arrive before opening hours to prevent them from approaching, or again after the centres close, to disperse them. One soldier said: 'We open fire early in the morning if someone tries to get in line from a few hundred metres away, and sometimes we just charge at them from close range. But there's no danger to the forces.' 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, reported Haaretz. He has previously attracted criticism in the Israeli media and was reported to have once told his troops: 'There are no innocents in Gaza'. Brigadier General Vach is also suspected of ordering the destruction of a hospital in Gaza without authorisation earlier this year, according to Israeli media. 'These are malicious falsehoods designed to defame the IDF, the most moral military in the world. IDF soldiers receive clear orders to avoid harming civilians' Statement from Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Israel Katz However, Haaretz added: '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.' Nir Hasson, an investigative journalist who researched and wrote the story, with colleagues Yaniv Kubovich and Bar Peleg, said that while the 'big majority' of Israelis still supported the war in Gaza, 'cracks in the mainstream consensus' were starting to appear. He said the soldiers and officers the newspaper had interviewed were motivated to speak partly for 'humanitarian' reasons but also because they feared that 'professionalism' and 'ethics' in parts of the IDF were breaking down. 'They say it goes against the values of the IDF and the state of Israel, and they will add that it is unbelievable that we are killing starving people who only want to get to the food,' Hasson said. 'Falsehoods' Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel Katz, the Israeli defence minister, said the Haaretz report was 'blood libel' designed to discredit the Israeli military. 'The State of Israel absolutely rejects the contemptible blood libels that have been published in the Haaretz newspaper,' they said in a joint statement. Loading They added: 'These are malicious falsehoods designed to defame the IDF, the most moral military in the world. IDF soldiers receive clear orders to avoid harming innocent civilians, and they act accordingly.' In a statement, the IDF denied that its soldiers had been ordered to shoot at Palestinians but said it was investigating. A spokesman said: 'The IDF did not instruct the forces to deliberately shoot at civilians, including those approaching the distribution centres. To be clear, IDF directives prohibit deliberate attacks on civilians.' They added that 'systematic learning processes aimed at improving the operational response in the area and minimising, as much as possible, potential friction between the civilian population and IDF forces' were taking place.
The Age
4 hours ago
- Health
- The Age
Israeli soldiers ordered to fire on Palestinians queuing for aid, say whistleblowers
Over the period in question, the Hamas-run health ministry says 549 people have been killed and 4000 have been wounded trying to pick up aid. 'A killing field' One soldier told Haaretz: 'It's a killing field. 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 centre 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 metres away, and sometimes we just charge at them from close range. But there's no danger to the forces.' Loading 'I'm not aware of a single instance of return fire. There's no enemy, no weapons,' they said. The aid distribution points at which the majority of the killings occurred are run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a controversial joint venture set up by Israel and the US to bypass the UN, which Israel has accused of working with Hamas. It now operates four 'rapid distribution' sites in Gaza – three in southern Gaza and one in the centre. They are staffed by private US and Palestinian workers but secured by the IDF from a distance of several hundred metres and only open for an hour at a time – a tactic that attracts crowds of thousands, sometimes tens of thousands, of people. An IDF officer told Haaretz that the military's security perimeters around distribution points included tanks, snipers and mortars, and they were designed to protect those present and ensure aid distribution could 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, 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.' 'There's no danger' According to the officers and soldiers who spoke to Haaretz, the IDF fires at people who arrive before opening hours to prevent them from approaching, or again after the centres close, to disperse them. One soldier said: 'We open fire early in the morning if someone tries to get in line from a few hundred metres away, and sometimes we just charge at them from close range. But there's no danger to the forces.' 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, reported Haaretz. He has previously attracted criticism in the Israeli media and was reported to have once told his troops: 'There are no innocents in Gaza'. Brigadier General Vach is also suspected of ordering the destruction of a hospital in Gaza without authorisation earlier this year, according to Israeli media. 'These are malicious falsehoods designed to defame the IDF, the most moral military in the world. IDF soldiers receive clear orders to avoid harming civilians' Statement from Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Israel Katz However, Haaretz added: '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.' Nir Hasson, an investigative journalist who researched and wrote the story, with colleagues Yaniv Kubovich and Bar Peleg, said that while the 'big majority' of Israelis still supported the war in Gaza, 'cracks in the mainstream consensus' were starting to appear. He said the soldiers and officers the newspaper had interviewed were motivated to speak partly for 'humanitarian' reasons but also because they feared that 'professionalism' and 'ethics' in parts of the IDF were breaking down. 'They say it goes against the values of the IDF and the state of Israel, and they will add that it is unbelievable that we are killing starving people who only want to get to the food,' Hasson said. 'Falsehoods' Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel Katz, the Israeli defence minister, said the Haaretz report was 'blood libel' designed to discredit the Israeli military. 'The State of Israel absolutely rejects the contemptible blood libels that have been published in the Haaretz newspaper,' they said in a joint statement. Loading They added: 'These are malicious falsehoods designed to defame the IDF, the most moral military in the world. IDF soldiers receive clear orders to avoid harming innocent civilians, and they act accordingly.' In a statement, the IDF denied that its soldiers had been ordered to shoot at Palestinians but said it was investigating. A spokesman said: 'The IDF did not instruct the forces to deliberately shoot at civilians, including those approaching the distribution centres. To be clear, IDF directives prohibit deliberate attacks on civilians.' They added that 'systematic learning processes aimed at improving the operational response in the area and minimising, as much as possible, potential friction between the civilian population and IDF forces' were taking place.
Business Recorder
9 hours ago
- Politics
- Business Recorder
UN chief says Gazans seeking food must not face ‘death sentence'
UNITED NATIONS: UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Friday that hungry people in Gaza seeking food must not face a 'death sentence' as controversy swirls around a new US- and Israeli-backed distribution system. 'People are being killed simply trying to feed themselves and their families. The search for food must never be a death sentence,' Guterres told reporters, without explicitly naming the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, whose operations have led to near-daily reports of Israeli forces firing on people desperate to get food. 'Any operation that channels desperate civilians into militarized zones is inherently unsafe. It is killing people,' Guterres added. The health ministry in the Hamas-run territory says that since late May, more than 500 people have been killed near aid centers while seeking scarce supplies. GHF has denied that fatal shootings have occurred in the immediate vicinity of its aid points. Starting in March, Israel blocked deliveries of food and other crucial supplies into Gaza for more than two months, leading to warnings of that the entire population of the occupied Palestinian territory is at risk of famine. UN condemns 'weaponisation of food' in Gaza The United Nations says Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza is illegal under international law. The densely populated Gaza Strip has been largely flattened by Israeli bombing since the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel by Hamas. Israel began allowing food supplies to trickle in at the end of May, using GHF – backed by armed US contractors, with Israeli troops on the perimeter – to run operations. 'The problem of the distribution of humanitarian aid must be solved. There is no need to reinvent the wheel with dangerous schemes,' Guterres said. The UN and major aid groups have refused to work with the GHF, citing concerns it serves Israeli military goals and that it violates basic humanitarian principles by working with one of the sides in a conflict. 'We have the solution – a detailed plan grounded in the humanitarian principles of humanity, impartiality, neutrality, and independence. We have the supplies. We have the experience. Our plan is guided by what people need,' said the UN chief. He said a 'handful' of medical crossed into Gaza this week, the first shipment in months. 'A trickle of aid is not enough. What's needed now is a surge - the trickle must become an ocean,' said Guterres. Guterres said that as the world focuses on the conflict between Israel and Iran, the suffering of Palestinians must not be 'pushed into the shadows,' calling for 'political courage for a ceasefire.'
Yahoo
10 hours ago
- Health
- Yahoo
U.S. to give $30M to Gaza aid group called a "death trap" by U.N.
The U.S. State Department announced Thursday that the Trump administration had approved $30 million in funding for the controversial, opaquely run private food distribution organization known as the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which has been criticized by a United Nations agency as "a death trap" for hungry Palestinians in the war-torn enclave. It is the first U.S. government funding for the GHF confirmed by the Trump administration. Since it began operating in May, the GHF says it has distributed more than 46 million meals to Gazans, but its record has been marred by almost daily reports of civilians being killed trying to access its four "distribution hubs." The Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health said that as of Wednesday, 549 people had been killed near GHF hubs trying to access aid, and more than 4,066 others wounded. The United Nations has reported a lower death toll, saying that 410 people have been killed near the aid hubs. The GHF dismisses the Ministry of Health's figures as disinformation, and it says daily that nobody has been killed inside any of its hubs, while acknowledging incidents of violence outside the sites and referring to Israel's military for further information. "We call on other countries to also support the GHF," State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott said during a media briefing on Thursday, adding that the U.S. support, "is simply the latest iteration of President Trump's and Secretary Rubio's pursuit of peace in the region." Pigott said he couldn't say whether the U.S. funds had already been handed over to the GHF. Asked about the pattern of near-daily reports of fatal shootings by Israeli forces around GHF distribution hubs, which the Israeli military says it is investigating, Pigott referred the reporter to the IDF to comment on its investigations, and added: "Many of these reports are based on Hamas propaganda." Given his emphasis on the Trump administration's priority being the provision of more aid in Gaza, Pigott was asked repeatedly whether the U.S. would push Israel to allow other, well established humanitarian organizations to operate more freely inside the strip. He responded to that question multiple times by repeating his call for other countries to support the GHF. After being pushed by multiple reporters on the accusations that the GHF hubs are "traps" for Israeli forces to fire on civilians, Pigott said it was "important to realize that Hamas bears sole responsibility for this conflict." Other humanitarian organizations, including U.N. agencies, have refused to work with the GHF, saying it operates in a way that dehumanizes Palestinians by forcing them to venture long distances for food, and citing repeated instances of violence around its distribution sites. "Now is the time for unity and collaboration," the GHF said Friday. "We look forward to other aid and humanitarian organizations joining us so we can feed even more Gazans, together." CBS News has requested in-person, on-camera interviews with GHF representatives repeatedly since the organization's creation was announced. GHF has yet to grant an interview. Criticism of GFH mounts, as it's labelled "a death trap" and a "U.S. proxy" The head of the U.N.'s agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, called the operation "a death trap" in a scathing statement earlier this week. There were new reports Friday of Palestinians being fired on near a GHF hub in southern Gaza, near the city of Rafah. An amateur video shared online by local Palestinian news organizations — which CBS News was not immediately able to independently verify — showed people laying on the ground for cover as bullets can be heard whizzing past. The video was shared with the caption: "We are besieged by hunger from behind and death from ahead." The international charity Doctors Without Borders added its voice on Friday to the list of non-governmental organizations decrying the GHF, calling the group a "Israeli-U.S. proxy" and a "slaughter masquerading as humanitarian aid." "The four distribution sites, all located in areas under the full control of Israeli forces after people had been forcibly displaced from there, are the size of football fields surrounded by watch points, mounds of earth and barbed wire. The fenced entrance gives only one access point in or out," MSF emergency coordinator in Gaza, Aitor Zabalgogeazkoa, said in the statement. "If people arrive early and approach the checkpoints, they get shot. If they arrive on time, but there is an overflow and they jump over the mounds and the wires, they get shot. If they arrive late, they shouldn't be there because it is an 'evacuated zone', they get shot." "It's unfortunate that MSF has joined the misinformation smear campaign by the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry," a GHF spokesperson told CBS News on Friday. "Many of these alleged incidents were falsely linked to GHF sites when in fact they occurred near other humanitarian convoys or distribution locations." The spokesperson did not reply to a CBS News' question about whether the GHF was created or operates in direct conjunction with the U.S. or Israeli governments. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz added further weight to the accusations about violence around GHF hubs in an article published Friday, saying it had been told by some anonymous IDF personnel of a deliberate policy to shoot at crowds near GHF distribution sites. One soldier was quoted as saying he had been deployed near a GHF hub, and he described the situation as "a killing field." "Where I was stationed, between one and five people were killed every day," the soldier told Haaretz, which has long been critical of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government. "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." "We strongly reject the accusation raised in the article," the IDF told CBS News in a statement on Friday. "The IDF did not instruct the forces to deliberately shoot at civilians, including those approaching the distribution centers. To be clear, IDF directives prohibit deliberate attacks on civilians." The military said it was "operating to allow and facilitate the distribution of humanitarian aid by the American 'Gaza Humanitarian Foundation' (GHF), and to secure the routes leading to the distribution centers, in order to allow the aid to reach the civilians rather than Hamas." The IDF added that its forces were "conducting systematic learning processes aimed at improving the operational response in the area (around GHF hubs) and minimizing, as much as possible, potential friction between the civilian population and IDF forces. As part of this effort, IDF forces have recently taken steps to reorganize the area, including the installation of new fencing, signage, the opening of additional routes, and more." It said recent reports of civilians being harmed approaching GHF hubs were "being examined by the relevant IDF authorities" and that "any allegation of a deviation from the law or IDF directives will be thoroughly examined, and further action will be taken as necessary." In a joint statement on Friday, Netanyahu and Israel's Defense Minister Israel Katz also said the "State of Israel strongly rejects the despicable blood libels published in the newspaper 'Haaretz.'" In response to the Haaretz article, a GHF spokesperson told CBS News on Friday that there had "been no incidents or fatalities at or in the immediate vicinity of any of our distribution sites. However, IDF is tasked with providing safe passage for aid-seekers to all humanitarian organizations operating in Gaza, including GHF. GHF is not aware of any of these incidents but these allegations are too grave to ignore and we therefore call on Israel to investigate them and transparently publish the results in a timely manner." GHF boss dismisses criticism as "disinformation" GHF executive chairman Johnnie Moore, an evangelical preacher twice appointed by President Trump as a White House adviser on religious freedoms, told Britain's Sky News on Friday that there was a "disinformation campaign" that is "meant to shut down our efforts" in the Gaza Strip. "Hamas is intentionally harming people for the purpose of defaming what we're doing," he said, adding that the "U.S. endorsement of the effort is Exhibit A that it is actually working, despite the disinformation campaign that is very, very deliberate, meant to shut down our efforts." Moore suggested that violence could not be avoided around its hubs in Gaza, as the small, densely populated Palestinian territory remains an active warzone. Sky cited a U.N. figure of 410 people killed near aid hubs in Gaza, slightly lower than the figure provided by the health ministry. In a social media post after his interview with Sky, Moore said that "some associated with the UN (& others) are knowingly sharing info that cannot be independently verified, & they're doing so solely for political purposes… while claiming impartiality. GHF is not political. It just has one mission: feed Gaza." "The key piece of disinformation is, every single day, some figure comes out from the Gaza Health Ministry. It's normally shared with a network like Al-Jazeera, and it sort of like, goes around the world," he told Sky, when asked specifically what disinformation he was referring to. Moore drew a distinction between the GHF's operations and those of the Israel military. "The difference between, you know, what happens when the IDF is involved in an incident — and we're not denying that there have been those incidents, there have been those incidents — but we're able to talk to the IDF, the IDF does an investigation, and the IDF is a professionalized military," Moore said. "Hamas is intentionally harming people for the purpose of defaming what we're doing." The IDF has issued repeated statements after reports of troops firing on unarmed Palestinian civilians seeking aid, saying it has launched investigations. The results of any investigations related to incidents near GHF hubs have yet to be made public by the IDF. "They go to get food, but end up being killed." A number of Palestinians have told CBS News' team in Gaza about experiences of violence near GHF distribution sites. In early June, the family of Reem Akhras, a mother of eight, told CBS News' team in Gaza at her funeral that she was shot on her way to retrieve an aid parcel from a GHF hub. "You went to get us food, Mom," Akhras' young daughter cried, sobbing over her body. "We will never forgive them." "They go to get food, but end up being killed," a man at Gaza's Nasser Hospital — where many of the injured were taken after an incident near a GHF hub in southern Gaza this week — told CBS News. "They come with empty bags, and the American security company along with the Israeli army, they shoot these young men." The man said 30 people were killed on that day trying to reach the GHF hub. "I tell everybody: Don't go. I send a message to all those young men: Do not go. Families should not send their children. Those who go will die. It's a trap. Stop going there. And if your son insists on going, break his legs. Do not go there." Another man at the hospital told CBS News that people have died "in every family. They were just going to get food. They are hungry, grieving. They've got nothing to eat. Nothing to drink. There's no life. No safety. There's none of that in Gaza." The man said he wished the rest of the world could understand the suffering of people in Gaza. "Young men in their prime are dying. What brings these youngsters to go to the aid sites? It's hunger. The fire of hunger has ravaged the people." GHF declines to reveal other backers Asked why the GHF was not being more transparent about its funding, organization and management, Moore declined to give further information about those matters, instead noting the group's daily press release to news organizations that lists the number of meals it says it has distributed and other "operations on the ground." The GHF has been surrounded by controversy from the moment it commenced operations in mid-May. Just days after it launched its operation in Gaza, the group's first executive director, American Jake Wood, announced his resignation, saying it had become clear the foundation would not be allowed to operate independently. GHF then said it was winding down its operation in Switzerland after Swiss authorities said it was breaching rules for foundations registered in that country. GHF told CBS News at the time that henceforth, its only operations would be based out of the United States. "We're saying everything we can, every single day, and by the way, we promise to do more of that," Moore said on Friday when pressed by Sky News about where the organization's funding comes from and what other entities it works with directly. "One of the reasons we haven't released some pieces of information is because of this amazing, amazing opposition to any effort whatsoever to do this differently." Moore repeated the GHF's insistence that only its method of aid distribution in Gaza was viable, as the only other way meant that "virtually every piece of aid that comes into the Gaza Strip is immediately taken by armed gangs, by Hamas." Other aid agencies, and officials in the Hamas-run enclave, acknowledge that looting does happen, but they refute claims of large-scale aid theft or diversion, saying the primary challenge to distributing food in Gaza is Israeli forces not permitting those operations. On June 11, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee was asked by CBS News' partner network BBC News if the State Department was funding GHF. "It is not currently being funded largely by the U.S.," he said at the time. "There are other countries, there are NGOs, there are humanitarian funds, and there are private individuals who have funded it, all of which have requested to remain anonymous. I think they don't want to become the targets of the hate that has befitted those who have tried to do something positive in what is a very difficult situation." Hegseth slams Iran strikes initial assessment that contradicts Trump's take Young Cuban girl asks Trump to lift travel ban stopping her from joining mom in U.S. Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez set for star-studded wedding in Venice
Channel 4
10 hours ago
- Politics
- Channel 4
Israel denies that IDF soldiers were ordered to shoot at aid site
The UN Secretary General has said the Israeli-US aid operation in Gaza is 'killing people' and is 'inherently unsafe'. More than 500 Palestinians have been killed near food distribution sites in the past month, according to the Hamas-run government. This comes amid claims in the Israeli media that IDF soldiers are being ordered to fire on unarmed civilians seeking food. Tonight Israel's Prime Minister angrily denied the allegations. Reporter: Alex Thomson Producer: Ed Gove Camera/Editor: Stuart Webb
