By Chris Hayes
This is an adapted excerpt from the Dec. 19 episode of “All In with Chris Hayes.”
Despite growing evidence of grave human rights abuses in Israel’s war in Gaza, documented by multiple human rights groups and Israeli reporters, President Joe Biden’s administration has been unwavering in its support for Israel. As the Biden White House approaches its final days, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz released a new report about the Israel Defense Forces’ alleged activities in Gaza.
The report, which is based on anonymous testimony from active-duty Israeli soldiers, career officers and reservists, centers on the military’s operations in what’s called the Netzarim Corridor, a sort of no-man’s zone that splits the Gaza Strip into two pieces, north and south.
According to an analysis by Hebrew University’s Adi Ben-Nun, a geographic data specialist, at least 750 buildings have been destroyed in the area, in what appears to be a systematic effort to create a “buffer zone.”
These are Israeli veterans offering harrowing accounts to an Israeli newspaper of indiscriminate killing and the routine classification of civilian casualties as terrorists.
Multiple Israeli officers now tell Haaretz that it’s more than just an exclusion zone. Those officers alleged it’s a “kill zone” where commanders have given their reserve soldiers free rein to kill any Palestinian who enters, even children.
“The forces in the field call it ‘the line of dead bodies,’” a commander alleged to the paper. “After shootings, bodies are not collected, attracting packs of dogs who come to eat them. In Gaza, people know that wherever you see these dogs, that’s where you must not go.”
Another recently discharged officer from the same unit told Haaretz the brutality was systematic. “We’re killing civilians there who are then counted as terrorists,” he alleged. “The IDF spokesperson’s announcements about casualty numbers have turned this into a competition between units. If Division 99 kills 150 [people], the next unit aims for 200.”
In a statement to Haaretz, the Israeli military acknowledged that the army “has been operating for several months in the [Netzarim] corridor area in central Gaza” and “carrying out intensive operational activity.”
It told the paper all activities and operations in the Gaza Strip, including along the Netzarim Corridor, are approved “by the highest levels of command.”
“All attacks in the area are carried out according to the mandatory procedures, including targets that are attacked at short notice due to operational circumstances,” the IDF continued.
The IDF also said that its “strikes are targeted solely at military objectives, and before the strikes are carried out, many steps are taken to minimize harm to noncombatants.”
But again, these are Israeli veterans of the Gaza war offering harrowing accounts to an Israeli newspaper of alleged indiscriminate killing and the routine classification of civilian casualties as terrorists.
Now, it’s possible the soldiers are not telling the truth, but their account squares with other evidence we’ve seen of alleged abuses by Israel in Gaza, in a war with no end in sight, steadfast U.S. support and no plan whatsoever for what might come after.
Allison Detzel contributed.
Chris Hayes hosts “All In with Chris Hayes” at 8 p.m. ET Monday through Friday on MSNBC. He is the editor-at-large at The Nation. A former fellow at Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics, Hayes was a Bernard Schwartz Fellow at the New America Foundation. His latest book is “A Colony in a Nation” (W. W. Norton).
