Troops admitted Palestinian men were shot regardless of age, whether they were armed and while holding white flags.<\/p>\n
Israeli soldiers said the army ordered troops to kill any man they encountered in Gaza during the genocide that began in 2023.
\n\u201cA man, no matter what age, don\u2019t play games with it; kill immediately,\u201d one soldier said, describing the orders they received.
\n\u201cThey even told us that if it\u2019s a woman or a child, use your judgment, because things happen,\u201d he added, saying similar instructions were given regarding donkeys.
\nHis testimony was given to Iris Haim, the mother of an Israeli captive killed by Israeli forces in Gaza, and aired on Channel 13\u2019s investigative programme on Thursday.
\nIn December 2023, Israeli soldiers killed three Israeli captives in Gaza City\u2019s Shujaiya neighbourhood despite them being shirtless, waving a white flag and posing no apparent threat.
\nThe incident sparked widespread criticism of Israel\u2019s rules of engagement in Gaza, which have led to indiscriminate killings of Palestinians near homes, aid sites and “buffer zones”.
\nIn the Channel 13 investigation, the soldier, who spoke anonymously, said he was the one who shot one of the captives during the incident.
\nDescribing his mindset at the time, he said: \u201cI fire 500 bullets a minute. I blow things up. I don\u2019t care. I\u2019m here to kill terrorists.\u201d
\nRecalling the shooting, the soldier said: \u201cThere are three terrorists, I\u2019ll kill them. Then I realised two had already been killed, and one had escaped.\u201d
\nThat captive, he later understood, was Yotam Haim.
\nAccording to the investigation, a commander instructed Yotam to approach the building where Israeli troops were stationed. As he approached, soldiers opened fire.
\n\u201cI fired one bullet, and he didn\u2019t die,\u201d the soldier told Yotam’s mother. He said his weapon then jammed before another soldier told him: \u201cLet me finish it.\u201d
\nIris, who has remained in contact with Israeli military officials since the incident, told Channel 13 that soldiers had effectively been ordered to \u201ckill every person walking on two legs\u201d.
\n\u201cIf a terrorist moves toward me, I try to kill him. I do not try to arrest him,\u201d the brigade commander involved in the incident told her.
\nAsked whether unarmed individuals were also shot, the commander replied: \u201cOf course, we need to kill him – yes, even if he is completely unarmed.\u201d
\nAnother soldier told Channel 13 that troops were taught to view anyone as a potential threat.
\n\u201cEven an old man can blow himself up with an explosive device. The protocol was to shoot them,\u201d he said, adding that \u201cthere was a situation where a person came out with a white flag and was shot on the spot\u201d.
\nAccording to the soldier, the commander who shot the captives said it was impossible to distinguish between Hamas fighters and civilians in Gaza.
\nThe commander was later promoted by the Israeli army’s chief of staff, Eyal Zamir, with the military describing him as \u201can outstanding officer\u201d.<\/p>\n
Military \u2018cover-up\u2019
\nThe Channel 13 report said the soldiers\u2019 testimonies contradicted the findings of the army\u2019s official investigation.
\nAccording to the soldiers, no order to halt fire was given at the time, contradicting the army\u2019s claim that all troops heard the command.
\nRaviv Drucker, the journalist who conducted the investigation, said the captives’ families approached the army “to receive a real investigation, and not what was presented to them, which in their eyes, and in mine as well, was a cover-up and a whitewash”.
\nThe investigation also found that five days before the captives were shot dead, Israeli forces fired a missile at a building in northern Gaza where the captives hid after troops exchanged fire with Hamas fighters nearby.
\nThe captives survived and later moved between houses in Shujaiya, hanging signs asking for help, but the report said military intelligence ignored information from troops on the ground.
\nOf the 251 people taken captive during the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel in 2023, 85 were either taken dead or later died in various, often contested circumstances during captivity.
\nAlthough Israel denies or refuses to comment on accusations that its attacks have killed captives, several reports indicate that military actions have directly or indirectly harmed Israelis held in Gaza.
\nIsraeli newspaper Maariv reported in October 2025 that, according to Israeli officials, many captives were killed by Israeli attacks, especially in the early stages of the war.
\nOn 7 October 2023, the Israeli army invoked the Hannibal Directive, a controversial military protocol designed to prevent the abduction of Israelis by firing on captives even at the risk of harming them.
\nIsraeli forces have killed more than 72,700 Palestinians in Gaza during the two-year genocide, including 850 since a ceasefire was declared in October 2025. Thousands more remain missing and are believed to be buried beneath the rubble.
\n#GazaWarCrimes #IsraeliMilitaryOrders #KillOnSight #GazaGenocide #PalestinianLives #WarCrimesInvestigation #HumanRightsViolations #ShujaiyaIncident #HannibalDirective #MiddleEastConflict<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Troops admitted Palestinian men were shot regardless of age, whether they were armed and while holding white flags. Israeli soldiers said the army ordered troops to kill any man they encountered in Gaza during the genocide that began in 2023. \u201cA man, no matter what age, don\u2019t play games with it; kill immediately,\u201d one soldier […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23632,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle-east-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fajr.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fajr.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fajr.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fajr.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fajr.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23631"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fajr.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23631\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fajr.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/23632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fajr.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fajr.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fajr.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}