Red Crescent mourns its executed Gazan dead
Despite Israel’s banning of international journalists in Gaza, film and reports of its atrocities there have become almost commonplace. Unbearable images of dead and disfigured children are seared into our brains, apocalyptic scenes of destruction engraved on our memories. But there is something about the corpses of executed Red Crescent aid workers being disinterred with the crushed remnants of their ambulances that beggars belief. A crime so heinous that even those capable of the mass murder of whole families and the obliteration of entire communities were driven to bury the evidence of what they had done. And yet the Israelis still claim that no crime was committed, that they were only taking out terrorists.
We publish here three reactions to the discovery of the mass grave in Tal al-Sultan on March 30.
1) From the British Palestine Media Centre which publishes regular newsletters you can sign up for. Their bulletin below contains graphic links.
2) From Ahmed Moor writing in The Guardian: “I was born in Tal al-Sultan, where the Israeli troops executed the paramedics.”
3) From a Ha’aretz editorial: Israeli society will one day have to acknowledge atrocities committed in its name.
NWI
From the latest bulletin of the British Palestine Media Centre
Paramedic urges colleagues not to be discouraged after medics found in mass grave
On 1 April, in a video circulated on social media, one Palestine Red Crescent Society paramedic urged his colleagues to be defiant and not be ‘discouraged’, following the funeral of 15 Gaza rescue personnel, including medics, civil defence members and UN staff, killed by Israeli forces. Their bodies were recovered from a mass grave on 30 March in Rafah, southern occupied Gaza, after they went on a rescue mission on 23 March and lost communication.
On 30 March, OCHA reported from the scene: “Their ambulances were hit by Israeli forces. They were here to save lives. Instead, they ended up in a mass grave. These abhorrent acts require accountability.” The Gaza Civil Defence warned on 31 March that Israel will carry out further executions “aimed at emptying Gaza from the humanitarian service system”, urging the international community to take action beyond merely “witnessing” Israeli crimes.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies expressed outrage at the killing of first responders on duty, stating: “Even in the most complex conflict zones, there are rules. These rules of International Humanitarian Law could not be clearer – civilians must be protected; humanitarians must be protected.”
By Ahmed Moor in The Guardian
Israel executes unarmed Red Crescent paramedics with the west’s blessing
The Guardian reports that Israeli troops “killed 15 Palestinian paramedics and rescue workers one by one”. “One by one” is another way of saying one person after another, which is another way of saying premeditated murder. Fifteen times over.
Dr Bashar Murad, the director of health programs at the Palestine Red Crescent, told reporters that one of the men who was executed by the Israelis was on the phone with colleagues. The victim had been injured and was requesting help.
“A few minutes later, during the call, we heard the sound of Israeli soldiers arriving at the location, speaking in Hebrew. The conversation was about gathering the team, with statements like: ‘Gather them at the wall and bring some restraints to tie them.’ This indicated that a large number of the medical staff were still alive.”
The Israeli army, for its part, claimed that the area was “an active combat zone”. Soldiers fired on the ambulances because they were “advancing suspiciously toward IDF troops without headlights or emergency signals”.
No one believes the army’s lies at this point. They serve a purpose; like all shoddy propaganda or misinformation, they work to obscure what is heartrendingly clear: the destruction of all Palestinian life is a matter of policy for Israel’s army. The genocide is a policy matter in that country.
Isaac Herzog, Israel’s president, explained his country’s logic early on: “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible. It is not true this rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved. It is absolutely not true.”
For those who support its actions – most of the Israeli public, if polls are to be believed – the army misinformation is a signal that the leadership regards the executions as a non-issue. Carry on – Eurovision is just around the corner.
News of the executions come after an anonymous Israeli soldier wrote a column in the Israeli paper Haaretz entitled, “In Gaza, Almost Every IDF Platoon Keeps a Human Shield, a Sub-army of Palestinian Slaves.”
In it, he describes how widespread the practice of utilizing human shields is in the Israeli army:
“Today, almost every platoon keeps a [human shield] and no infantry force enters a house before a [human shield] clears it. This means there are four [human shields] in a company, twelve in a battalion, and at least 36 in a brigade. We operate a sub-army of slaves.”
I was born in Tal al-Sultan, where the Israeli troops executed the paramedics. I know how far the neighborhood is from the beach, and what the offshore wind feels like in the spring. I remember what the Philadelphi route – the barrier between Gaza and Egypt – looked like the last time the Israelis occupied it. Now, Tal al-Sultan is hell on earth, which is what an Israeli military leader promised to make it at the start of the genocide, 18 months ago.
When I first learned that Israeli men had zip-tied the paramedics before executing them, I thought of their terror – how I would feel in their place. I imagined them in constraints and lined up, facing the unbridled malice of their executioners. Did they think of their wives and children – the pain of being separated from them forever? Did they still their hearts – or find peace in their final moments?
Ashraf Abu Labda, Raed Al-Sharif, Mohammed Bahloul, Mohammed Hilieh, Mustafa Khafaja, Saleh Muammar, Rifaat Radwan and Ezzedine Shaat, and their colleagues whose names I haven’t been able to find were heroes. They spent their last hours on earth on a mission to render aid, to save people. Instead, we learn that they were in a race to the grave. And for what?
The murderers’ state of mind is hinted at by the aftermath of the crime. The Israeli soldiers dug a mass grave to hide their victims’ bodies. They crushed an ambulance under a bulldozer and attempted to bury that too. I wondered briefly if their crimes would haunt them, before I realized it didn’t matter.
The Israeli men who executed 15 unarmed paramedics got away with it. Whether the Israelis enjoyed themselves as they murdered their victims, or whether they will blitz their brains with drugs to forget doesn’t matter. Just as with the men who executed Hind Rajab, a five-year-old child, individually, they will have got away with it because their society offers them safe haven. All of Europe and the US is their playground.
Nor will global leaders intervene to end the mass murder which has been punctuated by this latest obscenity. Some of them – such as Emmanuel Macron, who called for a ceasefire, might appear to want to end the slaughter. After all, dead babies in incubators and paramedics in a mass grave are unpleasant garlands to wear. But 18 months in, they are too deeply implicated. Who can forget Ursula von der Leyen’s embrace of Netanyahu? Or Keir Starmer’s affirmation of Israel’s “right” to starve Palestinians in Gaza?
Today, those who are tasked with upholding international law have been co-opted by the Israeli leadership, whether they like it or not. The logic of gangland drug dealers and criminals – new members commit crimes to join, and are locked in – prevails.
So far from being complicit, US and European leaders are the authors of this latest atrocity by their Israeli colleagues in Gaza.
As for the rest of us, we can take note, and we can remember. There will be no Nuremberg for the Palestinians, but we can honor the memory of all those who fought to live. And who were exterminated for having lived at all.
-
Ahmed Moor is a Palestinian American writer and recipient of the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans
Ha’aretz editorial April 1, 2025
Israelis Will Have to Look in the Mirror and See the Gaza Atrocities Committed in Our Name
Terrible things happened last week on the road to Tel al-Sultan, a neighborhood in the Gazan town of Rafah. What we know so far is that a Red Crescent ambulance was summoned to the area to evacuate the casualties of an Israeli attack. The ambulance crew that arrived first asked that a second ambulance be sent. But the second ambulance never reached its destination, and the same was true of several rescue crews sent out after it.
For five days, there was no information about what had become of them. Only on Sunday did the army allow rescue crews from the United Nations and the Red Crescent to go there. They found a giant pile of sand in which parts of crushed, destroyed vehicles were visible. Ultimately, they found five ambulances in it, as well as a fire truck and UN vehicles. In another location to which someone in the Israel Defense Forces referred them, they dug and found the bodies of the 15 rescue workers – eight employees of the Palestinian Red Crescent, six employees of Gaza’s civil defense agency and one UN worker.
Palestinian sources said that the bodies were found outside their vehicles. Some had their hands or legs tied, and there were indications that they had been shot from close range. In at least one case, someone who was there confirmed to Haaretz that the body’s legs were tied. And if all this weren’t enough, while they were on their way to the site, UN workers saw hundreds of people fleeing the area under fire. They said they saw one woman shot in the back of her head, and a young man who tried to help her was also shot.
The IDF confirmed that the vehicles were shot at, but claimed it was because they looked suspicious. It also said the shooting killed a known operative of Hamas’ military wing along with eight other people active in either Hamas or Islamic Jihad.
But this IDF response is inadequate, especially given the army’s permissive rules of engagement in the Gaza Strip and the fact that officers in the field ignore international law and even Israeli law. The 15 rescue workers killed in Tel al-Sultan join the over 1,000 medical workers, rescue workers and civil defense personnel who have been killed since the war began.
To date, more than 50,000 people have been killed in Gaza, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry. On Wednesday, April 2, it will be one month since Israel closed all the border crossings to Gaza. Since then, no food or aid of any kind has entered. The threat of starvation and a humanitarian crisis is once again hovering over Gaza’s 2 million inhabitants. The IDF must provide clear answers regarding what happened to the ambulances and their crews. In addition, the chief of staff and other senior officers must make an effort to prevent harm to innocents and medical workers and reduce the suffering of the innocent people in Gaza.
Even though this government would like the war to continue forever, it will end someday. And on that day, the IDF and Israeli society as a whole will be forced to look in the mirror and deal with the knowledge that these atrocities were committed in our name.
The above article is Haaretz’s lead editorial, as published in the Hebrew and English newspapers in Israel.
Clinging on to hope the murderers WILL be held accountable within their lifetimes … Hope is a necessity. Without it there’s no energy to work for justice and for whatever (inadequate) reparations are possible to these victims and to the Palestinians.
So in this spirit of desperately looking around for hope (anywhere), where might it be found?
America has been Israel’s greatest and possibly only genuinely committed friend. Trump’s antics put the USA and most of the world into an economic and political nightmare. They make effective American support for Israel less likely and they end the West’s consent for US leadership. Which means justice for the Palestinians is slightly more likely.
Israeli revolts against their government seem to be deepening. There’s resistance to continuing with the Gaza war from the public and from IDF reservists (to the extent that some units are 40% below strength).
Surely the tide will turn?
Think USS Liberty…
That particular episode says it all.
When will those who were responsible for these atrocities be held accountable under international law? Where is the outrage by World leaders repeating calls for justice loud and clear, now and from the beginning of the struggle for freedom for the people of Gaza.we need justice to prevail,all victims of wrong doings must not be failed,we must not forget,the truth must win.