Israeli soldiers have described a free-for-all in Gaza and a breakdown in norms and legal constraints, with civilians killed at the whim of individual officers, according to testimony in a TV documentary.
“If you want to shoot without restraint, you can,” Daniel, the commander of an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) tank unit, says in Breaking Ranks: Inside Israel’s War, due to be broadcast in the UK on ITV on Monday evening.
Some of the IDF soldiers who talked to the programme requested anonymity while others spoke on the record. All pointed to the evaporation of the official code of conduct concerning civilians.
The soldiers who agreed to talk confirmed the IDF’s routine use of human shields, contradicting official denials, and gave details of Israeli troops opening fire unprovoked on civilians racing to reach food handouts at the militarised distribution points set up by the US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).
“In basic training for the army, we all chanted ‘means, intent and ability’,” Capt Yotam Vilk, an armoured corps officer, says in reference to the official IDF training guidelines stipulating that a soldier can fire only if the target has the means, shows intent and has the ability to cause harm.
“There’s no such thing as ‘means, intent and ability’ in Gaza,” Vilk says. “No soldier ever mentions ‘means, intent, and ability’. It’s just: a suspicion of walking where it’s not allowed. A man aged between 20 and 40.”
Another soldier, identified in the programme only as Eli, says: “Life and death isn’t determined by procedures or opening fire regulations. It’s the conscience of the commander on the ground that decides.”
In those circumstances, the designation of who is an enemy or terrorist becomes arbitrary, Eli says in the documentary. “If they’re walking too fast, they’re suspicious. If they’re walking too slow, they’re suspicious. They’re plotting something. If three men are walking and one of them lags behind, it’s a two-to-one infantry formation – it’s a military formation,” he says.
Eli describes an incident in which a senior officer ordered a tank to demolish a building in an area designated as safe for civilians. “A man was standing on the roof, hanging laundry, and the officer decided that he was a spotter. He’s not a spotter. He’s hanging his laundry. You can see that he’s hanging laundry,” he says.
“Now, it’s not as if this man had binoculars or weapons. The closest military force was 600-700 metres away. So unless he had eagle eyes, how could he possibly be a spotter? And the tank fired a shell. The building half collapsed. And the result was many dead and wounded.”
Guardian analysis in August of the IDF’s intelligence data showed that by the reckoning of Israeli military officials, 83% of those killed in Gaza were civilians, a historic high for modern conflicts, though the IDF disputed the analysis. More than 69,000 Palestinians have been killed since the war started and more continue to die despite a ceasefire that began a month ago.
In a written statement, the IDF said: “The IDF remains committed to the rule of law and continues to operate in accordance with its legal and ethical obligations, despite the unprecedented operational complexity posed by Hamas’s systematic embedding within civilian infrastructure and its use of civilian sites for military purposes.”
Some of the soldiers interviewed in the Breaking Ranks programme said they were influenced by the language of Israeli politicians and religious leaders suggesting that after the Hamas attack of 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals were killed, every Palestinian was a legitimate target.
A UN commission concluded in September that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza. On the question of intent, it pointed to incitement from Israeli leaders such as the president, Isaac Herzog, who shortly after the 7 October attack said: “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible. It is not true, this rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved, it’s absolutely not true.”
Daniel, the tank unit commander, says in the documentary that the rhetoric declaring there was no such thing as an innocent in Gaza seeped down into army ranks. “You hear that all the time, so you start to believe it,” he says.
A spokesperson for Herzog said the Israeli president had been an outspoken voice for humanitarian causes and the protection of innocents.
The programme also provides evidence that such views have been propagated by some rabbis in the ranks. “One time, the brigade rabbi sat down next to me and spent half an hour explaining why we must be just like they were on October 7. That we must take revenge on all of them, including civilians. That we shouldn’t discriminate, and that this is the only way,” says Maj Neta Caspin.
Rabbi Avraham Zarbiv, an extremist Jewish cleric who served more than 500 days in Gaza, says in the programme: “Everything there is one big terrorist infrastructure.”
Zarbiv has not only given religious legitimacy to the mass demolition of Palestinian neighbourhoods but drove military bulldozers himself and claims credit for pioneering a tactic that had been adopted by the IDF as a whole, pointing to the mass purchase of armoured bulldozers.
“The IDF invests hundreds of thousands of shekels to destroy the Gaza Strip. We changed the conduct of an entire army,” Zarbiv says in the programme.
The soldiers giving their accounts in Breaking Ranks also confirm consistent reports throughout the two-year conflict of the use of Palestinian civilians as human shields, a practice informally known as the “mosquito protocol”.
“You send the human shield underground. As he walks down the tunnel, he maps it all for you. He has an iPhone in his vest and as he walks it sends back GPS information,” says Daniel, the tank commander, says in the documentary. “The commanders saw how it works. And the practice spread like wildfire. After about a week, every company was operating its own mosquito.”
The IDF said in a statement that “the IDF prohibits the use of civilians as human shields or coercing them in any way to participate in military operations. These orders have been routinely emphasized to forces throughout the war.”
“Allegations of misconduct are thoroughly examined, and when identifying details are provided, the matter is investigated in depth,” the IDF said. “In several cases, investigations have been opened by the Military Police Criminal Investigation Division (MPCID) following suspicions involving Palestinians in military missions. These investigations remain ongoing.”
The makers of Breaking Ranks spoke to a contractor identified only as Sam who worked at food distribution sites run by the GHF, who says he witnessed the IDF killing unarmed civilians.
He describes an incident at one distribution site where two young men were running in the general rush to get aid. “You could just see two soldiers run after them. They drop on to their knees and they just take two shots, and you could just see … two heads snap backwards and just drop,” Sam says. He recounts another incident in which an IDF tank in the vicinity of one of the distribution sites destroys “a normal car … just four normal people sat inside it”.
According to UN figures, at least 944 Palestinian civilians were killed while seeking aid in the vicinity of GHF aid sites. GHF and the IDF have denied targeting civilians seeking food at aid distribution sites, and the IDF has denied the allegations of systematic war crimes, insisting it operates in accordance with international law and takes measures to minimise civilian harm in its operations against Hamas. It was approached for comment on the allegations made in the Breaking Ranks documentary. Internal investigations of incidents involving the killing of civilians have led to virtually no disciplinary or legal accountability.
Breaking Ranks shows the mental strain on at least some of the soldiers in Gaza.
“I feel like they’ve destroyed all my pride in being an Israeli – in being an IDF officer,” Daniel says in the programme. “All that’s left is shame.”
Breaking Ranks: Inside Israel’s War will air in the UK at 10.45pm on Monday 10 November on ITV1, ITVX, STV and STV Player
