2023-12-16 15:09:27
The Israeli hostages killed this past Friday by the Israeli Army Israel in an operation in Gaza City they carried a white flag and one of them ended up shot dead despite the fact that he was allegedly asking for help in Hebrew, as the Army’s Southern Command announced in its preliminary investigation, before pointing out that the soldiers involved did not respect the basic rules of armed conflict.
According to this information, reported by the ‘Times of Israel’ and the Walla news portal, the incident began when an Israeli soldier identified three “suspicious people” who were leaving a building in the Shejaiya neighborhood. All of them were bare-chested and one of them carried an improvised white flag.
The soldier immediately opened fire on the group shouting “Terrorists!” to notify his colleagues, believing that they were victims of a trap. Two of the hostages died instantly. The third, wounded, returned to the building and the soldiers began to hear cries of “Help!” in Hebrew. When the hostage left the building again, he was finally shot down by a second soldier.
The investigation preliminary considers that the two soldiers acted against combat protocols, according to an officer from the Army’s Southern Command, before pointing out “mitigating” circumstances such as the fact that the forces in Gaza have not seen Palestinian civilians for days and that the only people they see in civilian clothes are usually Hamas militiamen, who present themselves as unarmed while hidden comrades open fire on the military.
The Southern Command also points out that the military found, near the scene of an incident, graffiti on a building with the phrase “Help, three hostages”, but has avoided confirming if it had any relationship with what happened.
The initial investigation was completed this Saturday by the head of the Southern Command, General Yaron Finkelman, and the Chief of the General Staff of the Israeli Army, General Herzi Halevi, who have already presented this documentation to the families of the three deceased, Yotam Haim. , Samar Talalka and Alon Lulu Shamriz.
This incident takes place amid criticism received by the Israeli Army following another similar event, the shooting death of a former police officer during a Hamas attack in Jerusalem. Yuval Castleman, who had helped thwart the attack, died from gunshots fired by a soldier even though he was unarmed and identifying himself in Hebrew.
Meanwhile, the spokesperson for the call Hostage Families Forum, Haim Rubinstein has denounced on his X account that still “no one has explained how to prevent the next disaster.” “Why do families have to beg for something that should be taken for granted?” he said.
“We are playing Russian roulette,” lamented Ruby Chen, whose son Itay was taken hostage, during a media meeting in Tel Aviv. “We can no longer continue like this. Every day we don’t know when we will be the ones knocking on the door,” she said, in statements reported by the ‘Times of Israel’.
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