Hebrew media exposes horrifying war crime against 80-year-old Palestinian

Hebrew news outlet HaMakom revealed the details of a harrowing war crime committed by a senior officer in the “Israeli” army Nahal Brigade in the Zaytoun neighbourhood in Gaza City, in which the officer tied an explosive belt to the neck of an elderly Gazan and used him as a human shield.

The report reveals that the senior officer, who was not named, served in the 50th battalion in the Nahal Brigade –one of the main infantry units of the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF)– and forced an 80-year-old man to sweep for explosives in houses in the Zaytoun Neighbourhood.

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The elderly man forcibly served as a human shield for hours, after which the soldiers murdered him and his wife in cold blood.

The incident occurred in May, during an operation in an area in Gaza City.

“Israeli” soldiers who spoke to HaMakom said they first found the man and his wife in one of the houses they were clearing.

"They said they had nowhere to run, and that they couldn't evacuate to Khan Yunis. The man was walking with a cane and they said they simply wouldn't be able to walk all the way there," said one soldier who witnessed the incident.

The two spoke to several soldiers who spoke Arabic and pleaded that their children had fled, and had no choice to stay at home.

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“The command decided to use them as mosquitoes,” said one soldier, referring to the Mosquito Protocol, a common practice in the “Israeli” military where soldiers use Palestinian civilians in combat zones as human shields.

The soldiers left the man’s wife at their home, and set off the elderly man, who uses a cane to walk, to lead the way ahead of the soldiers.

"He entered each of the houses before us, so that if there were weapons or a terrorist in it - it would be used on him, and not on us. The woman didn't really understand what was happening. She was told that they were taking him for an attack and then returning him,” said a testimony.

The officer, the deputy commander of the battalion, took a detonating fuse (a fuse used to connect charges and explosives), connected it to a detonator and tied it around the elderly man's neck as a leash "so that he wouldn't run away," one of the fighters said.

“They explained to him that if he did something wrong or not as we wanted, the person behind him would pull the rope and his head would be severed from his body,” the soldier continued.

The soldier then ordered the man to come back to his home after eight hours of walking, and told him and his wife to head south towards the humanitarian zone.

However, the battalion’s soldiers did not inform the forces in the area that the elderly couple were about to cross through the humanitarian zone.

"After a hundred meters, the second battalion saw them, and shot them on the spot. They died like that, in the street."

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In response, the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) said it is investigating the incident, and denied –as is the case with previous exposés– the existence of the “Mosquito Protocol”.

However, "The Mosquito Protocol is completely regulated, and it's a very gray area within the army," explains one of the fighters from the brigade.

"It's something from the battalion commander level and below. It comes down as a regular order, and somewhere at the brigade commander level they deny it completely. When problems start to arise, they shift responsibility down and say not to do it," he says, and goes on to describe the cover-up mechanism by the “Israeli” military..

"Some people said they weren't doing it and that they were forced to, but then the IDF for its part says: 'We didn't force it, we said do whatever you want.'”