‘Israeli’ forces claimed they rescued woman, investigation finds they shot her

• Ha-Makom reports that an officer from the Nahal Brigade's 50th Battalion shot and killed an elderly Palestinian woman he was evacuating from a combat zone in southern Gaza in the summer of 2024.
• This comes after ‘Israeli’ forces posted a photo of them allegedly helping the elderly woman. 

A photo of an ‘Israeli’ soldier assisting an elderly Gazan woman circulated widely online this week, with some citing it as evidence of the army’s treatment of civilians. An ‘Israeli’ military investigation has since detailed a different case, finding that a Nahal Brigade officer shot and killed an elderly Palestinian woman while evacuating her from Rafah in 2024. 

An investigation by the independent ‘Israeli’ outlet Ha-Makom reports that an officer from the Nahal Brigade's 50th Battalion shot and killed an elderly Palestinian woman he was evacuating from a combat zone in southern Gaza in the summer of 2024.

According to testimonies gathered by journalist Revital Hovel, soldiers from the battalion found the woman during a logistics run in a Rafah neighborhood that ‘Israeli’ forces had emptied of Palestinians. She was sick and weak and posed no threat. They decided to evacuate her and put her in a military Humvee, bound and blindfolded, with three soldiers. 

During the drive, the officer took a phone call, stopped the vehicle, pulled the woman out, shot her dead and drove on. One of the two soldiers who witnessed it described being left in shock. 

The officer reportedly told them the order came from Major Menachem Lasri, then the battalion's deputy commander. 

The case prompted a military police inquiry, but more than a year and a half later no soldier is known to have been questioned.

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