Israeli snipers ‘shoot Palestinians for sport’

 Israel's attempts to excuse the mass murder of civilians in Gaza as "collateral damage" fall apart in the face of mounting evidence that it employs deliberate sniper attacks. The targeted killing of unarmed people – using quadcopter drones and professional snipers – has restricted access to essential medical care, food, and water, exposing a chilling reality behind the occupation army’s actions. 

The International Criminal Court’s (ICC) arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant are further testament to this not being a conventional war; it is a systematic targeting of civilians that points directly to genocidal intent.

Over the past year, debates have raged over what constitutes an “acceptable” level of collateral damage in Gaza. In July, the West Point US Military Academy's Modern War Institute even published a piece that argued for a more surgical approach to be taken by the Israelis.

Similar discussions that also surround what constitutes a “disproportionate use of force” are all predicated on Tel Aviv’s approach being one of a conventional war. However, if Israel’s intention is not to wage war against Hamas and is instead to intentionally commit genocide and ethnic cleansing, these conversations prove meaningless. And no clearer evidence exists than the cold-blooded targeting of civilians by sniper fire.

Sniping civilians on live TV 

Though there have been instances when sniper attacks on civilians captured the international media's attention, this grim element of Israel's military strategy is largely ignored, likely because of the damning implications.

The first major case to break headlines in the western media was the murder of two Christian women at Gaza City’s Holy Family Church on 16 December 2023. The incident even received condemnation from the Pope over the murder of the Palestinian Catholic mother and her daughter, who were deliberately killed while seeking refuge inside the church compound.

But today, these kinds of shootings are so commonplace that they even occur during live TV interviews with western news outlets. For example, in January, British broadcaster ITV captured the moment when 51-year-old Ramzi Abu Sahloul was shot through the chest, only moments after he had spoken on air. Sahloul was part of a group of civilians who were fleeing to Rafah in Gaza’s south while holding white flags on the orders of the Israeli military. 

Another innocent civilian murdered while fleeing and with a white flag was Hala Khreis; she was shot and fatally wounded while holding her grandson's hand as they were walking. The incident was also caught on camera. A CNN investigation was able to prove that Israeli soldiers stationed nearby were responsible.

Intimidation by assassination 

Palestinian correspondent Motasem Dalloul, who is based in northern Gaza, testifies to The Cradle that his own son Yahya was murdered by an Israeli sniper on 29 May, after which the soldiers ran over his child's body with a tank.

“I took my sons to our destroyed house, in Al-Sabra neighborhood, in order to pick up some clothes from under the rubble. When we were there, I saw my son fall to the ground and he started bleeding from his head. I got close to him and found that his head had exploded.”

He explains that although he couldn’t see the Israeli soldiers, he knew that they were positioned nearby with sniper weapons and states that when he approached little Yahya’s body, he was struck by the fact that he was motionless. He adds:

“Israeli tanks began shooting and firing everywhere. I knew that my son was dead … so I had to leave him on the ground and flee with my other sons to safety. I couldn’t return back to this place for 10 days, where I later found that an Israeli tank had run over his body and dismembered it, we could only collect some of his flesh and bones, which had been smashed by the Israeli tanks, and we put them in a piece of fabric, like a shirt, and took them, burying them in a makeshift cemetery.”

During Dalloul’s conversation with The Cradle, bombs exploding in the background are heard as he recounts:

“I think the reason Israeli occupation [word muffled by the sound of explosions] killed my son was to frighten the rest of us and warn us not to return to this area … as that area was later on destroyed and all the buildings were erased, turning it into a military buffer zone. This put much pressure on the residents of Gaza City who do not have homes and a lot of these displaced people were murdered.”

Psychological warfare and denial of medical care

The calculated targeting of civilians is not limited to sniper fire. On 20 September, a UN special committee reported to the General Assembly that there has also been a “deliberate denial of healthcare access by Israeli snipers” to lactating and pregnant Palestinian women. 

After countless testimonies of deliberate shootings committed against civilians have been emerging, in December 2023, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) issued a press release urging accountability and an investigation. The press release also highlighted the execution of 11 men in front of their families in the Remal Neighbourhood of Gaza City.

Yassin, a young man from Jabalia Refugee Camp, describes to The Cradle how he was shot from a quadcopter drone in mid-November of 2023, managing to survive by mere chance. Yassin says that he was traveling on foot, using Salah al-Deen Road between Jabalia and Khan Younis, after receiving evacuation orders from the occupation army to move south. 

While he was fleeing, an armed clash suddenly erupted within his visual range: 

“I picked up my clothes and phone and ran from the place to escape this clash. There was a hill of sand in front of me, I jumped off it, and some of my clothes fell. Then I found the ambulance that the enemy [Israel] had stopped, remaining on the road.” 

Scared, he said he heard calls in Arabic for him to stop running, then “I heard the sound of the bullet, so I asked in a loud voice ‘Who was shot?’ After 10 meters, I realized this bullet had exploded inside my liver, and I was the answer to my own question. This bullet penetrated my right lung, then the diaphragm, then exploded in the liver.”

Yassin says that the only reason he survived was because a relative happened to be driving a nearby ambulance and acted quickly to save his life. Yassin’s recovery has been a long and grueling journey spanning several months, and he continues to suffer from his injuries despite evacuating across the Rafah Crossing into Egypt.

A policy of deliberate targeting 

American surgeon Mark Perlmutter, who traveled to Gaza in order to treat wounded Palestinians during the war, has also drawn specific attention to the intentional targeting of children by Israeli sniper fire. “No child gets shot twice by mistake,” he told France 24. Perlmutter has burst into tears during several interviews while describing how scores of children had died in front of his eyes. 

Perlmutter’s accounts align with the recent testimony of British doctor Nizam Mamode, who described to UK Members of Parliament how drones would deliberately shoot children “day after day” in Gaza. Such accounts have been emerging from foreign physicians throughout the war, with nine other on-the-ground doctors providing accounts of the calculated targeting of children to The Guardian earlier this year.

The Cradle also received testimony from a Palestinian man from northern Gaza whose brother was shot by an Israeli sniper in October during Israel’s re-invasion. As he tried to drag his brother to safety, he was repeatedly targeted by snipers and eventually had to watch his brother slowly die from his wounds.

He explains that they fled their homes to Gaza City, but he and his brother decided to return when the fighting was less intense, noting that the shooting erupted out of nowhere when they were in the Jabalia area. He then saw his brother collapse and bleed everywhere, noting that the bullet hit him in the middle of his body.

Twisted tactics 

The accounts provided to The Cradle are but a few in a long list of similar horrors that emerge on a daily basis from the Gaza Strip. In April, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor released a report that pointed out Israel’s use of intimidating sounds to scare and lure civilians into kill zones. In the Nuseirat Refugee Camp, drones were recorded playing the sounds of babies crying in order to draw civilians out of their homes and into the streets so that they could be fired upon. 

Throughout the writing of this piece, over a dozen eyewitnesses to shootings – including journalists and doctors in Gaza – were consulted. All confirmed that Israeli snipers deliberately target civilians without any justification to instill fear that prevents people from moving freely. 

A Palestinian doctor from northern Gaza, who requested anonymity, tells The Cradle, “They are shooting civilians for sport, and this is clearly deliberate; this must be the policy of the army.”