Another Israeli soldier and veteran of Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza has admitted that he was a party to war crimes — and says his commander ordered him and other soldiers to continue perpetrating those crimes even after they’d raised objections. This latest of many such accounts was given to CBS News by an Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) soldier who agreed to speak on the condition that his identity wouldn’t be revealed. The experience that troubled him the most was his unit’s practice of forcing Palestinian civilians to probe buildings for improvised explosive devices.
“They were Palestinian,” he said. “We sent them in first to see if the building was clear and check for booby traps…They were trembling and shaking.” So apparently common is the practice of using Palestinians in such a manner that it has a name of its own: the “Mosquito Protocol,” where Palestinians civilians are equated with the hated insects.
The soldier told CBS that he objected to that abusive treatment of civilians, to the point that he took his concern to the chain of command — where it fell on deaf ears. “We talked to our commander, and we asked him to stop doing it,” he said, but said the unconscionable orders continued to be issued.
The whistleblowing soldier who spoke to CBS says he continues to be troubled by what he personally did in Gaza. “I’m morally wounded. It’s fucked up, you know, to use citizens as your human shield like a dog.” The term “moral injury” describes psychological problems that spring from having observed, perpetrated, or failed to prevent actions that violate one’s sense of right and wrong.
Of course, the people on the other end of the depraved practice battle their own psychological demons. CBS spoke to a 14-year-old Palestinian in the West Bank, where the IDF is accused of the same form of abuse. He claims he and his nine-year-old cousin were forced at gunpoint to search a four-story apartment building. “I was so scared. Then they started beating us,” he said. The IDF told CBS it prohibits this behavior.
The soldier said he was witness to other IDF evils: “We’ve burned down buildings for no reasons, which is violating the international law, of course.” That confession should come as little surprise to even the most casual observer of the war, given the IDF’s astonishingly thorough and plainly visible destruction of neighborhoods, towns and cities throughout Gaza — and IDF soldiers’ enthusiastic use of personal social media accounts to share videos of themselves joyfully demolishing entire housing complexes. A January before-and-after analysis of Gaza using satellite imagery concluded that between 50% and 61% of buildings in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed.
The IDF loves to film themselves blowing up Palestinian homes. pic.twitter.com/poiYVpf9C2
— White Rabbit (@Dark_RabbitHole) January 7, 2025
A 2024 investigation by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, which interviewed soldiers, concluded the IDF has indeed used Palestinian civilians to probe Gaza tunnels which were feared to have been booby-trapped, with soldiers told, “Our lives are more important than their lives.” The soldiers ridiculed the Israel government’s official denials of the practice:
“I saw the IDF’s response [to posted videos said to show human shields at work], which totally doesn’t reflect reality. It’s done with the knowledge of the brigade commander, at the least... [Soldiers] know it’s not a one-time incident of a young and stupid company commander who decides on his own to take somebody.”
According to accounts from soldiers and those who claim to have been their victims, Palestinians are often detained, dressed in uniforms and flak jackets, mounted with cameras, and sent into buildings with their hands zip-tied behind them. Sometimes, they’re said to be simply stripped to their underwear and their hands tied before being coerced into the potentially lethal situation.
As ugly as the Mosquito Protocol allegations are, they’re far from the worst claims about the IDF’s conduct. As we covered last summer, a team of 20 humanitarian US doctors who volunteered to work Gaza hospitals were stunned by the volume of civilian harm, and particularly by how frequently they had to treat children with headshot wounds. A doctor who normally works in gunfire-heavy Chicago described the horrific conclusion he reached as the pattern emerged on the treatment tables in front of him:
“I thought these kids were in the wrong place at the wrong time, like sadly, some of the kids we treat in Chicago. But after the third or fourth time, I realized it was intentional; bullets were being put in these kids on purpose.”
On the other hand, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly said the IDF is “the most moral army in the world.” We’ll give Netanyahu the last word…while President Trump gives the IDF another $4 billion in weapons and ammunition.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 03/28/2025 – 21:20
