April 3, 2024 (EIRNS)—Israel’s Haaretz daily has in the past called for Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu to go, but in the wake of the IDF’s targeted killing of the World Central Kitchen personnel, Haaretz declared in its lead editorial in Hebrew and English today: “Israel Must End Its War in Gaza Now.”
Those killings “cannot be distanced from the ease with which the IDF kills Palestinians in Gaza,” the editors wrote. They call attention to the March 31 report by the daily’s military editor, Yaniv Kubovich, on the IDF’s “kill zones” policy in Gaza, in which anyone who enters a “kill zone” established by the local IDF commander around their military operations is automatically designated as a terrorist. The editorial quotes just one of the unnamed IDF officers cited in Kubovich’s article: “As soon as people enter it, mainly adult males, orders are to shoot and kill, even if that person is unarmed.”
The editorial concludes: “Therefore, it is not enough to simply exercise more caution in authorizing fire. Kubovich’s disturbing report on the number of dead and wounded in Gaza, along with the hunger and vast destruction and now Monday night’s incident should tell us that the time has come to end the war.”
Kubovich’s article rips apart the estimate that 9,000 of the 32,000 Gazans killed in the war were terrorists, showing how there is no way to know how many of those counted were terrorists, and how many civilians. The descriptions given by multiple unnamed officers of how decisions are made as to whom to shoot provides an ugly picture of the mindset that follows from the “kill zone” policies. One unnamed senior commander expressed concern over the result, describing to Kubovich how, after six months of war, especially in northern Gaza, those being shot and counted as “terrorists” include desperate civilians who leave their homes in search of food, without even knowing the IDF was still in their area.
