Malmedy, My Lai, Rafah…

War is nothing new to humanity. War is brutal and violent and gory and is prone to excess in all fields; and civilians always suffer. Romans raped the women of Carthage, Goths slaughtered Roman children, the Celts habitually tortured captives, the Aztecs spent prisoners-of-war to make sure the sun would continue to rise. Americans are not immune to this- every war in our history has involved civilian casualties, collateral damage, and no small amount of devastation and heartache and suffering inflicted on civilians as a result of martial activity, individual misbehavior and collective group actions. American soldiers raped Native and Mexican women habitually while they conquered the West; Don Buell’s (Union) Army of the Tennessee was just as infamous for executing scared young men with regional accents as Nathaniel Bedford Forrest’s Confederate cavalry raiders were. The modern Army’s hands are arguably even filthier; in an era where command oversight is far easier to accomplish and planning spans multiple organizations and thousands of people, we saw horrors like Operation Speedy Express perpetrated by our military leaders with civilian casualties viewed as a feature of the operation. In the modern era, the U.S. Army has had plenty of incidents- our invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan are estimated to have killed in excess of 408,000 civilians as a result of military force and violence, with nearly five million indirect casualties stemming from the social disruptions caused by war. If you prefer a less Ivy League source, we could look at the Iraq Body Count, which has our “civilian” death count pegged somewhere around 211,000. Some of them died in small batches, like these 15 people killed during our initial 2003 invasion when we were aiming for an Iraqi leadership target. Others died en masse, like the hundred-plus Iraqis killed by a terrorist truck bomb in 2007 or the 42 people killed when a USAF AC-130 Spectre gunship crew accidentally opened fire on a Medicine Sans Frontiers hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan. Most of these are the result of mistakes made in combat.

Some of these massacres are collective failures of good order and discipline with a hefty chunk of evil (My Lai massacre) and some are the results of collective sociopaths or individual predators like Robert Bales. And those are from one of the most professional, most-selective and better-disciplined militaries of the modern era, one in a high-pressure expeditionary capacity, where we are largely viewed as the good team. Our historical foes have historically done far worse to civilians, ranging from internecine battles like Massacre Canyon to the stereotype-defining brutality of the Comanche and other native tribes to the utter, pure high-octane institutional evil of organizations like the Imperial Japanese Army, the Imperial Japanese Navy or Nazi Germany or the Soviets or the Khmer Rouge or the Islamic State. Historically-speaking, when a nation starts making excuses for its forces- or simply accepting their conduct as presented- brutality and dead civilians come to define the force and the nation/state fielding it. As a historical note, the faction(s) doing these things do not win. In fact, most of them are vilified, pursued to destruction, and violently suppressed. For example, Iraq, ISIS, Nazi Germany/Imperial Japan, the Comanche, etc. For people like this, I think the Mattis Rule applies: “There are some assholes out there that just need to be shot.” Some people that we fight simply need to be killed, either to end a war or because of the threat that they pose to our comrades or our people or our way of life. However, this is ALSO to say that the lack of ethics, human decency, adherence to the laws of war, and even the pure, brutal savagery of the evil/terrorist/deluded/criminal/etc. people that we fight is not a reason to sink to their level, to resort to their methods or to debase ourselves as soldiers, as men or as humans. One can very easily see this illustrated in the HBO miniseries The Pacific, where we watch Eugene Sledge and Robert Leckie’s struggles with the dark side of human nature and war compete with their innate goodness and beliefs. And yes, that’s real- read their books, walk through the museums, talk to your great-gandparents if you still can (or your grandparents, because Vietnam was really really bad too).

All this is to say that war is never clean and that no one who fights through one, or lives through one, is unchanged, and few are entirely blameless. In my case, my platoon was engaged by a single teenaged gunman. He climbed a tree just north of a little hamlet on Route Trans-Am headed south from Hawijah on 2/1/2010, with an AK rifle provided by an enabler/recruiter, in order to shoot down into our gunner’s areas. As far as plans go, it was half-baked, but fundamentally solid- if one assumes a willingness to fight and die for his cause, ambushing a heavily-armored mechanized foe that rolls in armored trucks, fights as a team and boasts world-class training, armament and support from a position that allows the potential for success is as good a plan as I can imagine. He got a few rounds off, hitting a gun shield, an ammo box and the roof of an MRAP. Then we were through the ambush, and he was probably panicking, especially because his handler had abandoned him (so much for teamwork and courage). He climbed down from the tree while we pushed through the ambush and dismounted. Our platoon leader, Carlos M., was not the brightest bulb in the chandelier; he took most of our dismount squad into the hamlet and started kicking in doors looking for the shooter. Dumb, but he was a butterbar. SFC B. and I, meanwhile, were looking through the back windows of our truck, the last in the convoy, and wondering why exactly a grown man was climbing down a tree. Long story short, we dismounted and got in a gunfight with a scared teenager- 18-ish years old, born after Desert Storm, whose childhood had been defined by hardship and invasion and violence and people from the other side of the world rolling through his village. Find, fix (I burned 90 rounds for maybe 1 hit while suppressing him so Anthony and Scuba Steve could bound forward), kill (shot to the spinal cord at T3, shot to the right forearm/AK/right arm). Clean, clinical, and relatively OK as far as the metrics I cared/care about today went- all of my friends went home, and the insurgent was dead. He was wearing two sweaters over his normal clothes- maybe to protect his arms, maybe for warmth, maybe a poor idiot’s attempt at body armor. Either way, I’ll remember that blood-soaked Mighty Ducks logo on a dirty purple sweater for the rest of my thinking days. I remember rolling him over after we’d cleared the area and seeing his agonal breathing, flashing into medic mode and putting on a chest seal, and how he bit me when I tried to open his airway. Young, soldier me thought he was still fighting; older me knows I just triggered a dying airway response. Nothing really helps fix a blown-out great vessel, he died hemorrhaging internally and it was probably fast and exceptionally painful because that 5.56mm basically turned his spinal cord and lungs into ground meat. He died under that tree, and we bagged him and tossed him into an Iraqi Police pickup truck and then went and interrogated his family and village elders and probably the dude who gave him the AK and wrote it off as an “unsuccessful insurgent attack” or something like that. Honestly didn’t think much more about it after that. I’m still mostly OK with that outcome, but even so, we killed a kid who was literally trying to get laid by taking on the occupation army for his people, his God and some Iraqi girl he thought it would impress. Maybe a few dollars along the way to buy a Deer or maybe a Hilux and some goats? To this day, what strikes me is that he would still be alive if he had surrendered to us, if he had simply put his hands up and walked out slowly, or if we’d had a less-lethal option on-hand. We weren’t SWAT or even cops, we had no tear gas or pepper spray or flashbangs; we were soldiers, but even with that, we weren’t criminals. Somehow, his death bothered me less than when we shot an Iraqi mongrel dog that came too close to our USAF bomb dog and her handler, because that pupper was a big boy just out looking to get laid.

So, with that preamble, let’s talk about Malmedy. Germany was on the ropes, but the Ardennes Offensive was Hitler’s last shot at reversing their fortunes on the Western Front to try and force a stalemate. We know the story as the Battle of the Bulge, where heroic American resistance broke the last offensive strength of the Wehrmacht. However, in the early days of the offensive, raw American units like the 99th and 84th Infantry Divisions were shattered, and thousands of Americans were taken captive. Hundreds, however, were executed in cold blood by the S.S.- Hitler’s chosen soldiers. The S.S. was undisputedly a military unit, but within the hierarchy of the German military, they were a cross between the secret police, special forces and an assault formation. S.S. troopers typically had better equipment, higher morale, a high degree of discipline and an extraordinary dedication to the Nazi cause. They were true believers in the Fascist cause. They were professional soldiers, at least in the main. Many of their men had fought in the brutal, endless death slog of the Eastern campaign, against Soviet foes whose lack of compassion or empathy was well-known and infamous- fight or die was the order of the Eastern Front. That was the ethos of the Eastern Front, and when those men encountered American draftees who thought surrender in combat was a valid option when confronted with death, they (on a unit and an individual basis) generally chose to massacre their prisoners as if they were dealing with Russians or Untermensch. The role that racism, fear, orders and military expediency played in the individual minds of the soldiers who perpetuated the massacre will never really be known, but that they were Nazis is probably enough- it was certainly enough motivation at the time to spur “take no prisoner from the S.S.” policies and revenge massacres. Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind- plenty of German and Japanese soldiers, officers and civilians paid the price for these war crimes. Even so, even through that clearly-defined tragedy, both German and Allied forces still generally kept to the laws of war- most prisoners weren’t executed, treatment was generally within what standards could be met, and as the conclusion of the war moved from years to weeks away, sensible Germans came to view the POWs in their control as less of a liability and more of an opportunity to avoid a reckoning. Even contemporaneously, the U.S. Army strove to avoid massacres of literal Nazi POWs, at least on an official level. The same applied to Japanese prisoners- the Japanese were infamous for executing prisoners, but American forces often took pains to offer Japanese a conduit for surrender. Sometimes it worked.

Joachim Peiper, the SS colonel in command of the SS Kampfgruppe Peiper, was directly responsible for the massacres. The battle group was eventually declared responsible for the deaths of 362 prisoners of war and 111 civilians. He was found guilty and sentenced to death, but that sentence was commuted and he was released from prison in December 1956. That’s 11.5 years in detention, for an average of 9 days per life taken. He was ultimately assassinated by French communist vigilantes in 1976. When you think about it, this man lived the majority of his life free of the external consequences of his crimes, despite his adjudication of guilt in a free, fair military justice system. Seems pretty unfair to me…but that’s the standard set by our ancestors.

Now, let’s talk about Hamas and al-Queda and Islamic State and other terror groups. They’re terrible people, terrible groups, adherents to a toxic, violent, horrible ideology that is the antithesis of our entire way of life and culture. There is no coexistence with them, no real accommodation or peace opportunity. They’re the assholes General Mattis referenced- rabid predators, to be annihilated for the safety of everyone else. But who are they? Was the Iraqi teenager we shot in 2010 rabid? Or was he just a kid trying to show off and get laid? I’ll never know, and neither will anyone else. Maybe he didn’t know either. But that’s exactly the point. When we as a force start defining our enemies as irredeemably evil, that is not a guilt-free, easy thing to determine. That is an incredibly nuanced discussion to decide when known, likely and predictable civilian casualties and consequences might justify the action taken…and when it does not. Sometimes, the right answer is to take a deep breath, reach deep into ourselves, and realize that just because we have the power as soldiers to commit violence without real accountability does not mean that we should do that simply because of military necessity, labeling or even enemy activity, because the consequences are our humanity.

Now, on to the point of this post.
On March 23, 2025, a convoy of Palestinian ambulances, a fire truck and a UN vehicle were dispatched by the Red Crescent ambulance service to the site of a reported Israeli bombing at the request of the first ambulance on-scene, which departed and safely arrived at a hospital. The support convoy, responding to take care of other patients, disappeared into the wasteland just north of Rafah…no radio contact, no cell calls, nothing until reports trickled in of gunfire and slaughter. From the BBC report– Israel originally claimed troops opened fire because the convoy approached “suspiciously” in darkness without headlights or flashing lights. It said movement of the vehicles had not been previously co-ordinated or agreed with the army. Then we started to learn extra tidbits about this garden-variety routine mass murder.

A week after the killings, Israeli forces finally withdrew and allowed Palestinian Red Crescent and UN personnel to visit the site. Here’s some of the video. They recovered fifteen bodies, their colleagues, who are reported to have been executed and were found decomposed, bound and demonstrating injuries consistent with close-range gunfire. Despite this, the Israelis who shot them didn’t destroy their phones (at least not in all cases), and there’s reportedly at least two eyewitnesses. The video recorded by one of those murdered paramedics came to light last week. Israel has since changed their reporting of the incident and admitted that mistakes were made after the video came to public light…probably because the video itself is absolutely damning for Israeli discipline if one views it objectively.

Ambulances, hospitals, nurses, stretcher bearers, and even wounded combatants are protected by the Geneva Conventions…aka the Laws of War. Here’s a helpful summary from Google’s AI:

“Under international humanitarian law (IHL), medical personnel, medical units, and medical transports are protected in armed conflicts, meaning they must be respected and not attacked, unless they are used to commit acts harmful to the enemy. 

Key Protections and Rules:

Geneva Conventions: The Geneva Conventions form the basis of international law on the protection of medical personnel and facilities during armed conflicts. 

Non-Combatant Status: Medical personnel, including military and civilian medics, are considered non-combatants and are entitled to protection under IHL. 

Respect and Protection: Medical personnel, units, and transports must be respected and protected in all circumstances, meaning they cannot be attacked. 

Medical Duties: Medical personnel are entitled to fulfill their medical duties in accordance with medical ethics and are protected from punishment for performing such duties. 

Identification: Medical personnel are identified by the distinctive sign of the red cross, red crescent, or red crystal. 

Medical Units Protection: Medical units, including hospitals and mobile medical facilities, must be respected and protected in all circumstances, and may not be attacked. 

Medical Transports Protection: Any means of transportation assigned exclusively to the conveyance of the wounded and sick, medical personnel, and/or medical equipment or supplies must be respected and protected. 

Requisition: Precise rules regulate the requisition of medical material and means of transportation. 

Defense: Medical personnel are entitled to defend themselves and their patients from unlawful attacks, but only with small, defensive arms. 

Losing Protection: Medical personnel, units, and transports lose their protection if they are used to commit acts harmful to the enemy.”

/snip

Israel’s initial excuse was that they targeted “Hamas militants”. Aside from the obvious issues with positive target identification that any professional soldier can think up, is this really worth the PR nightmare of killing an entire convoy’s worth of first responders? We killed 15 people trying to get one of Iraq’s Big-4 kicking off our 2003 invasion and decided that was probably a mistake; here we’ve got some random IDF junior officer who somehow has alleged real-time definitive PID on a dude or dudes so hostile that they let them get in a convoy with everyone else and drive for an undetermined distance that just happened to be into an Israeli platoon ambush in a row…but wasn’t dangerous enough to get an airstrike or further support or even higher command involvement according to the Israelis? Then, the IDF machine-guns those super-stealthy ambulances (at least this time it wasn’t a tank shell?) and the really-hard-to-see fire truck, execute the crews, and doesn’t even hide the evidence beyond a half-assed mass burial to keep the smell down- that’s how confident these people are that there will be no consequences for their actions. Even if they had been active Hamas combatants (a meaningless distinction, because Hamas is the elected, actual and de facto government of the enclave), they would still be protected by the laws of war. Even if they had been carrying sidearms (which they weren’t), they would have been protected under the laws of war- American, British, Israeli, Chinese and even Canadian medics are issued small arms for the defense of themselves and their patients (I was issued an M4 and an M9). They were literally in marked ambulances, wearing easily-recognizable uniforms, on a mission of mercy, and there is no requirement to “deconflict” with an opposing force in the Geneva Convention to ‘activate’ that protection (although it’s good sense to do so, and apparently the Red Crescent had. Not that it means much…ask the World Central Kitchen about the worth of “deconfliction”.) The truth of the matter is, even if these medics were literally members of the Hamas armed forces, they were still due the protections the Geneva Conventions afford non-combatants as long as they were acting in the capacity of medics. Killing them is literally a violation of international humanitarian law and a violation of the laws of war. Full stop. Had an American platoon fired on a Soviet ambulance transporting wounded in a notional World War III, it would be a war crime. Same as how it was a war crime when VC attacked our medics, or Taliban, or anyone else. And yes, those who attacked us in violation of the conventions and laws of war often found themselves being hunted down at home, their families being killed, etc. Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind. But the entire point of a national army is to be better than that low standard, because how we fight matters too. A victory can be lost with thoughtless brutality, or gained with targeted discretion.

Now, it would be remarkably disingenuous to assume that the Israelis are unaware of the existence, organization or mission of the Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance service- Gaza and the West Bank are surveillance states where the Israelis enjoy complete autonomy in intelligence collection and surveillance and have direct contacts with the organizations in question. That a large convoy of Hamas fighters would disguise themselves as first responders (orange uniforms, trauma shears and all), commandeer an entire convoy of vehicles and drive not toward a vulnerable Israeli target, but towards an airstrike, boggles the mind…it is simply not internally consistent. Even if they were VBEIDs, why would they simply be driving towards an emergency, in convoy, and stopping to render aid? VBIEDs vs armored vehicles and dispersed infantry rely on speed and bulk to soak up small-arms fire until they’re close enough to detonate; pulling over and stopping is the antithesis of a successful attack profile. So, we can reasonably discount the notion that the IDF was institutionally in fear of these menacing ambulances and fire truck. That doesn’t mean that the actual soldiers who pulled their triggers didn’t have a credible fear, but that those fears were allowed to dictate their actions is a damning indictment on its own of Israeli discipline and operations.

So, if the convoy itself was not particularly threatening, why shoot? First, I think we need to understand the nature of the occupation itself. In Iraq and Afghanistan, the US Army and our Coalition allies generally took a light approach- the locals lived there and were going to keep living there; we were heavily-armed occupiers intruding to some extent on their lives and their culture, none of us were there to stay. We were not there to export America beyond the shallowest consumer goods and a firepower-enforced Pax Americana; we all knew that any actual changes from our work would take local adaptation, buy-in and implementation. That meant that, for vast swathes of the Army engaged with the locals, we were largely a fixture of the environment- peacekeeping, security, etc. With some exceptions, we were not shooting at many things or many people; the exceptions were generally very public and very violent full-spectrum operations. We certainly were not shooting at convoys of Iraqi ambulances and fire trucks. Israel’s occupation is different, however. The Israelis, in fact and increasingly in policy, are there to stay; there is talk of annexing the Gaza Strip directly or America taking control of the place, evicting the Palestinians and (presumably) resettling and rebuilding it as a part of Greater Israel with Israeli inhabitants. This isn’t occupation, this is conquest, and the actions of a conqueror are not necessarily the same as those of an occupying peacekeeper. For those Israeli soldiers, it’s a lot easier to view every Palestinian as a target- their very existence is an obstacle to the mission of conquest, their performance of state duties doubly so. Destruction of the Palestinian state and social infrastructure is a pillar of conquest and eviction, indeed, one could credibly argue that the Palestinian civil state as embodied by its workers is the primary obstacle to Israel’s claims that the enclave is uncivilized. This is not to say that there were direct orders to fire on civilians, but it is to say that there is far less of a military and cultural disincentive to doing so.

Thing is though, this “shoot everything that moves” approach of claiming that anyone erroneously killed brings “justification” at tremendous cost. Firstly, it’s obviously a lie, and in the 21st Century, lies spread like wildfire that burns reputations, souls and institutional trust. America has told its fair share of lies regarding civilian casualties, and many of those lies have exploded in our faces, alienating allies and reinforcing foes. Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan are rife with examples of this in action, and there is a strong case to be made that these lies made our war effort far more complicated and costly. In Vietnam and Afghanistan, the lies fatally undermined even the hope of a political success; in Iraq, they delayed our withdrawal by a decade and fueled both the insurgency and anti-American actors globally. America could afford those lies and their tremendous costs in that they didn’t directly threaten our national security, but even then their costs have been far in excess of anything gained from telling them. Israel does not have that luxury, particularly because their lies erode the social, economic and political support they rely on to maintain their technology-oriented economy, to finance their state and to offer protection and logistical support against their neighbors.

Second, shooting everyone that moves inherently undermines any hope of the IDF being seen as a trustworthy, peaceful organization. Gazans are already accustomed to an arbitrary, disinterested, unaccountable power that treats their lives as currency (Hamas); now they have to choose between two powers that arbitrarily kill without a shred of rationale, decency or justification. For a conquering power, this isn’t a huge problem- from the perspective of conquest, the only actual answer is Palestinian removal- but any hope of a peaceful “settlement” as anything other than an enslaved, repressed minority dies a little more with every person killed. And after a while, those unfettered killings come to define the people performing them, the organization, and ultimately the state and society performing them. The Wehrmacht and Germany, for example, was largely a conventional military engaged in a conventional war of conquest against another nation and its people and army- albeit brutally and without much regard for civilian casualties or lives- but it came to be defined primarily by the worst actions of the Einsatzgruppen and SS and their political leaders, not only in the moment but for eternity. This is something that every Israeli service member should come to understand- in a war where they have collectively defined “Gazan” as “hostes humani generis“, worthy of death or at least deportation, Israeli motivation and identities come into question too, and the leaders and followers who went along with this come to be defined by it. When talking about a few terrorists or pirates or criminals, sure- no harm done, hang ’em high. But when the people being shot are demonstrably and really non-combatants? That eats at a man, and at an institution. Sometimes they survive, like the US and Canadian armies after our massacres of our Natives. But sometimes they don’t, or they find themselves isolated from society, or their actions define that greater society. Again, as a conquering force, this may not bother them. But as a nation and society, that is going to be a rough accommodation and will inevitably bring massive costs upon it.

Third, and probably the most important, those soldiers and their chain of command have committed a full-fledged massacre of civilians, noncombatant medical first responders, and then covered it up (quite literally). This wasn’t a few errant bursts or a Javelin or a grenade. This was sustained, deliberate fire with close contact, a (very) high percentage of casualties, and probably executions. Even if one assumes that these “Hamas terrorists” were legitimate targets, the fact remains that the Israelis closed to contact distance and executed people who were most likely grievously wounded. For an entity with essentially unlimited medevac resources, in their own literal backyards, this is astonishingly stupid. Let’s take the Israeli bait for a second and pretend these were Hamas’s best uber-commandos. Wouldn’t it make sense to interrogate them? I mean, if these dudes somehow magically avoided the past 18 months of war and were the Super-Saiyan chameleons of the Islamic Jihad and your platoon somehow managed to take 10-15 of them prisoner, wouldn’t intelligence want a chat with them? Wouldn’t it make sense to keep at least a few alive and disappeared into Israeli military prison to see if they could figure out where more of them- or even hostages- might be? So we have a situation in which not only discipline entirely failed, but where even basic military opportunities are ignored. (in all fairness, one paramedic has entirely disappeared, so maybe he’s only being tortured?)

Here’s what I think happened. I think that an Israeli patrol was in ambush positions and saw an ambulance coming. Maybe the first one’s lights were on, maybe they weren’t, but either way they opened fire. Then more came, lights on, and the leadership/soldiers of that platoon made a decision to open fire, because what’s the actual difference between killing two men and killing four, or six, or ten, or fifteen? And with the paramedics in a dense cluster, and everyone firing, why not? Burn the belt, maybe someone saw something. They’re all Hamas. They’re Arabs, on Jewish land. Maybe they took hostages. Maybe they’re assholes who need killing. Hostes humani generis. And if not? So what? There won’t be consequences for it. And when all your friends are doing it, and your leaders tell you to do it and say its OK, and your culture accepts it, and maybe you want to do it, why not? And it happened. But then, after the ready belts are gone and no one is left standing, there’s dead and wounded men looking at you and they’re not horrible terrorists. They’re paramedics, crying to their mothers as they die. Every one of them has a story that makes a mockery of the values that the IDF allegedly stands for. Every one of them is evidence of your complicity and participation in a literal war crime. I think every Israeli leader on-scene recognized that. But what is to be done? They can’t snatch back those bullets. Even a medevac request will bring questions. And they can’t simply release them…six bullet-riddled vehicles and the bodies of their crews are too big to hide in any sort of environment where the Gazans have information exchange with the outside world. Time is a factor. And so, we come to the most horrible implication of the doctrine of hostes humani generis. Dead men tell no tales. And in some cases, it’s a mercy kill. Maybe their wounds are horrendous, debilitating at best, and surely doomed to a slow death in Gaza. Maybe it’s a form of euthanasia, as the Germans justified their atrocities in the T-4 program. Or it’s just another unpleasant reality of war…sometimes people pay for other people’s mistakes with their lives. Either way, cuffs and bullets are cheap and sand is free. And then? All they needed to do was wait. Wait for the bodies to decompose and the evidence to fade from memory and their leaders to come up with some rationale for the crime. Wait for the weight of numbers to add up with airstrikes and more shootings and the slow crush of starvation. Wait for the focus of the incident to be taken off of their platoon and shifted up to Brigade, Division, army headquarters, and eventually the state in general, because the higher up the chain of command the decisions to delay and deny and dismiss went, the less likely any personal consequences of import to any of those involved. Maybe, if they were lucky, someone else would screw up more bigly, and they could just pretend it never happened at all. And in a week, it happened exactly as planned. Until a video came out, because no one thought to search the bodies, and the half-baked nature of the cover-up betrayed its arrogance and incompetent execution. And now we know it happened. Of course, this is also helped by the fact that there are survivors of the incident as well…just as there were survivors from the worst of the Nazi or Japanese atrocities.
—
Survivor’s Account

Munther Abed, a 27-year-old volunteer with the Red Crescent since he was 18, was in the first ambulance to arrive at the scene of an airstrike in Rafah’s Hashashin district when it came under Israeli gunfire. Abed survived by throwing himself to the floor, while his two colleagues in the front were killed.^[1]

After being captured by Israeli soldiers, Abed described his treatment: “I was completely stripped, left only in my underwear, and my hands were bound behind my back,” he recalled. “They threw me to the ground, and the interrogation began. I endured severe torture, including beatings, insults, threats of death, and suffocation when one soldier pressed a rifle against my neck. Another soldier held a dagger to my left shoulder.” During his detention, he witnessed other rescue vehicles, including ambulances and fire trucks, being ambushed by Israeli forces. He also saw a bulldozer and excavator arrive to dig a pit where the vehicles and bodies were buried. Abed stated that a Red Crescent ambulance officer, Assad al-Nassara, who remains missing, was alive in Israeli detention near the scene of the killings^[1][11]

Abed stated that the ambulance was marked with lights on and the Red Crescent logo visible as they headed to the site.^[17] While the IDF described the area as a war zone, Abed asserted that Hashashin was a civilian area where daily life was ongoing, not a designated combat zone.^[1] He also rejected Israel’s claim that Hamas had used ambulances, calling it “utterly untrue” and reaffirming that all the crews involved were civilians.^[17]

Abed was forced to help Israeli soldiers in the vetting and photographing of local residents, who were ordered to leave the area and move to al-Mawasi. He was released in the evening and given back his watch and underwear but not his identity card, paramedic uniform, or shoes. Abed was instructed to walk toward al-Mawasi and was eventually able to flag down a passing Red Crescent vehicle for assistance.^[1]—

And the worst part is that it worked. We’re two weeks past this shooting and short of a video release it won’t get any better. There will be no justice for these men. The killing will continue until the last vestiges of Palestinian autonomy and statehood are broken and the survivors are forcibly resettled. And the IDF will be a little more associated with crushed ambulances, orange-jumpsuited bodies in mass graves and tragic lies. And in fifteen years, when those men are laying in their beds in Gazan condos or Tel Aviv apartments, they’ll remember the cost of those beds was fifteen innocent men on a mission of mercy, their self-respect and the character of their service. And for those Gazans, that will have to be enough.