The Daily - How Israel Uses Palestinian Detainees as Human Shields

Episode Date: November 27, 2024

Overnight, Israel agreed to a cease-fire with the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah — a major turning point in one of the wars the country has been fighting since Hamas attacked it on Oct. 7. But the war in Gaza shows no sign of ending, and Israel’s conduct there is coming under increased scrutiny.A New York Times investigation has examined one controversial tactic: the Israeli use of Palestinian detainees as human shields.Natan Odenheimer, a contributing reporter for The Times, explains what the investigation revealed, and what the tactic says about the nature of the conflict.Guest: Natan Odenheimer, a contributing reporter for The New York Times.Background reading: A Times investigation found that Israeli soldiers and intelligence agents, throughout the war in Gaza, have regularly forced captured Palestinians to conduct life-threatening reconnaissance missions to avoid putting Israeli soldiers at risk on the battlefield.As the cease-fire in Lebanon takes effect, follow live updates. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

From the New York Times, I'm Sabrina Tavernisi, and this is The Daily. Overnight, Israel agreed to a ceasefire with the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, a major turning point in one of the wars Israel has been fighting since Hamas attacked it on October 7. But the war in Gaza shows no signs of ending, with Israel coming under increased scrutiny for the way it is conducting it. Today, a Times investigation into one controversial tactic, the Israeli use of Palestinian detainees as human shields,

and what it reveals about the nature of the conflict. My colleague Natan Odenheimer explains. It's Wednesday, November 27th. So Natan, a lot has been happening with Israel in the past few days. We had the ceasefire with Lebanon and Hezbollah on Tuesday night. And the week before, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Golan. They issued those warrants for war crimes

and crimes against humanity in Gaza. You, Natan, have been investigating another practice by the Israeli military, one that's unconnected to what happened in the court, but seems to also raise questions about the rules of war. And that is Israel's use of Palestinians as human shields. Tell me exactly what you found. So actually, I stumbled into this story.

Around January 2024, I was filling my water bottle at the gym. When I heard someone who I quickly understood was an Israeli soldier who recently returned from Gaza, talking about seeing Palestinians being sent into Hamas tunnels. Then what he was explaining is that the military is using Palestinians as human shields, sending them into Hamas tunnels ahead of Israeli forces to probe those dangerous areas. So in other words, this is an Israeli soldier

you're overhearing, the guy just came back from Gaza, and he's recounting how they used Palestinians as human shields in Gaza. Precisely. And I immediately wanted to know more. If true, if they were using Palestinians in this way in combat, this would be very, very wrong and illegal under both Israeli and international law. So I injected myself into the conversation, challenged him a bit to see how insistent he is, and he stood behind the story. And I went back home that day knowing that I have to get to the bottom of this to understand if this is something that only happens in one or two places and is very local, or is

this something that is actually a widespread phenomena across the military? So what did you do next? How did your reporting take shape? Well, so I had one lead, right? I was able to get his number and I called him up a few days later. Introduced myself as a journalist, said that I'm interested to hearing more of his thoughts

about how the war is being fought. And when we got to this topic again, he showed a few more details, telling me more or less where it took place. But at some point he closed in and said that he'd want to stop the conversation there. He said that he's not very willing to talk about this anymore.

So basically he went dark before you could actually understand exactly what this phenomenon was. Right. And we had a lot of questions. We wanted to know how widespread it is, who are those Palestinians, and mainly who authorized this. And slowly, slowly, we were able to find more people. Some of them came forward because they thought that it's very disturbing. Others, we just kept on asking those questions and we were able to piece together a full picture. What did that picture show? Over a course of about 10 months of investigation,

we, Bilal Shabir, my colleague in Gaza, and Patrick Hinkley, the Jerusalem Bureau Chief of the New York Times, were able to uncover a disturbing practice of the Israeli military in Gaza. The Israeli military was using Palestinians as human shields in Gaza. They were using them to probe Hamas tunnels, and they sent them ahead of forces into homes that they were afraid were booby-trapped by Hamas. In some cases, Palestinian detainees were dressed as IDF soldiers, and in others, they were giving body cameras to take with them to give live feed to Israeli soldiers.

LESLIE KENDRICK Why use Palestinians for this? Why do this at all for that matter? Israel has an incredibly sophisticated military and presumably the technology to do this kind of work. Right. So there are different reasons. So first off, as great as drones and robots and even canine dogs can probe tunnels, a human being that can walk and move objects is way more efficient in probing areas. Sometimes a person can do tasks that a drone and a robot can't really do. And the other thing is that after three months of war, a canine dog is not as efficient as

it was in the past. They're too traumatized and they're confused from all the smell of the explosives around. So they lose their orientation. So whenever sniffer dogs, robots or drones weren't good enough to probe the tunnels or walk ahead of forces into homes, they started using Palestinian prisoners as human shields for dangerous tasks. So the Israeli military is using people, Palestinian detainees, to do this very dangerous job that even dogs at this point can't do. Were you able to talk to anyone who this actually happened to?

Yes. So our reporter in Gaza, Bilal Shabir, spoke with three Palestinians who spoke on the record about their experience as being used as human shields. One of them was a pharmacist named Bashir El-Dalu. He's a 43 year old father of four from northern Gaza. In the beginning of the war, he and his family fled south. And then around mid November, he decided that he wants to make a risky trip back to his home to get some essentials, some things that his family really needed.

At that point, the Israeli military considered any Palestinian walking around these unpopulated areas as a potential Hamas operative. I see, because this was after the Israelis had told everybody to evacuate. So anybody still there was suspect. Right. So after he got to his home, the Israeli military detained him. And by his account they ordered him at gunpoint to undress and they blindfolded him. They took him barefoot and almost completely naked to a nearby yard of a multi-story building. And then they took off the blindfold, made sure that his hands are tied in front of him and not in the back

so he would be able to move objects and told him to go ahead of forces and probe that area. And this yard, according to his account, was partly ruined. There were glass all over the floor and as he was walking he was injured by this glass. Because his feet were bare. Yes, exactly. His feet were bare. And the soldiers were staying behind, giving him directions from a megaphone. So they ordered him to move around the yard, looking into different places, places they thought were potentially booby-trapped or an entrance to a tunnel.

And then there was noise coming out from around an electricity generator. And the soldiers got really afraid and started shooting in that direction. But it turned out that it was a kithid that made all this noise. And he said that some of the soldiers laughed in relief. Wow. Was he hurt? He wasn't hurt from the shooting, but he was injured from walking barefoot on the glass. So they used him as a human shield in several instances, but eventually they decided to take him into Israel and send him to an Israeli detention center.

And I think that one of the things that really sent chills into my arms when I heard this story is that he said that he was excited, happy, and relieved to get there, knowing that he's outside of this dangerous zone. Wow. So that actually shows you how frightening that was for him, that he felt better once he got to the Israeli detention center, not generally the kind of place that a Gazan would tend to feel very safe in. Yeah. And I think that it's also important to mention that he was treated there for his injuries, but also released later on, sent back to Gaza, which tells us that the Israeli intelligence did not think that he was involved with any militant group.

Right, that he was essentially just a civilian. Yeah. Yeah. And what we later found out is that El Dalo's experience wasn't that rare. The Israeli military used Palestinians as human shields again and again throughout the war. We'll be right back.

So Natanya, you said that you eventually came to understand that the story of Bashir, the pharmacist, was actually not that rare. But what was the actual scope of this? What was the scale? So, it's very difficult to understand the scale, but we spoke to 16 Israeli defense officials and soldiers. Some of them participated in this practice and most of them describe it as a rather routine practice. And it seemed to us that this practice became more and more widespread throughout the war.

And one of the reasons that made us understand that is that we went to some people in say April or March and asked them if they know anything about it. And they gave us a hard no They said, you know, this is not something that they would imagine people would be doing but then again when we circle back in June or July suddenly they said that they came across it and Even saw it with their own eyes. So the practice seemed to have gotten much more widespread as the war went on exactly Sabrina and gotten much more widespread as the war went on. Exactly, Sabrina. And we were able to confirm that this took place in at least 11 different squads throughout

the Gaza Strip. So from the north to the south in five Palestinian cities. And what really gave us a clear idea that this is quite commonplace practice was that it had a term. So the practice was broad enough throughout the military that it had a name and people knew it. That implies scope. That's right. So the first time we heard these terms was in February.

A soldier who came back from the battlefields told us that already in November he heard a senior commander explain to his deputy that a nearby unit is asking for either a mosquito or a wasp. And what does he mean there? So luckily for us, the deputy didn't know either. And the more senior commander explained to him that a mosquito is a Palestinian who was detained nearby in Gaza and was then being used as a human shield in tunnels or in other dangerous places.

As for WASPs, we got varying accounts from sources. What we do know is that a WASP is someone who was in Israel and was brought into Gaza by Israeli intelligence officers for brief and specific missions. And there was some disagreement about whether these were detainees or whether these were paid collaborators who volunteered to enter Gaza with the military. Okay, so in other words, mosquitoes are kind of like Bashir, the pharmacist. They maybe got swept up in something inside Gaza, but wasps were different. They were brought from

Israel back to Gaza and used there. But why would that happen? What is the purpose of moving them? It seems quite complicated to do. So what I understood from several of the soldiers is that these are sometimes Palestinians who have knowledge of the tunnels or other places. Sometimes they were being used as human shields going into those tunnels ahead of the forces, but they were also used for intelligence and sometimes to point to places where they told the Israeli military could potentially be makeshift graves of hostages. So places that Hamas have hidden the bodies of Israeli soldiers taken captive on October

7th. So in other words, they might have some specific knowledge of where to look and where to find things. Exactly. The Israeli military was hoping to squeeze as much information as they could from those people. But the flip side of it is that it also created a lot of paperwork and bureaucracy and required logistics and coordination by different units and different agencies as well.

This suggests that senior commanders did not only know about it, but sanctioned at least several versions of this tactic. And what did the Israeli military say to you when you confronted them about the practice before you published your article? The Israeli military did not deny this. They said in the statement that its directives and guidelines strictly prohibit the use of detained Gaza civilians for military operations. It added that the account of the Palestinian detainees and soldiers interviewed

by the Times would be examined by the relevant authorities. So they said they'd look into it. What exactly are the laws and conventions around this? So using civilians or militants as human shields in a battlefield is completely illegal, not only by international law, but also by Israeli law. And Israel has some experience with that. About two and a half decades ago, the Israeli military used Palestinian civilians for risky missions, mostly in the West Bank. And this went to court.

And the Israeli Supreme Court said that this is completely prohibited under Israeli law and ordered the military to stop with this practice. But you've shown here that they're doing it again. What happened after your story published? Well, we know that it was discussed in the military and the government, but we can't really tell you if the military took serious steps in order to prevent it. But it's also important to note that the intensity of the war in Gaza went down significantly in the past few months and it's possible that this practice isn't as widespread as it was

in the height of the war. But as far as I know, not one Israeli officer or conscript was punished or even investigated for participating in this practice. Natan, I'm curious about those Israeli soldiers that you talked to and how they saw this practice. I mean, fundamentally, it was something that was meant to protect them, of course, but clearly some of them must have felt uncomfortable with it because they were talking to you, a journalist, about it. Right.

We wouldn't be able to report on this story if it wasn't for the many Israeli soldiers who felt disgust and disturbed and horrified by the fact that the Israeli military is using this practice. One soldier told us that his entire platoon pushed back so hard that they basically stopped using this practice in their platoon, releasing the two Palestinian civilians who they were using as human shields. And I think that one thing that really resonated with me is that a soldier said that, you know, even if this war is justified, it doesn't mean that everything we do or everything that we can do in this war is justified.

Natan, at a high level, it seems like what your reporting shows, and correct me if I'm wrong here, is that the Israeli military, like Hamas, is willing to sacrifice Palestinian civilians for their own military purposes. And Israel, of course, accuses Hamas of hiding within civilian populations, essentially using Palestinians as human shields in Gaza. And now we know that Israel is also using Palestinians as human shields. So I'm wondering if you think that the correct way to understand your reporting here is actually a sort of shared disregard both on the part of the Israeli military and Hamas for Palestinian civilian life.

Well, there is a common thread in the disregard to Palestinian lives, and both are terribly wrong. But they're each going about it in their own way. Hamas is a terrorist organization that is showing disregard for its own people, whereas Israel is a sovereign state that is violating the rules of war. And I think that an important takeaway from this story is how the Israeli military, which is a military of a state that is a member of the UN, that has the most powerful nations in the world as allies, has its military standards being deteriorating to a place that

it hasn't been ever before, namely using Palestinians as human shields in this widespread way. And one way to understand how it could have deteriorated to this point is to be reminded of the shock of Israeli society after seeing the October 7 atrocities. And the Israeli society was just traumatized by this, which clouded the moral judgment of many Israeli soldiers walking into their roles in the military and later marching into Gaza. In other words, there's an emotional response that's happening on the part of Israelis and Israeli citizens who of course are also Israeli soldiers and that is clouding in some ways

judgment and allowing them or perhaps kind of inviting them to see Palestinians in this dehumanized way? Yeah, and also made them think that Hamas are Palestinians and that Palestinians are Hamas, which is something that is a bit hard for the greater Israeli society to understand that there are many Palestinians who oppose Hamas or many Palestinians who are suffering from Hamas and who suffered from Hamas even from before the war. But this shows a deterioration in

the regards to human lives by the Israeli military and something that we've never seen before. Where, then, does Israel go from here? So we're in the stage of the war in which the intensity of the fighting is winding down in Gaza. And also, the ICC have just issued the orders against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Minister of Defense Yoav Galant. So these two things make it harder for Israelis to ignore the consequences of the war in Gaza, namely the vast destruction and the many, tens of South ends of Palestinians who died

in this conflict. And now Israeli society that has justified this war throughout needs to face unjustified parts of it, like in the case that Bilal Patrick and I uncovered about how it's using Palestinians as human shields. [♪ music playing in background, with a soft beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat of a beat We'll be right back. Here's what you should know today. Early this morning, the ceasefire between Israel and the Lebanese militia group Hezbollah went into effect. The deal was announced by President Biden in a televised address from the White House

on Tuesday night. He said it was designed to end the war between Israel and Hezbollah permanently. It was a major turning point in a conflict that had displaced over a million Lebanese and tens of thousands of Israelis. The conflict started on October 7th when Hezbollah began firing into Israel in solidarity with Hamas. Israel later retaliated, killing the group's longtime leader, planting explosives in the pagers used by the group's operatives, and conducting airstrikes against Hezbollah strongholds in Lebanon. The fighting has killed more than 3,000 Lebanese and 100 Israelis and severely damaged Hezbollah.

In the hours before the ceasefire was set to take effect, Israel continued to hit Hezbollah strongholds in Lebanon in the heaviest barrage since the war began. The Lebanese parliament is expected to approve the agreement in a vote on Wednesday. Today's episode was produced by Mouch Zadie, Jessica Chung, and Luke Vanderplug. It was edited by M.J. Davis Lin with help from Chris Haxel. With research assistance by Susan Lee, contains original music by Dan Powell and Marian Lozano, and was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly. Special thanks to Patrick Kingsley. That's it for the Daily. I'm Sabrina Tavernisi.

See you tomorrow.