Natan Odenheimer
Appearances
The Daily
How Israel Uses Palestinian Detainees as Human Shields
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.
The Daily
How Israel Uses Palestinian Detainees as Human Shields
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.
The Daily
How Israel Uses Palestinian Detainees as Human Shields
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 haven't been ever before, namely using Palestinians as human shields in this widespread way.
The Daily
How Israel Uses Palestinian Detainees as Human Shields
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 7th 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.
The Daily
How Israel Uses Palestinian Detainees as Human Shields
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.
The Daily
How Israel Uses Palestinian Detainees as Human Shields
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.
The Daily
How Israel Uses Palestinian Detainees as Human Shields
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 thousands of Palestinians who died in this conflict.
The Daily
How Israel Uses Palestinian Detainees as Human Shields
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.
The Daily
How Israel Uses Palestinian Detainees as Human Shields
And 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.
The Daily
How Israel Uses Palestinian Detainees as Human Shields
Precisely. And I admittedly 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.
The Daily
How Israel Uses Palestinian Detainees as Human Shields
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?
The Daily
How Israel Uses Palestinian Detainees as Human Shields
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 shared 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 and
The Daily
How Israel Uses Palestinian Detainees as Human Shields
He said that he's not very willing to talk about this anymore.
The Daily
How Israel Uses Palestinian Detainees as Human Shields
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. And what did that picture show?
The Daily
How Israel Uses Palestinian Detainees as Human Shields
So over a course of about 10 months of investigation, we... Bilal Shabir, my colleague in Gaza, and Patrick Hinckley, 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.
The Daily
How Israel Uses Palestinian Detainees as Human Shields
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 given body cameras to take with them to give live feed to Israeli soldiers.
The Daily
How Israel Uses Palestinian Detainees as Human Shields
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.
The Daily
How Israel Uses Palestinian Detainees as Human Shields
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.
The Daily
How Israel Uses Palestinian Detainees as Human Shields
Yes. So a 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.
The Daily
How Israel Uses Palestinian Detainees as Human Shields
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.
The Daily
How Israel Uses Palestinian Detainees as Human Shields
Right. So after Bashir 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.
The Daily
How Israel Uses Palestinian Detainees as Human Shields
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'd 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.
The Daily
How Israel Uses Palestinian Detainees as Human Shields
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.
The Daily
How Israel Uses Palestinian Detainees as Human Shields
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.
The Daily
How Israel Uses Palestinian Detainees as Human Shields
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.
The Daily
How Israel Uses Palestinian Detainees as Human Shields
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.
The Daily
How Israel Uses Palestinian Detainees as Human Shields
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.
The Daily
How Israel Uses Palestinian Detainees as Human Shields
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.
The Daily
How Israel Uses Palestinian Detainees as Human Shields
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 described it as a rather routine practice. And it seemed to us that this practice became more and more widespread throughout the war.
The Daily
How Israel Uses Palestinian Detainees as Human Shields
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.
The Daily
How Israel Uses Palestinian Detainees as Human Shields
But then again, when we circled back in June or July, suddenly they said that they came across it and even saw it with their own eyes.
The Daily
How Israel Uses Palestinian Detainees as Human Shields
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.
The Daily
How Israel Uses Palestinian Detainees as Human Shields
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? I mean, mosquito and wasp. So luckily for us, the deputy didn't know either.
The Daily
How Israel Uses Palestinian Detainees as Human Shields
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.
The Daily
How Israel Uses Palestinian Detainees as Human Shields
And there was some disagreement about whether these were detainees or whether these were paid collaborators who volunteered to enter Gaza with the military.
The Daily
How Israel Uses Palestinian Detainees as Human Shields
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.
The Daily
How Israel Uses Palestinian Detainees as Human Shields
So places that Hamas have hidden the bodies of Israeli soldiers taken captive on October 7th.
The Daily
How Israel Uses Palestinian Detainees as Human Shields
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.
The Daily
How Israel Uses Palestinian Detainees as Human Shields
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.
The Daily
How Israel Uses Palestinian Detainees as Human Shields
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.
The Daily
How Israel Uses Palestinian Detainees as Human Shields
And the Israeli Supreme Court said that this is completely prohibited under Israeli law and ordered the military to stop with this practice.
The Daily
How Israel Uses Palestinian Detainees as Human Shields
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.
The Daily
How Israel Uses Palestinian Detainees as Human Shields
But as far as I know, not one Israeli officer or conscript was punished or even investigated for participating in this practice.
The Daily
How Israel Uses Palestinian Detainees as Human Shields
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.
The Daily
How Israel Uses Palestinian Detainees as Human Shields
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.
The Daily
How Israel Uses Palestinian Detainees as Human Shields
And I think that one thing that really resonated with me is that a soldier said that 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.