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.
Chapter 1: What was the major turning point regarding Israel and Hezbollah?
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 7th. But the war in Gaza shows no signs of ending, with Israel coming under increased scrutiny for the way it is conducting it.
Chapter 2: What controversial tactic is investigated in this episode?
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 Galant. 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.
Chapter 3: How does Israel use Palestinian detainees in the conflict?
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.
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.
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 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.
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 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
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Chapter 4: What did Natan Odenheimer discover about the Israeli military's practices?
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. And what did that picture show?
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.
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.
Why use Palestinians for this? Why do this at all, for that matter? You know, 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?
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Chapter 5: What examples illustrate the use of 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.
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.
So the practice seemed to have 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, you know, 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? I mean, mosquito and wasp. 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.
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Chapter 6: What is the scale of this practice according to the investigation?
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 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. 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 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 haven'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 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.
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.
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