By Quds News Network
Gaza (QNN)- An Israeli sniper serving in Gaza during the ongoing genocide confirmed forces are ordered to shoot starving aid seekers despite posing no threat. “I have no idea how many I have killed, a lot of children,” he said, adding “The officers don’t care if children die.”
In an interview with Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Yoni, an active-duty soldier in the Nahal Brigade, recounted an attack on children last May in Beit Lahiya where soldiers claimed two children were “terrorists.”
“Terrorists, terrorists!” one of the soldiers shouted. “We went into a frenzy, and I immediately got up with the Negev (a type of machine gun) and started spraying, firing hundreds of bullets. Then we stormed forward, and that’s when I realized it was a mistake,” he said.
“I saw two bodies of children, maybe eight years old, maybe ten, I have no idea,” Yoni recalled. “All blood, full of bullet marks. I knew it was all on me, that I did this. I wanted to throw up. A few minutes later, the company commander arrived and said coldly, like he wasn’t human, ‘They entered a kill zone. It’s their fault. That’s how it is in war.’”
Beni, a sniper in the Nahal, said there is an invisible line in front of aid seekers in northern Gaza when aid trucks arrive and begin unloading.
“A line that if they cross it, I can shoot them,” Beni said. “It’s like a cat-and-mouse game. They try to come from different directions, and I’m there with my sniper rifle, and the officers are yelling at me, ‘Take them down, take them down.’ I shoot 50 to 60 rounds a day. I stopped counting the Xs. I have no idea how many I’ve killed. A lot. Children.”
He said he was forced and threatened to shoot starving civilians seeking aid.
“The battalion commander was screaming on the radio, ‘Why aren’t you taking them down? They’re advancing toward us; it’s dangerous,’” he recounts, saying the officers “don’t care if children die, and they don’t care what it does to me mentally. To them, I’m just another tool.”
Beni now is reportedly trying to leave the army. “I don’t trust the officers, I don’t believe the government. I just want to leave the army and start my life.”
At least 859 Palestinians have been killed while attempting to obtain aid at the US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) aid sites between May 27 and July 31, 2025, most by the Israeli military, according to the United Nations.
514 others have been killed by Israeli forces along the routes of food convoys.
Human Rights Watch said the “dire humanitarian situation is a direct result of Israel’s use of starvation of civilians as a weapon of war—a war crime —as well as Israel’s continued intentional deprivation of aid and basic services, ongoing actions that amount to the crime against humanity of extermination, and acts of genocide.”
Palestinians in Gaza and the UN described these sites as “mass death traps” and “slaughterhouses”.
Since GHF started operating aid sites in May, there have been reports on near-daily shootings by Israeli forces and US mercenaries at or near GHF sites, starving aid seekers in Gaza and former US mercenaries have spoken out about witnessing gunfire against Palestinian crowds.
15 September 2025
Source: countercurrents.org