😡 Israeli soldiers admit, on the record, that they regularly used Palestinians as human shields and shot and killed unarmed civilians whenever they felt like it

It's time that EVERYBODY who participated in this genocide be held fully accountable.

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Credit to The Guardian (reporting by Julian Borger) for today’s story on the ITV documentary Breaking Ranks: Inside Israel’s War. Israeli soldiers — some named, some anonymous — describe Gaza as a free-for-all where the rules evaporated and civilians died at the whim of commanders.

One tank commander says, “If you want to shoot without restraint, you can.” An armoured officer says the official “means, intent, and ability” standard for lethal force simply didn’t exist in Gaza; suspicion became a walking speed or a man’s age.

Another soldier describes a senior officer ordering a tank to shell a building in a designated safe area because a man was hanging laundry on the roof; the shell collapsed the structure, leaving many dead and wounded. A contractor working at U.S./Israeli-backed food distribution points recounts soldiers dropping to their knees and firing two shots into the heads of unarmed civilians running for aid.

The soldiers also confirm a practice nicknamed the “mosquito protocol”: using Palestinian civilians as human shields to map tunnels, sending a civilian underground with a phone in his vest to transmit GPS data while troops stay back. According to the testimony, it “spread like wildfire” within a week.

Every accusation they make is always a true confession of their guilt.

This is not “fog.” These are admissions. And under international law, they are war crimes. The Fourth Geneva Convention and Additional Protocol I prohibit using civilians as human shields (AP I 51(7)); willful killing of civilians is a grave breach (GC IV 147; Rome Statute 8(2)(a)(i)); indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks — like shelling a home because someone is hanging laundry — are criminal (AP I 51(4) & 51(5)(b); RS 8(2)(b)(iv)). Firing on people seeking aid violates protections for humanitarian relief operations (AP I 70–71) and triggers individual criminal responsibility (Rome Statute 25) and command responsibility up the chain (Rome Statute 28).

I do not want to hear one more press line about “the rule of law.” If this testimony is accurate, the rule of law requires prosecutions — not just at the top, but for every person who ordered, incited, enabled, or carried out these crimes. That means the prime minister and defense chiefs — yes — but also the company commanders who replaced rules with “conscience,” the tank crews who shelled safe areas, the snipers who executed unarmed people at food sites, the bulldozer operators who demolished neighborhoods unlawfully, and the military clergy and officials who incited violence against civilians. The law does not end at the podium. It starts where a finger met the trigger.

The documentary captures another truth: how rhetoric travels from the leaders of Israel to the rifles of its soldiers. Soldiers describe hearing, again and again, that there are no innocents in Gaza — a message echoed by senior figures in the early weeks of the war. When leaders tell a military that everyone is a legitimate target, the line between suspicion and kill disappears. That is why incitement matters for proving intent in genocide and war-crimes cases — words become practice.

Now the accountability. The ICC has already moved on leadership. It should expand charges to include ordering, aiding/abetting, and direct perpetration where evidence supports it. States with universal jurisdiction should open national cases against identifiable suspects who enter their territory — yes, line soldiers and NCOs, where testimonial and forensic evidence connect them to specific incidents. Targeted sanctions should designate individual perpetrators and commanders. And arms-supplying states should halt transfers when credible information of grave breaches exists — the legal trigger is credibility, not a defendant’s confession.

I am asking prosecutors, lawmakers, and every state that claims a rules-based order to act like it. Subpoena the raw footage. Identify units, times, locations. Match testimonies with incident logs, munition types, drone feeds, hospital records, and grave sites. Build cases that do not stop at a lectern, but hold the person who said “shoot” and the person who shot.

What’s clear to me is that a new court, a new tribunal of some sort, is going to have to be created just for the very purpose of holding Israel and their partners accountable for their war crimes.

We will keep tracking this — free, daily, relentless — and build a simple public index that maps each admission to the legal charge it triggers. To do that well, we need the two hires I’ve been asking for. If you want this work to be the ledgerthe world needs, become a member. If you can, join monthly, annually, or as a founding member. We don’t have 12 million subscribers. We have 3,120 — and an allegiance that’s clean: we tell the truth and we side with the oppressed.

Love and appreciate each of you.
Your friend and brother,
Shaun

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