How Israeli Soldiers Killed 15 Rescue Workers in Gaza | Visual Investigations

I’m Malachy, one of the producers of this video. When we started investigating what happened to these medics and rescue workers, little was known about how they had come to be killed. Five days after they disappeared their bodies were recovered, but the IDF’s responses at that time were opaque. One was still missing. A team of reporters from Gaza, Israel, the West Bank, Cairo, London, New York, Norway and Ireland set about finding answers. Our colleague Bilal Shbair in Gaza tracked down a survivor and two witnesses to the shooting and interviewed them independently. Our colleague Farnaz Fassihi was the first to obtain the video of the shooting above, recovered from the phone of Rifaat Radwan, one of the slain medics. His video supported what the witnesses told us and proved the IDF had lied when it said the medics approached their soldiers suspiciously and without their lights and signals. The Times also obtained a recording of a phone call made by another medic, Ashraf Abu Labda during the attack. By using the sound of gunfire to synchronize his phone call with Rifaat’s video, we determined that Israeli soldiers fired for over six minutes, even as the medics were unarmed, sheltering and praying. The IDF confirmed that the 15 rescue workers were unarmed, while autopsy reports confirmed that they died from gunshots – many of them were shot multiple times. We consulted audio and weapons experts who determined from the sound of the gunfire that the IDF closed in around the men and continued firing at them despite the absence of return fire and as the men were still alive. A video shown to one of our reporters in Israel also confirmed the soldiers’ movements. We also interviewed an IDF official who led an internal investigation, a pathologist involved in the autopsies, experts in the laws of war and the colleagues of the workers who gave a timeline of their movements that night and details of how their bodies were recovered. We also spoke to the families left to mourn the men. The IDF said that the shooting resulted from a cascading mistakes in which their soldiers misidentified the rescue workers as Hamas militants, even though they admitted they didn’t know who was inside the vehicles when they opened fire. The victims worked for the Palestine Red Crescent Society, the Civil Defense and the United Nations, who have called for an independent investigation.