The response to the Gaza aid workers massacre shows Israel has undergone brutalization

Mourners gather around the bodies of 8 Red Crescent emergency responders, recovered in Rafah a week after an Israeli attack, as they are transported for burial from a hospital in Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip, in late March 2025

Ahmad Tibi writes in Haaretz on 8 April 2025:

Reports in the Guardian and Haaretz revealed an incident that ought to shock not just Israel, but the conscience of all humanity. Yet it didn’t shock Israel, because Israeli society has undergone post-traumatic brutalization.

Fifteen paramedics – rescue workers who came to help the wounded – were shot at close range and buried in a mass grave by the army’s heavy engineering vehicles. Only after five days were their bodies exhumed, after someone in the army told the aid agencies where the grave was located.

Munther Abed, a paramedic in one of the ambulances and the only survivor of the massacre, told the Guardian that he “was completely stripped, left only in my underwear, and my hands were bound behind my back.

“They threw me to the ground, and the interrogation began. I endured severe torture, including beatings, insults, threats of death, and suffocation when one soldier pressed a rifle against my neck,” he said.    Abed continued, “Another soldier held a dagger to my left shoulder. After a while, an officer arrived and ordered the soldiers to stop, calling them ‘crazy people’ who didn’t know how to communicate.”

The findings at the scene – the bound hands and feet, the shots fired from close range, the fact that the bodies were buried together with the humanitarian vehicles – raise suspicions that the medical crews were executed.

And over the weekend, the New York Times published a video filmed by one of the paramedics in the mass grave that contradicts the army’s story. The video clearly shows that the vehicles were marked and the ambulances’ lights were on when the army attacked them.  Is this how an army that pretends to be “the most moral in the world” looks? Is this how a country that boasts of its democracy and Western values looks?

History is full of moments when nations chose to shut their eyes. “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing,” according to the famous quote commonly attributed to Irish philosopher Edmund Burke. And it’s true.

The Israeli media’s silence over this issue, the fact that the majority of Israeli media outlets have almost totally ignored it, is no less serious than the incident itself. This silence at a time when fundamental principles of morality are being trampled is a form of abetting the crime.

Five ambulances, a fire truck, UN vehicles and everyone inside them have become nameless statistics. They were unarmed. They weren’t combatants, but people of conscience, medical crews, rescue personnel. “Anyone who saves a single life, it’s as if he had saved the entire world,” the Talmud says. So what do we say of people who snuffed out 15 worlds in a single grave?

It’s impossible to keep whitewashing this incident and claiming it stemmed from the fog of war. When soldiers bury bodies in a mass grave, this isn’t due to confusion, but to policy. And when the army tells the rescue workers where to dig, it attests to an act committed intentionally.

Relatives mourn during the funeral procession for members of the Palestine Red Crescent and other emergency services who were killed a week earlier by Israeli forces, at Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis in southern Gaza, March 2025

I am calling for the establishment of an independent, external commission of inquiry, preferably an international one. The investigation into this affair must not be left to the mechanisms that have failed so many times before.  This is an issue of basic morality, a test of humanity. The entire world is watching. And if the truth isn’t uncovered and we don’t demand justice, history will judge us.

International conventions are clear on this issue. The Fourth Geneva Convention, which Israel has signed, requires that medical crews be protected even in combat zones. Deliberate attacks on medical personnel are considered war crimes. The fact that the bodies were found tied up and outside their humanitarian vehicles should lead to red lights flashing in every law-abiding institution in Israel and outside it.

Unfortunately, this isn’t a lone anomalous incident. For months, reports have been published on the ongoing damage done to the Gaza Strip’s medical infrastructure – hospitals, clinics, medical crews and ambulances.

As these incidents accumulate, the big picture becomes increasingly clear – it’s a strategy of dehumanization and “medicide” (the destruction of health-care systems). When you turn doctors into enemies and nurses and ambulances into military targets, you are crossing red lines that a democratic country isn’t even supposed to get near.  I urge the international community, the World Health Organization, the United Nations and international legal associations not to remain silent. You have a duty to speak out. Anyone who remains silent in the face of an evil this great legitimizes it.

Germany’s Foreign Ministry said the aid workers in Gaza were definitely killed by Israeli soldiers. The pathologist who examined some of the bodies said he has evidence that they were executed.

The incident sparked widespread international outrage, as the aid workers were killed while they were unloading food supplies, even though the humanitarian nature of their actions was clear. The army expressed “regret” after coming under international pressure and said it is “investigating;” regulations will surely be spelled out to the troops.

But when we’re talking about the lives of 15 aid workers, regret is no substitute for taking responsibility, and this tragedy cannot be a pretext for fake justice. The solution that must be implemented immediately is a hostage deal and an end to the war.  That would be possible if it weren’t for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s concerns about his personal political survival and maintaining his governing coalition. And that, too, is a crime. Enough with the war and enough with the crimes.

The massacre in Rafah, shocking though it was, didn’t happen in a vacuum. The slaughter of the ambulance crews may be one of the worst incidents since the war began, but it isn’t the only one. Every day, every night and almost every hour, Israel bombs shelters, schools, hospitals, mosques, churches and civilian homes.

This is an ongoing massacre, the best documented and best publicized in history. And history will remember not only the perpetrators and those who kept silent, but also the chronic liars and the false statements issued by the army’s spokesman.

In memory of Mustafa Khafaja, Ezz El-Din Shaat, Saleh Muammar, Refaat Radwan, Muhammad Bahloul, Ashraf Abu Libda, Muhammad Al-Hila, Raed Al-Sharif, Youssef Khalifa, Fouad Al-Jamal, Zuhair Al-Farra, Anwar Al-Attar, Sameer Al-Bahabsa, Ibrahim Al-Maghari and Kamal Mohammed Shahtout. And to this day, the fate of Assad al-Nassara, one of the Red Crescent workers, remains unknown. Abed, the only known survivor, said when he last saw Al-Nassara he was alive, and being detained by the soldiers.

Ahmad Tibi is chairman of the Ta’al party and a doctor by training

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