Israeli occupying forces and illegal settlers in Palestinian territories have been committing horrific crimes against men, women and children for decades. However, such crimes have significantly increased, and become a routine matter, since the Israeli invasion of Gaza in October 2023.
Here is a list of the crimes committed by the Israelis in Gaza since the start of the invasion. Evidence is there for each of the crimes, as provided through external links shared in this article.
1. Killing Civilians
The Israelis have killed over 37,000 people, the vast majority of whom were civilians, in Gaza, and injured over 82,600 people, with a further 10,000 missing. The dead include over 10,000 women, including at least 6,000 mothers.
2. Burying Civilians Alive
Some of the patients found in the mass graves beneath hospitals had medical tubes attached to them, making it highly likely that they were buried alive in some of the mass graves dug by the Israelis. The bodies of many other individuals, including children, women, and the elderly, shown clear signs of torture.
3. Murdering Children
The Israelis have killed over 15,000 children in Gaza since the start of its brutal invasion. At least 30 children have died due to starvation, malnutrition or dehydration, while many others have died or gravely suffered from starvation-related complications. Videos of Israeli soldiers boasting about killing babies and children in Gaza have gone viral on social media.
4. Injuring and Incapacitating Children
The Israelis have injured over 11,000 children, including more than 1,000 children who have lost one or more of their limbs due to Israeli bombing and targeting of children. As one Israeli soldier admitted in a viral video clip, “Maybe I killed a girl, she was 12, but I’m looking for a baby.” The Israelis have also orphaned over 19,000 children by killing their parents.
5. Raping and Torturing Women
Israeli soldiers have routinely raped Palestinian women and subjected them to acts of sexual violence after entering and ransacking their homes. Israeli forces have also taken women as captives, raped them, and uploaded the photos of the victims in “degrading circumstances” online.
6. Depriving People of Food and Water
The Israelis have committed yet another war crime by using starvation as a weapon of war against the Palestinians, as admitted by Israeli ministers and senior officials, according to Human Rights Watch. The Israelis have routinely stopped supplies of food and water into Gaza, which has disproportionately affected children and pregnant or breast-feeding mothers. By early December 2023, 48 percent of households in northern Gaza and 38 percent of displaced people in southern Gaza had experienced severe levels of hunger.
7. Attacking Aid Convoys
Israeli extremists, aided by Israeli police and occupying forces, have routinely attacked aid convoys, destroying food packages and wasting lifesaving aid as per video footage of a recent attack. They have also resorted to assaulting truck drivers and setting trucks ablaze in acts of arson and terrorism.
8. Destroying Homes
The Israeli forces had destroyed or damaged over 80 percent of the housing units in Gaza as early as January 2024, forcing most of the people into makeshift tents in Rafah.
9. Vandalizing Homes and Shops
In addition to many other war crimes committed by the Israelis, the Israeli soldiers have ransacked homes, vandalized shops, destroyed cars, burned food, and used racist and hateful language. A video clip of an Israeli soldier smashing shop items against the floor and then shattering the heads of two dolls after picking them from the shelf gives some indication of the psychotic mentality prevalent among Israeli soldiers.
10. Displacing Residents
Over 85 percent of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been displaced due to their homes being destroyed by land, sea, and air bombardment. More than 1 million people were forced to live in overcrowded and self-built structures in a small area of 65km2 in Rafah before Israeli attacks there forced them to flee once more.
Also Read: How You can Help the People of Gaza
11. Attacking Refugee Camps
After displacing the survivors of Gaza from their homes, the Israelis have resorted to relentlessly bombing the refugee camps, killing children, women, and men on a regular basis by targeting camps such as Bureij and Maghazi. As many Palestinians fled to the southern town of Rafah, Israelis began bombarding and killing people there, causing over 1 million people to once again flee and hope to be accommodated in refugee camps elsewhere.
12. Mocking the Victims
Israeli soldiers have engaged in abhorrent and shameful acts of mocking the Palestinians they have tortured or killed. Video clips and images shared by Israeli soldiers on social media, and verified by Reuters, show Israeli soldiers wearing female victims’ undergarments and engaging in mock sexual acts using the undergarments and mannequins. Other clips show the Israeli invading soldiers making derogatory, sexist remarks about Arab women and riding children’s bicycles through the debris of homes they have destroyed, among many other appalling acts.
13. Destroying Hospitals
The Israelis have destroyed the health care system at Gaza. As early as November 2023, 30 of 36 hospitals in Gaza had been attacked by the Israelis. Many of the hospitals have been completely destroyed while some continue to partly function. Al-Shifa, Gaza’s largest hospital, has been attacked at least 12 times, including the 2-week long invasion and siege in March 2024 which left the hospitals in ruins and completely out of service.
14. Targeting Medical Workers
Israelis have targeted health care facilities at least 450 times and killed over 700 health workers, including doctors, nurses, midwives, and other staff. The medical workers, alongside journalists, were blindfolded, handcuffed, stripped naked, and severely beaten by Israeli forces invading hospitals.
15. Secretly Digging Mass Graves
After the Israelis bombed hospitals and executed people inside them, they dug mass graves which contain hundreds of bodies belonging to patients, doctors, and other hospital workers. In May 2024, a seventh mass grave was discovered at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.
16. Killing Journalists
The Israelis have killed at least 108 journalists and media workers since the start of its invasion as part of its strategy to spread misinformation and conceal its atrocities in Gaza. Dozens of journalists have also been injured, arrested, and subjected to assaults and threats by the Israelis.
17. Demolishing Schools and Universities
Gaza had at least 737 schools before the Israeli invasion. However, all schools have shut down as a result of Israel’s targeting of educational institutions, including at least 346 schools having been completely destroyed of damaged by the Israelis. There is also no functional university in Gaza, with at least 12 higher educational institutions been destroyed or damaged. Israelis have killed at least 94 university professors in Gaza.
18. Depriving Children of Education
As a result Israelis targeting and destroying schools, at least 625,000 children have been deprived of an education. Among the intact school buildings, 92 percent are functioning as shelter places for 1.4 million displaced persons.
19. Razing Agricultural Land
The Israelis have razed or systematically destroyed agricultural land and infrastructure in Gaza in order to dwindle its food supplies and force the region into a famine. They have destroyed at least 50 percent of tree crops and 42 percent of greenhouses in Gaza.
20. Driving Hyper-Inflation
Through deliberately targeting Gaza’s economy and destroying its commercial entities, the Israelis caused prices of basic necessities to skyrocket. For example, by February 2024, wheat flour prices had increased by 979 percent, salt prices by 467 percent, and vegetable oil prices by 198 percent, since the start of Israel’s invasion, according to World Food Program.
21. Destroying Commercial Facilities
By January 2024, the Israelis had already destroyed 80 percent of all commercial facilities in Gaza, according to the United Nations, bringing much of the commercial activity to a halt and decimating the region’s economy.
22. Cutting off Electricity
Gaza has been deprived of electricity for large periods since the Israeli invasion. Due to the Israelis stopping fuel supplies to Gaza, its sole power plant has run out of supplies, pushing the region into a complete energy blackout. Cutting off Gaza’s electricity supply is part of Israel’s broader strategy make Gaza uninhabitable.
23. Severing Communication
The Israelis have repeatedly cut off communications, including internet services, in a bid to isolate Gaza from the rest of the world. There have been at least 10 telecom blockouts in Gaza, with the Israelis repeatedly sabotaging communications by deliberately disconnecting cables that run through Israeli territory.
24. Encroaching on Gaza’s Land
Israel has encroached on 32 percent of Gaza’s land by systematically demolishing entire neighborhoods, using “air raids, artillery attacks, and bulldozers”. The Israelis have already made one-third of Gaza uninhabitable by razing the entire infrastructure, including homes, schools, and hospitals, paving the way Israeli illegal settlers and occupiers to usurp the land in future.
While the genocidal nature of Israel’s killing spree is obvious, as widely being acknowledged internationally, the special rapporteur of the United Nations on human rights in Palestine also recently found “reasonable grounds” to believe that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza. However, it is indeed shocking that the world has terribly failed to prevent this genocide and the systematic destruction of Gaza by the Israelis.
The above list of Israel’s crimes in Gaza is by no means exhaustive. As the rest of the world watches, the Israelis are committing new crimes on a daily basis as of June 2024. If you find any of Israel’s crimes in Gaza missing in the above list, please share it by leaving a comment below.
Important Sources for Documenting Israel’s Crimes in Gaza:
Israel-Gaza War in Maps and Charts – Live tracker by Al Jazeera
Anatomy of a Genocide – Report of the United Nations Human Rights Council (March 25, 2024)
Genocide in Gaza: Analysis of International Law and its Application to Israel’s Military Actions since October 7, 2023 – Report by University Network for Human Rights (May 15, 2024)
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