Israel's changing story of an attack on rescue workers

Summary

Consider This from NPR: Israel's Changing Story of an Attack on Rescue Workers

Release Date: April 23, 2025
Host: Juana Summers

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Introduction

On March 23, amidst escalating tensions and resumed attacks by Israel on Gaza, a tragic incident unfolded that highlighted the dire situation for rescue workers in the region. Juana Summers narrates the harrowing story of 15 rescue workers who lost their lives while responding to emergency calls during intense Israeli military operations.

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The March 23 Attack

Juana Summers begins by setting the scene:

"On March 23, the death toll in Gaza surpassed 50,000 people killed by Israeli fire in the war with Hamas. This is the story of 15 people who were killed the same day."

Just five days after Israel ended a ceasefire, airstrikes intensified across Gaza, and Israeli ground troops advanced into the southern region of Rafah. It was here that the rescue workers—operating ambulances and a fire truck with flashing lights and sirens—encountered Israeli soldiers.

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Initial Military Narrative

In the immediate aftermath, the Israeli military stated that the rescue vehicles approached suspiciously without headlights or emergency signals. They claimed that the soldiers engaged the vehicles, believing them to be carrying Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants. This account suggested that the shootings were justified attempts to eliminate threats within a hostile combat zone.

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Contradicting Evidence

However, this narrative was swiftly challenged when Marwan Jelani, Vice President of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, presented a pivotal piece of evidence:

"[00:59] Marwan Jelani: That showed very clearly the cars, the vehicles of the ambulances had their lights on. The fire brigade truck had its lights on and the sirens. You hear the sound."

This video, captured by one of the paramedics, unequivocally contradicted the Israeli military's claims, showing that the rescue vehicles were functioning with all necessary emergency indicators active.

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Survivor Testimonies

Aya Batrawi reports from Gaza, providing deeper insights:

[07:02] Aya Batrawi: "Abid was also detained by troops that night. He says the Israeli troops cursed him, his religion, spat on him, beat him with their rifles. He was blindfolded the entire time before they let him go."

Only two survivors, Munzer Abed and Assad Al Nasara (still detained), provided harrowing accounts of the attack. Munzer Abed, a seasoned paramedic, recounted his trauma:

"He says he can't work anymore. He's too traumatized. He told us he suffers from nightmares."

These testimonies underscored the profound human cost and the psychological toll on those who serve as first responders in conflict zones.

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UN's Recovery Mission and Findings

Following international pressure and the emergence of the video evidence, the United Nations was granted access to the affected area in Rafah. Under the leadership of Jonathan Whittle, the UN's humanitarian response team conducted a recovery mission:

[08:26] Aya Batrawi: "When they reached the site where the paramedics and rescue workers were killed, they found the 15 bodies in a mass grave."

The UN team also discovered the rescue vehicles, now crushed into the sand by bulldozers, raising further questions about the handling of the aftermath.

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Israeli Military's Investigation Findings

In response to the mounting evidence, Israel initiated its own investigation, revealing a nuanced stance:

[09:17] Aya Batrawi: "The military says there were three shootings by Israeli troops that night in this area... The investigation determines these were the result of an operational misunderstanding."

The investigation attributed the tragic shootings to poor night visibility and a misinterpretation of the rescue vehicles as hostile threats. Consequently, the deputy commander involved was dismissed, though the findings were met with skepticism.

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International and Palestinian Response

The Palestinian Red Crescent vehemently criticized the Israeli investigation:

[11:02] Aya Batrawi: "The Palestinian Red Crescent says the military's investigation conceals a wider truth, that the Israeli military repeatedly commits violations."

Jonathan Whittle of the UN echoed these sentiments, calling for greater accountability and questioning the credibility of the operational misunderstanding explanation:

[11:02] Aya Batrawi: "He says the conclusion that the ambulances couldn't be recognized in the dark flies in the face of the evidence."

This incident is part of a broader pattern, with nearly 140 rescue workers killed in Gaza over the past 18 months, highlighting systemic issues in the protection of medical personnel during conflicts.

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Broader Implications and Current Situation

The attack and subsequent investigations have shed light on the evolving dynamics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:

• Military Escalation: Israeli forces have taken control of significant portions of southern Gaza, intensifying their offensive.
• Casualties: Over 1400 Palestinians have been killed since the March attack, with a third being children, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
• Policy Stance: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remains steadfast, declaring that the war will continue until hostages held by Hamas are released under Israeli terms.

Critics argue that the conflict has transcended conventional warfare, venturing into a "war without limits," characterized by relentless military pressure and severe humanitarian consequences.

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Conclusion

This episode of Consider This delves deep into a critical and tragic event within the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Through survivor testimonies, conflicting narratives, and international perspectives, it underscores the dire need for accountability and the protection of humanitarian workers in war zones.

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Produced by: Connor Donovan
Reporting by: Anas Baba, Hadil Al Shalchi, Yanal Jabari, Abu Bakr Bashir, Ahmed Abu Hamda
Edited by: James Heider, Courtney Dorning
Executive Producer: Sammy Yenigun

Transcript

[Juana Summers]

On March 23, the death toll in Gaza surpassed 50,000 people killed by Israeli fire in the war with Hamas. This is the story of 15 people who were killed the same day. It was just five days after Israel had ended a ceasefire and resumed attacks on Gaza. There were airstrikes across the territory. In the south, Israeli troops advanced on the ground, which is where they encountered the crew of emergency workers in ambulances and a fire truck. The troops opened fire and killed the 15 paramed and rescue workers. At first, the Israeli military said the vehicles were advancing suspiciously toward troops without headlights or emergency signals. It said the soldiers had eliminated a number of Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants. And that is where the story might have ended, except a recording was unearthed days later from the phone of one of the paramedics, and it disproved the Israeli military's account.

[Marwan Jelani]

That showed very clearly the cars, the vehicles of the ambulances had their lights on. The fire brigade truck had its lights on and the sirens. You hear the sound.

[Juana Summers]

That's Marwan Jelani, vice president of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society. He said his organization had presented the video to the United Nations Security Council and called for an independent investigation.

[Marwan Jelani]

We have never seen an Israeli investigation that resulted in any accountability whatsoever.

[Juana Summers]

After the video became public, Israel did conduct an investigation and released the results over the weekend. It blamed the killings on an operational misunderstanding and cited professional failures. Consider this. In more than 18 months of war, it has been rare for the Israeli military to acknowledge failure. Coming up, we hear from one of the survivors of the attack. From npr, I'm Juana Summers.

[Martinez]

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[Marwan Jelani]

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[Juana Summers]

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[Aya Batrawi]

Foreign.

[Juana Summers]

Palestinian officials say nearly 140 rescue workers have been killed on the job in Gaza during the war. The attack in March is notable because it's one of the very few that the Israeli military investigated. NPR's Aya Batrawi took a closer look at the attack and Israel's changing story about what happened. So a, if you can just start from the beginning, what do you know about what happened on March 23?

[Aya Batrawi]

It started with Israel shattering the ceasefire, and already hundreds of people had been killed in airstrikes. And Israeli troops were re entering parts of Gaza they'd withdrawn from earlier. And in the south, the offensive, the ground offensive there was overwhelming and it was spreading across all of Rafah. So this was a Sunday. It was before dawn when a team of Palestinian rescue workers were responding to emergency calls from this area. The road is dark. Several ambulances and a fire truck light up the night with flashing red and white emergency signals. The scene otherwise is eerie, eerily desolate. There's no street lights, just these flashing lights. This is being filmed by Rifat Radwan, a paramedic in one of the ambulances. Now he's in the passenger seat filming this with his phone, and he's nervous. They spot an ambulance on the side of the road and they see bodies. They step out and immediately this happens. They come under attack.

[Juana Summers]

And just so I understand, these guys are coming out of clearly marked emergency vehicles to check on another ambulance on the side road where some paramedics have already been killed. What happens now?

[Aya Batrawi]

So Raan records nearly seven minutes of video on it. And for more than five minutes, we can hear him being shot at. We can hear him praying to God for forgiveness over and over again. And he's also asking his mom to forgive him. In this moment, he tells his mom he was only trying to save lives if she could forgive him. Now the gunfire continues for several minutes until we hear some Hebrew being shouted. It's unclear what's being said, but then the video cuts.

[Juana Summers]

And Aya, before that video was released, though, Israel's military, they put out their own statement on this incident and it does not resemble what was in the video. Right?

[Aya Batrawi]

Right. So they say troops open fire toward Hamas vehicles and killed several militants. And they say Hamas repeatedly uses ambulances for its own purposes. Then they say more vehicles approach them suspiciously soon after this without headlights or emergency signals on, and that troops again killed More Hamas militants. And the military then says that after an initial inquiry, the suspicious vehicles that were moving towards the troops turned out to be ambulances and fire trucks. Now, if their statement sounds confusing, that's because it is. It's unclear if they're saying that everyone in these cars was identified as militants or if they're actually saying they were militants, but they do acknowledge that these were rescue vehicles and did not have their lights on. That's what they say. Now, unlike other attacks in Gaza, where there are two versions of events, sometimes the Israeli side or the Palestinian. In this one, there's proof. It was that video unearthed on the body of Radwan, who was one of the 15 killed that night. It was on his phone in his pocket.

[Juana Summers]

And aya, you and NPR's producer in Gaza, Anas Baba, actually spoke with a survivor from that night. Can you just tell us a bit about him and what he told you?

[Aya Batrawi]

Sure. So there's only two survivors from this evening, Munzer Abed and another paramedic, Assad Al Nasara, who's still being held by the Israeli military, detained, and they haven't said why they're holding him. Now, Abid was also detained by troops that night. He says the Israeli troops cursed him, his religion, spat on him, beat him with their rifles. He was blindfolded the entire time before they let him go. Fifteen hours later, the 27 year old told us he didn't think he was going to survive the shooting or that evening. Abbott says this isn't the first time the Israeli military has killed rescue workers in Gaza and he doesn't think it'll be the. He believes they did try to cover up the attack, fearing a scandal, but says thank God the video revealed the truth. Now, Muntzer's been a paramedic with the red Crescent for 10 years, and he says this was the first time he'd ever come under direct fire. He says he can't work anymore. He's too traumatized. He told us he suffers from nightmares. And he'd already lost a brother who was an aid worker who was killed last year in an Israeli airstrike.

[Juana Summers]

Wow. And for days after this attack, the Palestinian Red Crescent and Civil Defense were demanding answers about their missing crews. The UN was finally given permission by Israel to enter this area of Rafah and recover the bodies. What did they find?

[Aya Batrawi]

So Jonathan Whittle leads the UN's humanitarian response in Gaza, and he led this recovery mission. So from the UN car on that mission to retrieve these bodies, they come across and film A woman they say is shot by Israeli troops in Rafah while trying to heed military evacuation orders in this area. And then the video also shows a young man shot trying to retrieve her.

[Juana Summers]

And what did they find? When they reached the site where the paramedics and rescue workers were killed, they.

[Aya Batrawi]

Find the 15 bodies in a mass grave.

[Marwan Jelani]

Romeo 2, this is Romeo 1.

[Juana Summers]

I'm just going to check to see.

[Marwan Jelani]

If there's any human remains in here.

[Juana Summers]

Just wait out.

[Aya Batrawi]

And they found the ambulances crushed into the sand by bulldozers.

[Juana Summers]

Ea, tell us what the Israeli military's investigation determined in all of this.

[Aya Batrawi]

Well, it's important to know that they premise the findings around the mindset of the troops. And they say that this was a hostile combat zone. But the investigation also says that from the start, it's the troops responsibility to respect and protect medical teams. So the military says there were three shootings by Israeli troops that night in this area. The first hit a Palestinian ambulance, and it was the bodies of those medics that the rescue vehicles came upon when they, too, were attacked. Then there was a third vehicle, a UN car with a Palestinian aid worker inside who arrived after the main shooting and was himself killed. So the investigation says the deputy commander on the ground was operating under a, quote, sense of threat and that he ordered troops to open fire. The investigation determines these were the result of a, quote, operational misunderstanding. And they say that this deputy commander did not recognize the emergency vehicles due to what they say was poor night visibility. And the investigation faults him for providing what they describe as an inaccurate and incomplete report during his debriefing about what originally had happened that night. Now, this deputy commander was dismissed from his position, but he was described in the military's findings as a highly respected officer who'd been volunteering his service after the October 7th attack by Hamas that killed 1200 people in Israel in 2023. Now, the military also reprimanded a top commanding officer, but stopped short of dismissing him.

[Juana Summers]

Okay, but what did they have to say about the bodies that were buried in this mass grave and the vehicles that were crushed?

[Aya Batrawi]

The military determined that removing the bodies was reason under the circumstances, they say to prevent further harm to them, but that the decision to crush the vehicles was wrong. And they insist there was no attempt by soldiers to conceal the event.

[Juana Summers]

Aya, what has been the response to this attack as well as the military's investigations?

[Aya Batrawi]

The Palestinian Red Crescent says the military's investigation conceals a wider truth, that the Israeli military repeatedly commits violations. You know, before this attack, 125 Palestinian emergency workers had already been killed on the job over the past 18 months of this war in Gaza. And Whittle of the UN who led that recovery mission, he's also urged greater accountability. He says the conclusion that the ambulances couldn't be recognized in the dark flies in the face of the evidence. And earlier this month in a briefing from Gaza, he said this about the attack on the rescue workers.

[Juana Summers]

I think it's really emblematic of the.

[Marwan Jelani]

Point that we've reached in Gaza. What is happening here defies decency.

[Aya Batrawi]

It defies humanity. It defies the law.

[Juana Summers]

It really is a war without limits.

[Aya Batrawi]

A war without limits. And that's what critics say soldiers on the ground are hearing from their leaders. So in a video circulating online aired On Israel's Channel 14 news, the commander of the Golani reconnaissance Battalion whose forces were involved in the shooting tells them before last month's ground offensive, anyone we encounter is an enemy. We identify a figure, we eliminate it. And he says this is how to free Israeli hostages still held by Hamas in Gaza. Now, this commander's deputy was the one dismissed after the investigation, but this message of military pressure is being echoed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Just this weekend, he said Israel will not stop the war until hostages are returned on Israeli terms of a ceasefire. And Hamas is now since this attack a month ago on Israeli airstrikes and attacks have killed another 1400 Palestinians. Gaza's health ministry says a third of them are children. And the Israeli military has taken over the entire southern stretch of Gaza and is taking over more territory in other areas. And it continues pushing ahead with its offensive.

[Juana Summers]

That was NPR's Aya Batawi in Dubai. Thank you so much.

[Aya Batrawi]

Thanks, Juana.

[Juana Summers]

This episode was produced by Connor Donovan with reporting by Anas Baba, Hadil Al Shalchi, Yanal Jabari, Abu Bakr Bashir and Ahmed Abu Hamda. It was edited by James Heider and Courtney Dorning. Our executive producer is Sammy Yenigun. It's consider this from NPR. I'm Juana Summers.

[Marwan Jelani]

When Malcolm Gladwell presented NPR's Throughline podcast with a Peabody Award, he praised it for its historical and moral clarity. On Throughline, we take you back in time to the origins of what's in the news, like presidential power, aging and evangelicalism. Time travel with us every week on the Throughline podcast from npr.

[Aya Batrawi]

Having news at your fingertips is great, but sometimes you need an escape and that's where short wave comes in. We're a joy filled science podcast driven by wonder and curiosity that will get you out of your head and in touch with the world around you. Listen now to Short Wave, the science podcast from npr.

[Martinez]

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