Israeli soldiers appear to have stopped them and moments later the person is shot. This next video is set to show a group of Palestinians walking north on May 17th. One of them steps out of the group and raises their hands in the air, apparently showing that they’re unarmed, they’re shot within minutes. Then the video appears to show soldiers coming in to take the person’s body away. And in this footage another person is standing in the same area with their hands in the air. This is shortly before they’re shot by Israeli soldiers. The same then happens to another person later.

We’re going to bring in Anthony Lowenstein. He’s the author of The Palestine Laboratory. It’s a book on Israel’s arms and surveillance industry. He’s joining us live from Sydney. Thank you very much indeed for being with us. I want you to help me out with some context, first of all, geographically. What’s your understanding of where the safe zone was at this time? Well, the truth is there is no safe zone, as every viewer will know. I mean, Israel has claimed at various points in the last eight plus months that certain parts of Gaza were safe zones, particularly in the last month or so, for example, where around 800,000 to a million Palestinians and Rafah moved slightly away from the border on Egypt.

But there was no safe zone because those areas were also bombed. So there are no safe zones, despite what Israel claims. And this sort of footage that you’re showing is just yet the latest example of the complete criminality, really, and unaccountability of Israeli forces there without any kind of rules of engagement. Of course, the Israeli military says there are rules of engagement if you ask them directly. But as we’ve seen for a long time in Gaza, and frankly, long before October 7, those rules of engagement are lax at best. When it comes to situations like this, one of the arguments that are defenses, shall we say, that is put forward by the Israeli military is that individuals would pose some sort of threat to the troops or they were encroaching on some sort of military installation.

You’ve seen the pictures. What’s your interpretation? Would that argument stand up? No, is the short answer. And it’s similar to what we saw, I think, about a month or so ago, also in Al Jazeera, from footage, drone footage of Palestinians unarmed who are walking in an open field, nothing near a military installation, who were shot dead, a number of them. And this fits into a longstanding pattern. And almost certainly, if Israel does respond to this, they will say, yes, we’ll investigate. It was against the rules of engagement. We deeply apologize. But it never goes anywhere.

And that’s similar to what we’ve seen, for example, of huge amounts of Israeli soldiers documenting on TikTok and other social media platforms, other abuses of Palestinians, the humiliation of Palestinians. And the idea that there’s a particular safe zone, I think, also goes to the heart of what Israel’s creating in Gaza, which is large buffer zones, that in the current negotiations for a so-called ceasefire, which appeared to be stalled yet again, there is a talk, a demand from Hamas that all Israeli forces would inevitably withdraw in a reasonable amount of time.

But Israel has been creating for months, largely out of the international eye, buffer zones, where around 16 to 20 percent of Gaza has essentially been gobbled up by this so-called buffer zone. And there’s no suggestion from Israel that they would ever leave that buffer zone, essentially allowing them access in the north and the south of Gaza any time they want, when and if the war ends. So, the idea of safe zones are a myth, tragically. We are talking about a war zone, and soldiers, combat troops under fire, can be under significant stress.

Is there anything in these pictures to indicate that the soldiers may have been responding to a stressful situation? Look, not that we’re seeing. Obviously, it’s impossible to know exactly what happened before this footage and what happened slightly after. But it fits into a longstanding pattern, as I say, of Israeli soldiers being trigger-happy. And this has been since October 7 along the Israel-Gaza border for years. And we only have to remember a number of years ago, the so-called Gaza March of Return, where thousands of Palestinians were shot, many of them maimed forever for simply walking towards a fence in Gaza.

And huge numbers of Palestinians were killed as well. So, yes, Israeli soldiers would feel under a threat. That’s no doubt true, because it’s a war zone. But that does not justify any kind of killing of unarmed civilians. Nothing justifies that whatsoever. Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly referred to the Israeli military as the most moral army in the world. Do these pictures reflect that? I mean, the idea that in 2024, the Israeli government and many of its supporters claim that there’s any such thing as a moral army. I mean, the concept of armies, by definition, you could argue, are immoral.

And what I mean by that is that if you look at the U.S. military in the last 20 years, Iraq or Afghanistan, or the Israeli military in Gaza or the West Bank or, frankly, Lebanon in the last years, immorality is the point. Mass killing is the point. Mass slaughter is the point. As we’ve seen in Gaza since October 7, the idea of having potentially 40 to 50,000 Palestinians killed, the vast majority of whom are civilians, no one really buys this argument that Israel is a moral army. Its greatest backers and supporters might support that or believe that delusion.

But no one who’s rational does. And that’s why in many parts of the world, now particularly young people in the U.S., Israel’s image has tanked, completely tanked. And that’s a problem that Israel is going to have moving forward. Ante, let one soon. We appreciate you being with us in Al Jazeera. So thank you very much indeed for your time. Thank you. [tr:trw].

See more of Jim Fetzer on their Public Channel and the MPN Jim Fetzer channel.