Two weeks ago, the investigative program HaMakor on Israel’s Channel 13 aired a 60-minute report on the December 2023 killing of three Israeli hostages — Yotam Haim, Alon Shamriz, and Samer Al-Talalka — who were shot by Israeli soldiers in Shuja’iya, eastern Gaza City, after emerging from a hiding place carrying a white flag.
Even without intimate knowledge of the details, one thing should have been clear from the outset: When soldiers fire from inside buildings at three shirtless men carrying a white flag, kill two of them, then pursue the third, call him out of hiding, and shoot him dead, the issue is not merely “mistaken identity.” The issue is that Israeli soldiers routinely shoot innocent people. One would have to be extraordinarily naïve to believe that the single time this happened, the victims just happened to be Israelis.