Israel reportedly executed elderly Gaza man after using him for propaganda purposes
Israeli forces reportedly shot dead a 79-year-old Palestinian man who was fleeing his home in the Gaza Strip after taking photos with him for propaganda purposes.
Photo: Israeli propaganda image posted on the IDFTweets Instagram account with the comment: “Our soldiers are humans before being fighters.” The civilian in the photo was identified as Bashir Hajji, a 79-year-old Palestinian, found dead along the same humanitarian corridor, shot twice in the back. – Source: X / Twitter (Muhammed Shehada)
An elderly Palestinian man fleeing his home in Gaza and appearing in Israeli military propaganda was found dead after being executed by Israeli soldiers, the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said.
Bashir Hajji, a 79-year-old resident of the Zaytoun neighborhood of Gaza City, was seen in a photo next to a soldier while traveling on the main Salah al-Din road from the Gaza Strip to the south from Gaza, where Israel says it has established a “security corridor”, allowing civilians to flee to the south of the besieged and bombed Palestinian enclave.
However, photos later emerged on social media showing that Mr Hajji had died after being shot in the head and back by soldiers. The deceased man in the photos was wearing the same blue polo shirt and striped tracksuit bottoms as in the previous images.
The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Observatory said it “strongly condemns” his killing by Israeli forces, as well as the treatment of other displaced Palestinians who are escaping Israel’s ground assault on northern Syria. the Gaza Strip.
“The soldier in the photo appears to be helping and protecting displaced Palestinian civilians…yet Mr. Hajji was executed on the ground on the morning of Friday, November 10”the human rights watchdog said.
Left: Israel posted this PR picture with a disabled elderly Gazan, Bashir Hajji (75), bragging about their “humanity”
Right: Bashir’s body was discovered right after, killed with 2 shots to the head & back, by his granddaughter
“He died tired, cold, thirsty & hungry” she wrote pic.twitter.com/aXwerDEqIA
— Muhammad Shehada (@muhammadshehad2) November 14, 2023
The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Observatory called on the United Nations and the International Criminal Court to open “an urgent independent investigation into the criminal executions of which displaced Palestinians have been and are still being subjected, to demand accountability from those who ordered these crimes and to obtain justice for the victims.”
The human rights group said Mr Hajji’s granddaughter, Hala Hajji, confirmed her grandfather’s death to a Euro-Med team and said he appeared in the released photo by Israel.
The organization added that this “highlighted the Israeli military’s dangerous practice of blatantly fabricating stories.”
Israeli civilian and military officials have been caught repeatedly disinformation since the start of the indiscriminate war on Gaza, which has killed more than 11,000 people, most of them women and children.
Euro-Med said it had documented several cases of displaced Palestinians attempting to flee to the southern Gaza Strip, following Israel’s evacuation order for 1.1 million residents of the northern Gaza Strip. Gaza to move towards the south of the territory, and who were shot down by Israeli soldiers or killed by artillery fire.
The United Nations Human Rights Council also documented the 2014 assassination of Ghalia Abu Reda, a 70-year-old Palestinian woman in a wheelchair who was shot dead in her family home and later presented with an Israeli soldier in a post on social media as having been given water before his death.
Ahmad Qdeh, a journalist for the Hamas-run Al Aqsa TV, later claimed to have witnessed the event and recounted what happened.
“Ghalia Ahmad Abu-Reda lived in the Khuza’ district, east of the city of Khan Younis. I also live in this neighborhood and I made a television report on her story after Israeli soldiers executed this woman during their attack on the neighborhood,” Mr. Qdeh said.
“During the attack, an Israeli soldier approached the elderly woman Abu-Reda and took a photo for another soldier while giving her water. They then executed her by shooting her in the head from a meter away and left her to bleed out until she died.”.
About 200,000 people have fled the north and south of the Gaza Strip in recent days, as Israel continues its ground offensive and deadly bombings on the Gaza Strip, the United Nations humanitarian office said Tuesday. Tens of thousands of people are believed to have remained in the north.
Translated by: AFPS
