Afrasianet - A five-month investigation reveals how four members of the same family were shot dead in a single day, and highlights the pattern of Israeli forces targeting unarmed civilians.
The British newspaper "The Guardian" publishes a detailed investigative investigation into the killing of a Palestinian family in Gaza by Israeli snipers, including soldiers with dual American and German citizenship.
The investigation focuses on the individual tragedy and systematic crimes against civilians in Gaza, while providing precise details of the victims, perpetrators, modus operandi, and legal considerations.
The following is the text of the interrogation:
Daniel Raab showed no hesitation as he watched a video of 19-year-old Salem Daghmash collapsing to the ground next to his brother on a street in northern Gaza.
"That was my first exclusion," he says. The video, filmed with a drone, lasted only a few seconds. The young Palestinian looked unarmed when he was shot in the head.
Rapp, a former basketball player from a Chicago suburb who became an Israeli sniper, admits he knew it. He says he shot Salem just because he was trying to retrieve the body of his older brother, Habib Mohammed.
In a video interview posted on X, Raab said: "It's hard for me to understand why he was trying to retrieve his body and I honestly don't care. I mean, what was important about this body?"
A five-month investigation by The Guardian, the investigative journalism network ARIJ, Paper Trail Media, Der Spiegel and ZDF revealed the identities of six people who were shot dead by Israeli snipers on November 22, 2023. Through interviews with survivors, eyewitnesses, and relatives, and a review of death certificates, medical records, and geographic photographs, we revealed how a family from Gaza City's Tel al-Hawa neighborhood was killed in a matter of hours by men who grew up in Naperville, Illinois, and Munich, Germany.
Israeli snipers killed four members of the Daghmash family that day, wounding two others. Their story highlights the killing patterns perpetrated by Israeli occupation soldiers, who routinely targeted unarmed men between the ages of 18 and 40 in Gaza.
The mass slaughter of tens of thousands of civilians is one of the factors cited by researchers, lawyers, and human rights groups who say Israel is committing genocide.
"They say to themselves, 'Oh, I don't think I'm going to be a target because I'm dressed in civilian clothes and I don't carry a weapon and so on,' but they were wrong," said Raab, who majored in biology at the University of Illinois before joining the Israeli army. That's why there are snipers."
After Salem was shot, his father, Montaser, 51, rushed to the scene and tried to collect the bodies of his two sons for burial, but was also fatally wounded by a sniper.
The need for a dignified funeral for loved ones is a fundamental human instinct, protected by law and addressed in works of art. It is mentioned in Homer's Iliad, one of the earliest surviving literary works.
But that day, Raab treated love and grief as the reason for the killing. "They kept coming to try to pull these bodies out," he said.
The video of Salem's death, and other footage of attacks on unarmed Palestinians, was posted online five months after his death, as part of a clip made by a soldier named Shalom Gilbert to celebrate the deployment of his army in Gaza.
Raab later stated that he and another sniper carried out three of these killings, in an interview conducted under deceptive circumstances by a team led by Palestinian journalist and activist Younis Tirawi.
Tirawi said he reached out to Raab speaking in Hebrew and claimed that he wanted to write about the band's experiences and commemorate fallen soldiers. Raab promised to remain anonymous, but Tirawi posted excerpts of the interview online, justifying the decision by saying it was in the public interest, given the scale of civilian deaths.
Raab did not name his partner, who was later identified from the photos as Daniel Gretz.
Raab and Greitz did not respond to requests for comment on the shooting, which were sent over several months by journalists working on the investigation.
The tragedy of the Daghmash family took place on a short stretch of Munir al-Rais Street in Gaza City, near Barcelona Park.
Residents were aware of the presence of Israeli forces in the area, but on the morning of November 22, 2023, the sound of someone cutting wood in the street reassured locals that there was no active fighting in the area. It was a false sense of security.
When Mohammed Daghmash set out into the garden with his cousin, Raab and Graetz were already in their place.
The two men were part of a sniper team whose members called themselves Refaim, meaning ghosts. They had no connection to an elite official special forces unit also known as Rafaim.
Many of the unit's members held dual nationalities, and photos and videos of their operations that went viral online helped human rights organizations alert prosecutors in Belgium and France to suspected war crimes by unit members.
Raab and Gritz's location was traced back to photos and videos taken by Israeli soldiers showing the snipers pointing their weapons through a window and a hole in the wall. Using satellite imagery, the investigative team geolocated this location in a six-story building about 400 meters from the site of the killings.
The location provided a clear view of Munir Al Rais Street. A Palestinian journalist working on the investigation visited the buildings and found more evidence of the presence of "ghost" snipers: graffiti showing the number 9 with devil's horns, the band's unofficial logo.
The reporter, who also interviewed Daghmash's family, asked not to be named because Israel killed at least 189 journalists in Gaza. Mohammed, who was 26 when he was killed, has a high school diploma and was supporting his family by collecting metal and plastic waste for resale. Salem dropped out of school after the 10th grade and joined it.
Faiza Daghmash recognized her sons from Salem's olive green shirt and Mohammed's black clothes when she was offered Gilbert's recording. She cried indescribably as she watched what happened 18 months after her two sons were killed.
Mohammed, who loved to eat chicken wings and helped his mother kneade the family bread every day, was the first to come out. Then he greeted his cousin Yusuf from his nearby house, and the two men left.
Israeli forces may have filmed his final moments. Gilbert's montage includes two distorted videos of targeted killings. Youssef says he recognizes himself, walking with his hands in his pockets next to Mohammed, his old friend.
Raab describes this video as Gretz's "second elimination," in their early days in Tel al-Hawa. Gretz, who grew up in Munich, can be seen in Gilbert's video, and his identity has been confirmed through facial recognition technology and interviews with former classmates.
Weapons experts who examined the scene were divided on whether the projectile seen in several shots was a bullet from a sniper rifle. The images show a man with a gunshot wound in the back, while Youssef says Mohammed was shot in the front.
But if what Raab and Muhammad's relatives say is true, Gretz seems to have killed Muhammad because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Neither man was carrying a weapon.
In November 2023, Israeli forces operating in the area decided that part of Munir al-Rais Street was off-limits to civilians, without notifying Palestinians. Raab described the area as a "combat zone" where any man of conscription age is "a target worth dying for."
Israeli soldiers have testified that creating an invisible "security perimeter" and then shooting at civilians who cross it has become a common practice in Gaza.
When asked how his team made the decision to shoot unarmed Palestinians, Raab said, "It's a matter of distance. There's a line that we deline. They don't know where this line is, but we know it."
The Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology examined the videos that contained the most critical statements and found no indication that the content had been modified.
After Muhammad was killed, Yusuf ran to inform his brothers, inadvertently ending Salem's fate. Raab describes on camera how he shot the teenager when he came to collect Mohammed's body.
The return of bodies is protected by international law. Israeli army regulations also state that people who collect bodies are not legitimate targets.
The next victim was Salem and Mohammed's father, Muntaser. "My sons," was all he could say when he saw them dead bodies in the street. He tried to get close to them and I shot him.
The snipers then targeted his cousin, Khalil, who rushed to Montaser's aid. Khalil, who managed to stagger out of sight before he lost consciousness, said: "I had taken about eight to ten steps carrying it when I was shot, and I felt like my arm had been amputated."
The two men were taken to hospital, but Montaser died the next day. The family decided they could not risk losing more, and left the brothers' bodies on the street until the ceasefire began on November 24.
"Whoever came close was shot," Khalil said. Khalil is still suffering from the bullet damage that hit his torso just below his armpit, so strong that he initially thought his arm had been amputated. "If I walk a little, I get tired. If I work, I get tired."
There is no video of him being shot, but Rapp describes a person from his squad beating a Palestinian near the brothers' bodies, causing a serious injury to his arm. "I had his arm amputated, and we assumed he wouldn't survive," he said.
The attacks match a pattern described by a former Israeli reservist, who told the Guardian that soldiers who served with them in Gaza repeatedly fired at unarmed Palestinians trying to retrieve bodies.
Mohammed, Salem and Muntaser were not the only members of their family who were shot near Barcelona Park on that day in November.
Mohammed Farid, 47, a distant cousin of the Daghmash brothers, lived on Munir al-Rais Street. He had evacuated his family to a less vulnerable building earlier in November, but wanted to check if their house had been damaged. On his way back, he met another cousin, Jamal, who was finishing a similar mission, and they continued on their way together.
When they reached the corner of Jamal Street, a few meters from his house, Farid was shot. Jamal's wife, Amal in horror, watched as Farid collapsed to the ground as her husband rushed to take cover.
In Gilbert's video, there is a third clip showing a murder, which Raab also identifies as the work of his partner, Greitz.
The clip shows two men walking away from the camera down a street littered with rubble. Neither of them appears to have been carrying a weapon. A bullet went off, and one of them fell to the ground, while the other rushed to escape the fire.
Witnesses, including Farid's immediate family and his cousin Jamal, identified the victim as Farid, referring to his distinctive headscarf. He was taken to hospital, but was pronounced dead within half an hour.
Raab says Israeli snipers shot eight people in two days near Barcelona Park. Six of them were probably from the Daghmash family. Mohammed and Salem, their father Muntaser and Mohamed Farid, were killed, and two of his cousins were wounded. Two unidentified bodies were also found in the area at the time, according to eyewitnesses and survivors.
Raab says his "team" had killed a total of 105 people by the end of its mission in Gaza. "It's really impressive," he said of the toll.
International law protects unarmed individuals and the collection of bodies. Experts said the shooting on Munir al-Rais Street appeared to be a violation of that. Tom Dannenbaum, a professor of international law at Stanford Law School, said: "The available evidence points to a war crime."
Nearly two years after the shooting, the survivors of the Daghmash family are more hopeful of divine justice than the sharia courts. Faiza remembers standing next to her house when they brought her two sons' bodies. "Even if you forgive him, God won't forgive him," she says of Raab.
(The names of survivors and witnesses have been changed for security reasons.)
Source: The Guardian