What country could be so depraved that its soldiers would knowingly murder medical workers, consciously bury all the evidence—including the ambulances—and not even notify the families for five days?

What government could be so amoral and shameless as to cover up for their soldiers—until explicit video of the war crime came to light?

And once the lies were exposed, what more powerful and allied country’s president could be so brutal and murderous as to declare full “understanding of” and support for these war crimes?

Read on.

Southern Gaza, March 23, 4:20 a.m. Several Palestinians in the Hashashin district of Rafah had been injured in an Israeli airstrike. A Red Crescent ambulance was dispatched so they could be collected and treated. 

According to international law, knowingly attacking or killing a medic who is clearly identifiable as such, and who is not engaged in combat, is a war crime. 

None of the paramedics sent out by the Red Crescent were armed. The medical personnel and their ambulance were both clearly marked. “The ambulance’s lights were clearly on, and the Red Crescent logo was visible as we headed to the scene,” said Munther Abed, who was in this first ambulance. 

But these paramedics were never able to give aid. When their ambulance arrived in the area, it was hit by a barrage of Israeli gunfire, instantly killing the two sitting in the front seats. Abed was sitting in the back and immediately threw himself on the floor of the van. “I wasn’t hearing any sounds or words from my colleagues. The only thing I heard was their last gasp before they died,” he said. “We were directly and deliberately shot at.”

“Suddenly, I heard people around me speaking Hebrew. Then, they opened the door and special forces came in. I recognized them from their uniforms,” he recalled. “They dragged me out of the car and took me to the sand nearby. They tortured me and beat me.”

More Ambulances and Rescue Vehicles Dispatched

After losing contact with its ambulance, over the next several hours the Red Crescent Society sent out two different convoys, including ambulances and a fire truck, to rescue its paramedics, and the UN and Health Ministry sent vehicles as well. All told 17 people were dispatched.  

By 7:30 a.m., the Red Crescent announced it hadn’t heard from any of the three crews it had dispatched. 

Abel had been beaten with rifles, tied up and forced to lie face-down on the ground. But he managed to catch glimpses of the horrors that came next: As his friends and colleagues arrived on the scene in different groups, each was gunned down in a hail of Israeli bullets. 

Abel saw Israel forces trying to cover up their crimes: “They crushed and buried all the cars—the Red Crescent and Civil Defense cars. They buried everything and covered it with sand.”

The Cellphone Video of Israeli War Crimes

One of the paramedics in the last group to arrive videotaped what happened on his cellphone.

Their convoy was driving along when it spotted a vehicle on the side of the road. They pulled over to investigate and give assistance. But as two of the men approached the vehicle, gunfire exploded. The cellphone screen goes dark but the sound continued for another five minutes. 

The last words you can hear on the video are the prayers of someone who realized he’s about to die: "Forgive me, mother... I was trying to save people."

The crews, including the man filming, were never heard from again. Of the 17 Red Crescent and Civil Defense first responders sent to help the wounded, all but Abel and one other (whose fate is unknown) had been gunned down by Israeli soldiers. 

Israel Refuses to Allow Anyone Near the Crime Scene for Four Agonizing Days

For the next four days, from March 23 through March 26, the Red Crescent, Gaza’s Health Ministry, the UN, and the families, colleagues and friends of the missing were desperately trying to learn their fate. They made repeated requests to search the area, but Israel had sealed off the crime scene and refused to let anyone examine it. 

Israel also refused to provide information on the whereabouts of the missing medics. “They knew exactly where they were because they killed them,” a Palestinian doctor who later examined the bodies said.  

Ask yourself: if Israel had done nothing wrong, as its military spokesperson initially claimed, then why refuse to tell the Red Crescent what happened or give it access the scene?

Finally on March 27 and 28, Red Crescent personnel were able to briefly visit the site. They retrieved one body; it was the leader of their rescue operation. He had been dismembered. 

They also saw the wreckage of their vehicles: “They were bombed and fired at heavily which confirms that something bad has happened to our crews,” the Red Crescent’s spokesperson said afterward. 

A Worst-Case Nightmare

Israel only allowed Palestinian authorities full access to the site on March 30, seven days after its massacre. 

What rescuers found was their worst nightmare: the 14 paramedics and civil defense workers were all dead. They’d been buried in a mass grave near the roadside.¹ All had been shot—most multiple times at very close range, some execution-style in the back of the head. One had his hands tied behind his back. Another first responder had been beheaded. The UN concluded the Israeli military had shot them “one by one.”

All had been buried still wearing their distinctive UN and Red Crescent uniforms.

Their ambulances, rescue, and civil defense vehicles had been gathered together, crushed by bulldozers, then dumped next to the bodies and covered with sand.  

“They were here to save lives,” the UN’s lead humanitarian official in Gaza said. “Instead, they ended up in a mass grave.” 

Israel’s Bald-Faced Lies and Coverup

When news of this massacre first came out, the Israeli military insisted they did nothing wrong. They claimed nine of the victims were Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters and that it was another case of Hamas “once again exploiting medical facilities and equipment for their activities.”  

But Israel provided no proof, and none of the paramedics were armed or had engaged in anything but medical rescue and aid. If the victims really were Hamas operatives, why try and cover up their murder by burying them in a mass grave? 

Then Israel declared that its forces didn’t “randomly attack” the ambulances; they “were identified advancing suspiciously,” approaching in the dark “without headlights or emergency signals,” and this is what necessitated the shooting.²

In other words, this was supposedly a case of “justifiable homicide.”

Israel’s “My Lai” Massacre

This cellphone video was discovered in the pocket of one of the paramedics Israel had executed and then buried in the mass grave. And on April 4 it was published by the New York Times.

It showed the ambulances were clearly marked. Their emergency lights were on. They weren’t driving suspiciously, they were searching for their colleagues and pulled over when they found them. 

Rescue workers, at least two of whom can be seen wearing uniforms, are seen exiting a fire truck and an ambulance marked with the emblem of the Red Crescent and approaching the ambulance derailed to the side. These were paramedics, in clearly distinctive uniforms, not armed combatants. 

All this confirmed what Munther Abed had witnessed: that these were clearly medical vehicles and personnel who were not engaged in military activity. 

The Israeli military knew this from the start: they saw the vehicles, they saw the personnel. They didn’t fire at one group and then realize their “mistake.” They fired on clearly identifiable medical and rescue workers on at least three separate occasions that morning, and then executed them, with their uniforms on, at close range. And then they tried to coverup their crime—literally—by burying the dead and their vehicles in a mass grave.

This is the textbook definition of a war crime.  

What This Video Reveals

The videos of the police murder of George Floyd and beating of Rodney King showed the world what the pigs in the U.S. do ROUTINELY to Black people, the lies they routinely tell to cover up and justify their crimes, and most fundamentally that terrorizing and suppressing Black and other oppressed peoples IS their job under this system. 

This video from a Palestinian paramedic exposes Israel’s barrage of lies and what it is deliberately doing in Gaza all the time. First, it’s targeting Gaza’s medical workers and healthcare infrastructure. Second, it’s terrorizing and massacring innocent civilians. And third, it uses the excuse that any attack it carries out is directed at Hamas in order to try to justify its mass murder and systematic genocide against the Palestinian people.³

But Israel’s military spokesperson was right about one thing: Israeli forces didn’t “fire randomly” on these ambulances. They carry out these kinds of war crimes systematically. 

What This Massacre—and Trump’s Backing of It—Shows About the U.S. and Israel 

The day after the massacre video was released, the Israeli military changed its story. Sort of. It now says the initial account “from forces on the ground” was “mistaken.” It has not yet spelled out how. And it continues to insist—without evidence—that six of the 15 medical and rescue personnel massacred were Hamas operatives. 

Meanwhile, Trump has jumped in, fully supporting not just Israel in general, but this massacre in particular! "Hamas uses ambulances and more broadly human shields for terrorism," a spokesperson for Trump’s National Security Council said on Sunday, April 6. "President Trump understands the impossible situation this tactic creates for Israel and holds Hamas entirely responsible."

This depraved massacre has exposed the illegitimacy and depraved criminality of the state of Israel, and the United States, without whose backing Israel could not and would not be able to carry out such unspeakable crimes. 

This massacre also underlines—and Trump’s support of it further underscores—the grave danger posed by the Trump/MAGA fascist regime, which is ratcheting up these horrors. In this situation, it’s urgent that this truth from Bob Avakian’s social media message Revolution #114—and the entire message (“Defeating Trump/MAGA fascism: Looking to some future elections... or working now to mobilize millions around this powerful unifying demand: The Trump fascist regime must go!”)—is widely spread, understood, and acted on: 

Trump fascism is a regime that openly and aggressively strips away basic rights and blatantly declares that there is no rule of law and due process of law other than what it dictates, and that raw destructive power is what must rule in the international arena, without even the pretense of adherence to international law or concern about the sovereignty, or even the right to exist, of less powerful peoples and countries.