Episode 25: What is happening in Gaza?

Ask Haviv Anything

Haviv Rettig Gur

History

4.9 • 640 Ratings

🗓️ 1 July 2025

⏱️ 48 minutes

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Summary

A bombshell Haaretz report last Friday concluded that IDF soldiers were responsible for a great many of the deaths of Gazan civilians outside aid distribution centers in Gaza.

What should we make of the report? How reliable is it? And what does it tell us about the army's handling of Gaza and the progress of the war?

This episode was sponsored by an anonymous donor in memory of the seven IDF soldiers who were killed on June 24, 2025, during fighting in the southern Gaza Strip. Their names were: Lt. Matan Shai Yashinovski, Staff Sgt. Ronel Ben-Moshe, Sgt. Ronen Shapiro, Sgt. Maayan Baruch Pearlstein, Staff Sgt. Niv Radia, Sgt. Shahar Manoav, and Staff Sgt. Alon Davidov. May their memory be a blessing.

Please join me on Patreon to support this project: ⁠ www.patreon.com/AskHavivAnything⁠

If you would like to sponsor an episode, please email us at ⁠[email protected]⁠.

A podcast by Haviv Rettig Gur

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, everybody.
0:07.0	On June 27, the Israeli newspaper Ha'Aretz published a bombshell news report that argued that
0:15.8	that Israeli soldiers were shooting and killing deliberately.
0:20.4	The word was in the headline, aiming at targeting, shooting and killing,
0:24.8	Gaza and civilians coming to four aid distribution centers in southern Gaza, run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation,
0:31.7	for food, and they were being shot by Israeli soldiers guarding outside of those distribution centers.
0:41.4	The report, of course, when instantly exploded internationally, there have been reports for two
0:48.8	months since the opening of the centers of shootings at people coming to get those aid boxes.
0:57.2	Tens of millions of meals have been given out, but these reports keep filtering out of
1:04.4	Gaza in the proximity of these of these distribution centers. It has not been clear exactly what was happening.
1:14.0	And what I mean by that is we know for a fact that Hamas opened fire on people going to
1:18.3	these distribution centers because Hamas is desperate to avoid the distribution of aid
1:25.5	that isn't in a method in a way that Hamas can take over. In other words,
1:29.4	the Hamas can have its gunmen climb on top of the trucks, as we've seen hundreds of times
1:32.9	already over the last 21 months, and grab the aid and then essentially use the aid, sell
1:36.9	it on the black market, and use the aid to finance its war effort. And Hamas has also
1:43.3	massacred employees, Palestinian employees who work alongside with American contractors in the distribution centers where Israeli soldiers are not allowed to go.
1:54.1	And so was it Hamas?
1:57.1	Some of the Palestinian security at these distribution centers is essentially a militia called Abu Shabab, belonging to a clan based in southern Gaza, that has been armed by the Israelis. They're not controlled by the Israelis. They have their own. They've been fighting Hamas. They've been opposed to Hamas. They've been a power center of their own for quite a while.
2:18.2	But they're being armed by the Israelis on the theory that they are willing to face down Hamas, to hold territory in Gaza.
2:24.0	The Hamas is not allowed to enter.
2:26.1	And that makes them very useful to a war effort to remove Hamas from Gaza.
	...

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