Mosquito Protocol: Ex-Israeli Soldier on Army’s Systematic Use of Palestinians as Human Shields

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: We turn now to Gaza, where more evidence is coming to light about how Israel has systematically used Palestinians as human shields in violation of both international and Israeli law. That’s the conclusion of a new investigation by the Associated Press based on interviews with Israeli soldiers and with Palestinians who said they were used as human shields to inspect buildings, tunnels and other sites in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. The AP reports the Israeli soldiers said the practice was used in part to spare combat dogs from injury or death. One Israeli sergeant admitted to using Palestinians as young as 16 years old as human shields.

AMY GOODMAN: In February, the news outlet +972 revealed how Israel used an 80-year-old man as a human shield. Troops tied an explosive cord around his neck, then forced him to search abandoned buildings. After he finished the mission, he was ordered to flee, but then another Israeli unit fatally shot him and his wife Haaretz and the Red Cross have also documented Israel’s use of human shields.

The AP report is based in part on testimonies collected by Breaking the Silence, a group made up of former Israeli soldiers opposed to the Israeli occupation. The group has also released photos of Palestinians being used as human shields in Gaza.

We’re joined now by the group’s executive director, Nadav Weiman. He’s a former Israeli soldier, joining us from Tel Aviv.

Thanks so much for being with us. Tell us what information you collected, the Israeli soldiers you talked to, and how exactly they’re using Palestinians as human shields.

NADAV WEIMAN: So, Amy, I’ve got to say that from the beginning of this war, we got testimonies from soldiers that told us that they were ordered by senior officers to grab Palestinians next to them and to use them as human shields, meaning that they were ordered to send Palestinians — some of them were dressed up with IDF uniforms, had GoPro cameras on their head or on their chest, and then they were sent into tunnels and houses to check that there isn’t any IEDs or explosives over there, so the soldiers could enter safely or clear the area. And we got testimonies from different units, different times, different places in the Gaza Strip, which shows, as you said, that it’s widely spread, this protocol.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Nadav, as far as you know, how long has this practice been in place?

NADAV WEIMAN: Now, the first testimony that we have is from December 2023, meaning immediately after the ground invasion started. And the last testimony that we had is from the beginning of this year, beginning of 2025, just before the ceasefire. And it’s something that the IDF is using more and more and more, more units and more areas throughout the world.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And to what extent are you aware of soldiers resisting these orders to use Palestinians as human shields?

NADAV WEIMAN: Yeah, so, it’s interesting. Now, every — almost every soldier in the IDF learned about the fact that we used Palestinians as human shields during the Second Intifada. Back then, we called it the “neighbor procedure,” when you come to arrest a high-ranking Palestinian or you know that he’s armed, so you grab the next-door neighbor, and you told the neighbor, “You knock on the door. Not me.” And maybe he will get shot. And if nobody shot him, then we told him, “Get inside the house. Open all of the doors, and open all of the lights,” so we will be more safe. And that was banned by the Supreme Court in Israel in the end of the Second Intifada. So, the reservists in the Israeli army grew up on that history, that we did something, it was bad, but it was banned, and that’s it.

And now they got a command that is exactly that, but, I can say, even worse, actually. Right? Because it’s dressing them up in IDF uniform. Some of the soldiers told us that it’s maybe that they will be the target, so they will get shot. Now, the thing is, is that our testifiers told us there was a debate inside their unit, but it’s our testifiers, right? I just read an op-ed in Haaretz of an officer that served in Gaza, and he said that almost every platoon is using human shields. Right? So, our testifiers told us there was a debate. They came to the senior officers and told them, “Hey, you know, that we were trained to fight, not to use human beings as human shields, or that’s dehumanization of Palestinians, or that’s immoral or illegal,” or I don’t know what. But I cannot tell you what’s going on in the greater IDF at the moment.

AMY GOODMAN: So, explain, Nadav Weiman, why this is called the “mosquito procedure.” And also talk about what these Israeli soldiers told you about what happens to the Palestinians, many forced into houses, buildings, tunnels, that are suspected of being booby-trapped, allegedly made to perform tasks like looking for explosives in tunnels.

NADAV WEIMAN: Yeah, so, first of all, a lot of things that the IDF has names for, I don’t know the reason. But I can say that mosquito, like, it’s a bug that flies in the air, and, like, you can kill it. Who cares about it? And that was the relationship a lot of times between the soldiers and those Palestinian individuals that were used. And that’s the word: They were “used.” Right? We have a testifier that called them a “sub-army of slaves.”

Now, the protocol is quite simple. You need that individual with you for a period of time — two days, three days, a week, three weeks. So, it means that only when he’s scanning a tunnel or a house or an alley, so he doesn’t have handcuffs or a blindfold. The rest of the time, when he’s with you inside the house, you need to feed him. You need to take him to the bathroom. But he’s also handcuffed and blindfolded, so you need to help him. In some units, they were — the mosquitoes inside the house were used to clean the house where the soldiers stayed. So, it’s not only — you know, don’t only think about that time in the tunnel when they need to endanger their life. Think about the rest of the time, the majority of the day, that they were living with the soldiers inside the house. But again, eventually, they were supposed to be released. So, it’s — again, I’m quoting that soldier — a “sub-army of slaves.”

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Nadav, could you talk about the context in which this news has been coming out, where there’s mounting anger against Netanyahu, protests all across the country yesterday, for refusing to agree to a deal that would guarantee the release of Israeli hostages in Gaza? If you could explain what the mood is in Israel, the repeated calls for Netanyahu to step down? You’ve said that he’s acting like a dictator.

NADAV WEIMAN: Yeah, so, from the very beginning of this war, we and other human rights organizations, we called for a deal to release our hostages, ceasefire and enter humanitarian aid into Gaza. Now, at the beginning, we were a minority at the protests. But as this war — it’s hard for me to call it a war, because, as a soldier, they told me that a war, it’s two armies fighting one another. So, as this intensive operation in Gaza went so long, and we killed so many civilians, and we lost so many of our soldiers, and also we — also some of our hostages, more and more Israelis are resisting this war. And if you look at polls in Israel at the moment, you can see that the majority of Israelis, meaning even Bibi’s voters, I believe, are against the continuation of this war, and pro-hostage deal and pro-ending this war. And you can see the atmosphere on the streets.

What happened yesterday, it was the 600th day of this operation, or since October 7th, and we saw a lot of anger. You know, protesters in Tel Aviv took over the headquarters of the Likud party in Tel Aviv for a couple of hours, right? And they put signs. They said it’s the embassy of Qatar, because of the allegation that Qatar paid for the close advisers of Bibi to support them more than anything else. But I can say that what changed is, in the mid-March, when we returned fighting in Gaza, when we continued bombing in Gaza, and we broke the ceasefire, and we stopped releasing our hostages, the majority of the audience in Israel understood that this is a war to protect Bibi’s seat and Bibi’s government, not to release our hostages, not to fight Hamas and not to defend our borders, because if that was the case, we will go to a hostage deal, like Witkoff helped us achieve in the minute Trump stepped into office. Now, what we saw yesterday is more and more Israelis understanding that we are being lied to, that our soldiers are sent to die and to be killed for themselves without any good reason, without releasing our hostages or ending this war.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to turn for a last example to the occupied West Bank, Israel admitting to strapping a wounded Palestinian man to the hood of an Israeli military vehicle during a raid on Jenin. Relatives and neighbors of the man, Mujahid Azmi, said Israeli soldiers used him as a human shield instead of allowing him to get medical care after he’d been shot. This is 13-year-old Alaa Azmi speaking last year.

ALAA AZMI: [translated] We told them we want an ambulance for the wounded person in the room, so the army told us to bring him to them. We got him outside. And for about an hour or a half an hour, we kept asking for an ambulance. Then we called one. Fifteen minutes later, two Jeeps came, and they got in here. The troops told us to turn around and not to look. And they put Mujahid on the Jeep’s hood and took him.

AMY GOODMAN: After a video of the incident went viral, the Israeli military released a statement claiming the action was, quote, “in violation of orders and standard operating procedures.” Nadav Weiman, if you can talk about how Israel is responding now to this latest news of this much more widespread use of exactly this kind of example?

NADAV WEIMAN: Now, first of all, I’ve got to say that IDF spokespersons a lot of times when they are confronted with something bad that soldiers did that are against regulation, they say, “It’s against regulation. We will educate the soldiers. A mistake.” And that’s it — no investigation, no nothing.

Now, I’ve got to say that now the IDF announced that six investigations were opened after the IDF soldiers used Palestinians as human shields in Gaza. And it’s a joke, right? Because we have so many more incidents. And even Yaniv Kubovich from Haaretz newspaper published a couple of months ago that Herzi Halevi, then-commander-in-chief of the IDF, was sitting in the meeting room while the mosquito protocol was discussed, meaning that everybody knew.

Now, I’ve got to say, that connects to something a lot bigger in the Israeli society, and that’s dehumanization of Palestinians. Right? Since October 7th, it’s even on steroids, right? We have government members that are openly talking about genocide. Right? When the head of the Labor Party, Yair Golan, last week said that the right-wing politician likes to kill Palestinian kids and babies, he was called as a traitor by our government. You know, we have ministers saying there isn’t any innocent in Gaza, that all of the Palestinians are assisting terror or terrorists by themselves. And that seeps down into the IDF, into commands that soldiers are getting. And if you connect that with the fact that we have more and more officers and commanders in the IDF that comes from the religious right wing and from the settler movement and believe that maybe it’s a holy war, not a war of defending ourselves, you can understand why you have such a huge amount of those kind of incidents. Dehumanization of Palestinians in Israel became something so common that it also leads to these kind of practices inside the IDF.

AMY GOODMAN: Nadav Weiman, we want to thank you for being with us, executive director of Breaking the Silence, a whistleblower group of former Israeli soldiers.

When we come back, Israeli troops have fatally shot at least 10 Palestinians as they attempted to collect food and aid amidst the chaotic unveiling of a new Israeli-U.S.-backed aid distribution plan run by a shadowy U.S. group. We’ll speak to Jeremy Scahill of Drop Site News, in 20 seconds.

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