Story by Yahya Al-Qassas<\/strong><\/h2>\nKHAN YOUNIS, GAZA\u2014In October of 2024, 63-year-old Jameel Al-Masri, a Palestinian man from Beit Hanoun, was working on the staff of Indonesian Hospital while the Israeli military was carrying out what was known as \u201cthe Generals\u2019 Plan,\u201d an effort to depopulate major swaths of Gaza. His job was to help move patients and families through the hospital as safely as possible, a task that went from difficult to impossible as Israel began attacking the area around the hospital in mid-October. Jameel fled with his family to El-Fawka school, seeking refuge.<\/p>\n
But it didn\u2019t matter. Israeli troops came days later, besieged the school, and ordered everyone south.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am a hospital employee that gets his salary from the Palestinian Authority and don\u2019t even work for the government in Gaza. Previously I worked for decades in Israel and spoke Hebrew. I have nothing to do with politics.\u201d<\/p>\n
Near the UN supply center, Israeli soldiers set up a checkpoint and began rounding up all the men in fives. Jameel was among them. While waiting near a detention center, a soldier shouted: \u201cWho knows Hebrew?\u201d Jameel noticed two women had also been abducted and assumed they needed a translator. He stepped forward.<\/p>\n
\u201cI do.\u201d<\/p>\n
That moment changed everything. Soldiers with Israel\u2019s Givati Brigade pulled him aside and interrogated him about his Hebrew. He told them he\u2019d worked in Israel for over 30 years. They blindfolded him and threw him into an armored personnel carrier, an APC. No charges. No explanation.<\/p>\n
When the blindfold came off, he got his first glimpse of a man he had been lying on top of, held like cargo on the floor. They stayed like that for a full day. Jameel still remembers his name: Wael AbdelLatif Abo Amsha.<\/p>\n
The next day, soldiers told them:<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re going to help us get people out of the schools. It\u2019s a two-day job, then you\u2019ll go home. You don\u2019t have anything on you in our system.\u201d<\/p>\n
They dressed him in a vest. He complied, as he did not have any other choice. The soldiers had lied to him: months of torment were ahead.<\/p>\n
A week passed. No release. Only beatings, shouting, humiliation, and filth thrown at them.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to empty all the schools,\u201d they said. \u201cYou will stay here and then go home.\u201d<\/p>\n
The first school Jameel was forced to clear out was in Beit Hanoun. He was ordered to head to the school, put the displaced civilians in lines and move them out. Then came something else. Soldiers would force him to enter destroyed and burned-out homes \u2013 alone. The APC door would open and he would be told to get out\u2014dressed in an IDF uniform\u2014and search inside. A drone hovered over him, emitting a voice that directed him where to go.<\/p>\n
Once he cleared the home, the drone filmed everything. Then soldiers stormed in, planted explosives on the support pillars, and later blew up the house. That was the cycle. Again and again. House after house.<\/p>\n
The military unit changed every month, but Jameel stayed. Three different units. He was their tool. Every week or two, he was dragged back into the field.<\/p>\n
Jameel was sick. He had heart problems, had undergone stent placement, and was often short of breath. Eventually, they realized he couldn\u2019t keep up, and used him less and less over the three months of his abduction.<\/p>\n
One night, when a unit was preparing to leave, they shouted at him as he lay on the stairs, weapons drawn. They ordered him to clean their kitchen. He thought he was finally going home.<\/p>\n
Instead, they sat him down and resumed their game, asking about his Hebrew. One of them loaded his weapon behind him, pointing it at his head, playing around, laughing.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t care. I don\u2019t know what\u2019s on their mind. I was waiting every day for the ceasefire to go home.\u201d<\/p>\n
Every few days they repeated the same promise:<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t worry. One week or ten days and you\u2019ll go home.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, he was fed one piece of bread and a single can of tuna per day. During the first week, they gave him nothing.<\/p>\n
I asked Jameel about his conditions. He didn\u2019t hesitate:<\/p>\n
\u201cSleep was very, very hard. You sleep on the stairs and floor.\u201d<\/p>\n
Weapons pointed at his face, constantly. Orders barked. Sent into dangerous ruins, alone, following a drone. No protection. No dignity. No choice.<\/p>\n
Did the army give him anything for protection?<\/p>\n
\u201cThey would dress me in a vest and give me a military uniform.\u201d<\/p>\n
He asked them why.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause we don\u2019t want the drone above you to shoot you.\u201d<\/p>\n
The soldiers were young. Barely in their twenties. They spoke broken Arabic. Names he remembers: Sion, Dany, Ido, Benjamin.<\/p>\n
Jameel recounts another night: he was lying down when a soldier jumped on him, weapon aimed.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have 2 minutes to get ready.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jameel was sent to scan homes in Jabaliya. If he took too long, hesitated, or moved too slowly from sheer exhaustion, the soldiers cursed him, kicked him, and beat him without warning.<\/p>\n
\u201cSon of a bitch.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat a dog.\u201d<\/p>\n
He saw corpses on the streets.<\/p>\n
Another time, soldiers ordered him to clean the kitchen. One pointed a machine gun at him while the other filmed. They threatened him, saying:<\/p>\n
\u201cNow it\u2019s your time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then they laughed and said it was a joke. It wasn\u2019t the first time. Another unit had done the same thing.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut at least I thought they won\u2019t kill me inside the room. Maybe outside. They don\u2019t want blood where they sleep. They\u2019re afraid of blood and bodies.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jameel had to ask for permission to use the bathroom. The humiliation was constant. And the accusations too.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou did October 7, you handed out candies.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jameel answered:<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat do I have to do with that? Nothing. I go every day to work and back.\u201d<\/p>\n
But the soldier replied:<\/p>\n
\u201cNo! It\u2019s all of you. You were all silent. They told me. They didn\u2019t care. They weren\u2019t asking. They were provoking.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even among themselves, they were violent. Jameel heard them shouting, mocking, bragging. Talking casually about killing.<\/p>\n
\u201cI sniped this guy.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI shot like that.\u201d<\/p>\n
He heard soldiers talk about their post-service trips to Thailand, to the UK, about Trump, about a ceasefire so they could go home. He remembers soldiers speaking about an incident in which one of their colleagues died after playing with a grenade in Jabaliya.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am very psychologically impacted.\u201d<\/p>\n
His family lived in agony.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey thought I was killed. They didn\u2019t inform them of where I was. If it wasn\u2019t for a guy I evacuated from a school during my mission to tell my family I was okay, they would have thought I was dead.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jameel Al-Masri was released on January 20, 2025, the first day of the ceasefire after being abducted on October 18, 2024 from Jabaliya Refugee Camp. Even when he returned to his family, he couldn\u2019t believe it.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt took me an entire month to forget what I just went through. I would wake up and still think I was abducted.\u201d<\/p>\n
He suffers from a prolapsed disc due to the beatings by soldiers. He was deprived of his medication for high blood pressure. After release, doctors found narrowed arteries. He\u2019s on meds now, and physically better. But his mind is still in captivity.<\/p>\n
Following his release, Al-Masri remained in Khan Younis despite orders to leave. His family did not find another place to stay and cannot afford a tent. There are now sheltering in a school.<\/p>\n
Younis Tirawi and Maira Pinheiro contributed reporting.<\/em><\/p>\nSource\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"How soldiers from the \u201cmost moral Army in the world\u201d forced a 63-year-old Palestinian with heart problems to act as a human shield for them while they ravaged Gaza<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":309954,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[118,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-309950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-7-10-gaza-war","category-Israel_Anti-Semitism_Zionism_and_US-UK_allies"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=309950"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309950\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":309955,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309950\/revisions\/309955"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/309954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=309950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=309950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=309950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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