'We Can Kill Whoever We Want': Ex-IDF Drone Operator Describes Gaza

An Israeli drone operator who returned to duty after October 7 has described an IDF system in Gaza where, he said, soldiers could kill Palestinians with little fear of accountability and where operational rules steadily gave way to increasingly permissive use of force.

“(I) realized that anyone can kill whoever they want, as much as they want, and they won't be held accountable for it,” Nir, a pseudonym for a reserve major who served as a drone operator and attack-cell commander, told Haaretz.

His account portrays not a series of isolated battlefield errors, but a broader breakdown in restraint: civilians entering newly designated firing zones, strikes justified after the fact, expanding definitions of who could be treated as a target and an operational culture increasingly desensitized to Palestinian deaths.

Ambulances Under Fire

Nir said one of the clearest examples came on March 23, 2025, in Rafah’s Tel-al Sultan neighborhood.

From a drone operations position, he said he watched Israeli troops attack ambulances that were clearly identifiable as emergency vehicles.

Medical personnel exited the vehicles, sought cover and pleaded for their lives before being shot, according to his account.

Nir said military communications initially referred to 15 Hamas operatives, then 12, before the number was reduced to three suspects.

The bodies were later buried at the scene, he said, while the ambulances were crushed by a Caterpillar D9 armored bulldozer and covered with earth.

The IDF described the episode as an identification mistake and professional error. The military advocate general subsequently ordered a Military Police investigation.

For Nir, the incident exposed a wider problem.

He said the significance was not only that people had been killed, but that the military system could absorb such an event and continue operating.

Expanding the Kill Zone

Nir said another example involved the Yellow Line, the IDF’s line of control inside Gaza.

According to him, a division commander moved physical markers westward by hundreds of meters, effectively expanding the area in which Palestinians could be treated as threats.

Civilians were not necessarily aware that the boundary had changed, he said, and the Air Force was not always updated.

A farmer could therefore enter land he believed remained accessible and suddenly find himself inside an area treated by Israeli forces as a firing zone.

“I canceled attacks in droves,” Nir said.

He said proposed strikes were sometimes accompanied by explanations created only after an individual had already been marked for attack.

Claims that a person had approached a weapons deal or might have been planting an explosive device were, in his view, sometimes used without supporting intelligence.

“In my opinion, they tried to incriminate people without intelligence and without proof, retroactively, just to create a justification for an attack,” he said.

“Terrorist” Becomes a Flexible Category

Nir said the definition of a legitimate target also widened during the war.

In one case, a multi-story building was attacked after intelligence indicated that a wanted person had entered it.

The instruction, Nir said, was that anyone leaving the building should be killed.

Fifteen people were killed. The wanted man was not among them.

Nir said the concept of collateral damage also steadily lost operational weight.

“In general,” he said, “very quickly, this whole story of 'collateral damage' disappeared from considerations. They fire at anyone they see.”

The language inside attack cells reflected that shift, he said.

Personnel began urging soldiers to kill in language Nir compared to spectators at a soccer match shouting for a player to score.

A Culture of “Ethical Burnout”

Nir described the broader change as “ethical burnout.”

“The feeling was that something was broken; everyone had become cynical about death,” he said.

He said battlefield exhaustion was accompanied by a weakening of responsibility and an increasing sense that no one remained in control of the limits on lethal force.

That erosion extended beyond individual troops, according to his account, into the processes used to define targets, establish firing zones and assess Palestinian casualties.

Mistakes involving Israeli soldiers were quickly recognized as operational failures, Nir said.

When Palestinians were killed, he said, comparable incidents could instead be rationalized, accepted or retroactively justified.