Inside one Israeli Battalion’s
Year-long Mission of Destruction
Younis Tirawi and Sam Vanderlip / New York Progressive Action Network
(October 31, 2024) — In mainstream Western media, the coverage of Israel’s year of scorched-earth destruction often touches on the victims and events happening in Gaza in the passive voice. Death and destruction befall Palestinians the way a city suffers from a hurricane or an earthquake—though in those cases, the media has little difficulty identifying the natural disaster as the cause of the destruction.
When it comes to Gaza, buildings mysteriously explode and people die. Rarely do we see the Israeli military identified as having carried out the act—and never do we see individual members of the military named and identified, their actions described in detail, broken down by unit and task. In fact, doing so in Israel is illegal.
The stated rationale for that censorship is operational security, but according to a report from Israel’s Channel 13, the real aim is to dodge accountability for war crimes. If that’s true, the soldiers themselves work against this cover up on a daily basis—posting endless photos, videos, and montages from the homes and neighborhoods of Gaza they are razing. That’s where this investigation begins.
Journalists Younis Tirawi and Sami Vanderlip have managed to find and archive all the Instagram stories and daily posts shared by the soldiers of one key unit, Israel’s 749 Combat Engineering Battalion. They’ve mapped out the structure of the unit and identified the individual soldiers and officers involved, along with their various roles in operations. They have tracked the activities of each company in the battalion, including what they were doing, when, and where, as the force shred their way through Gaza.
The mission is nothing less than a systematic, concerted, and deliberate effort to erase the intellectual, cultural, and social future of the Palestinian people. “Our job is to flatten Gaza,” the soldiers of the official D9 company of the battalion wrote on their Instagram page. They added, accurately: “No one will stop us.”
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You likely heard about some of the atrocities described in this article in real time and if you follow our work here at Drop Site, learned of the impact on the population. But now you can see it from the perspective of those carrying out and reveling in them.
The following is a thorough account of the acts committed by the 749 battalion, complete with the evidence they post themselves. These are not just isolated events, but represent a pattern that runs through the very heart of the Israeli military—a sadistic attitude toward the civilians of Gaza, whose futures they have been tasked with blowing up or flattening. If sadistic sounds harsh, read through this dispatch and ask yourself if it’s not, in the end, too soft of a description.
We shared the social media videos with the Israeli military and asked for comment as to whether the behavior portrayed was appropriate and what military mission or value was behind them. A spokesperson said:
In response to the barbaric attacks by Hamas, the IDF [Israeli Defense Forces] is working to dismantle the military and administrative capabilities of Hamas.
In complete contrast to the deliberate attacks by Hamas on Israeli men, women and children, the IDF operates according to international law and takes possible precautions to reduce harm to civilians.
The IDF acts to address exceptional incidents that deviate from the orders and expected values of IDF soldiers. The IDF examines events of this kind as well as reports of videos posted on social media and handles them with command and disciplinary measures. In cases involving a suspicion of a criminal offence arises that justifies opening an investigation, an investigation is opened by the Criminal Investigation Division. Upon its conclusion, the findings are transferred to the Military Advocate General for review. It should be clarified that in some of the examined cases, it was concluded that the expression or behavior of the soldiers in the video was inappropriate, and it was handled accordingly.
The type of investigation you’re about to read is extraordinarily time- and resource-intensive. And that doesn’t end after we publish. There will be new leads to follow, as well as intense pushback. All that requires us to build the strongest organization possible. To help make that a reality, please upgrade to a paid subscription if you haven’t already.
Israel’s 8173rd Combat Engineering Battalion in ruins of Gaza.
“Our Job Is to Flatten Gaza. No One Will Stop Us”:
An investigation into 749 Combat Engineering Battalion’s
mission to destroy “the symbols of Gaza’s future.”
Drop Site News
“Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally
destroy everything that belongs to them.
Do not spare them; put to death
men and women, children and infants,
cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.”
This is what the deputy commander of Israel’s 749 Combat Engineering Battalion, Lieutenant Colonel Adi Bekore, posted on his personal Facebook account on October 9, 2023, just two days after the Hamas attacks of October 7. Numerous soldiers from the battalion he had command over liked the post. It is a quote from a biblical passage in which the biblical nation of Israel is commanded to attack the Amalekites, an ancient biblical nation that was a recurrent enemy of the Israelites. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also invoked this reference early in the war—a moment cited by South Africa in its case to the ICJ as a piece of genocidal rhetoric:
Like much of the rhetoric coming from all organs of the Israeli military since its assault on Gaza started, these words served as a stark warning of what was to come.
One year later, countless homes, schools, hospitals, and residential buildings have been bombed and destroyed. 42,718 people have been killed, according to the most recent Gaza Health Ministry figures. The actual figure is certain to be a lot higher: An estimated 10,000 people are buried in the rubble, and the official count doesn’t include those indirectly killed by Israel’s assault on Gaza.
Senior officer invokes divine protection during assault on Gaza.
Over the past year, the 749 Battalion has played an indispensable role in Gaza. Its soldiers are reservists—alumni of the combat engineering corps, which trains soldiers in demolition. The battalion comes in after combat units, toppling buildings and homes that managed to survive air strikes.
The 749 Battalion was among the first to enter the strip through the Netzarim corridor, the four-mile-long road separating Gaza City and Deir al-Balah that Israel occupied early in the war in order to divide the north and south of Gaza. After helping to cement control of south Gaza City, including the Netzarim corridor, the battalion later advanced into areas like Shuja’iya in Gaza City, the Bureij Refugee Camp in Central Gaza, and even Rafah.
At the time of writing, the 749 Battalion is operating in northern Gaza and Jabalia, where, even following Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar’s killing in southern Gaza, Israel’s campaign has intensified to the point of executions and depopulation. There, the battalion is seemingly racing to destroy as many buildings as possible. As one soldier put it, “We will leave them nothing!”
The images in this investigation come primarily from the group’s own social media page, which Drop Site News gained access to, as well as the personal accounts of dozens of soldiers from various companies within the battalion. By stitching together the information shared within the battalion, we were able to clearly map out the unit’s organizational structure and identify over a hundred of its members.
Drop Site News was also able to use the videos to determine the areas where the 749 Battalion was operating and document their activities in the Gaza Strip in detail. They are not the only battalion tasked specifically with demolitions — if it was, Gaza wouldn’t look the way it does — but a close examination of its daily activity offers a rare window into the Israeli operation on the ground in Gaza.
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