Videos show Israeli soldiers throwing the bodies of three dead Palestinian men off of a building during an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) raid in Jenin in the West Bank on September 19. Seven people were killed in the operation. The IDF described the incident as “serious” after the footage's emergence. We analysed these photos and spoke to witnesses to find out more about the incident the White House called “deeply disturbing”.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) carried out a raid on September 19 in Qabatiya, a town in the Jenin governorate of the West Bank, where IDF operations have intensified in recent months. In a message published in Hebrew on the IDF’s Telegram channel on September 20, the IDF said that seven people had been killed in the raid, including “four armed terrorists during an exchange of gunfire”.
Soon after the raid, disturbing videos started appearing on local online groups showing Israeli soldiers disrespecting the bodies of three of the men who were killed. Some of these videos show Israeli soldiers throwing the three bodies from buildings.
A 'serious incident'
Our team was able to geolocate these videos showing members of the IDF throwing the bodies from rooftops. They were filmed in the village of Qabatiya, next to a school.
One video, a compilation of several different videos obtained by the Associated Press agency, shows soldiers pushing one of these bodies off the roof head first.
Two other sequences shared by the agency show three soldiers then throwing two other bodies from the rooftop.
An outcry followed the publication of these videos, which have since been viewed several million times on X.
Our team contacted the IDF, who said this “serious incident” would be reviewed. They added that it “does not coincide with (its) values and the expectations from (its) soldiers”.
A spokesperson for the White House said these images were “deeply disturbing”.
National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said that, if the video was verified, "it clearly would depict abhorrent and egregious behaviour by professional soldiers".
'Why does the occupation have these bodies?'
The footage shared online doesn’t document the fighting or how the Palestinian men were actually killed. For the time being, the IDF has not commented on this.
The governor of Jenin, Kamal Abu Al-Rub, said in an interview with television channel Al-Araby that the men “were killed in cold blood and remained on the roof of the house for more than seven hours”.
The governor also claimed that one of the IDF soldiers “placed an explosive on the body of one of the martyrs and exploded it”.
After that, he said “the martyrs’ bodies were dragged and thrown [off the roof]”.
For the time being, we have not been able to independently verify the claim that an explosive was placed on one of the bodies.
As for what happened to the bodies after they were thrown off the roof, a video that our team was able to verify shows a bulldozer being used by the IDF to pick up one of the bodies from where it was lying at the base of the building.
While no footage has emerged showing what happened to the bodies after that, Al Araby reported that the bodies were in the possession of the Israeli Army.
A Palestinian journalist who was there at the time and preferred to remain anonymous told our team that the bodies were “thrown and then taken to an unknown location”.
Seven hours there, the bodies were still lying there in the sun and ambulances and the Red Crescent were prevented from going into the zone. The IDF brought bulldozers up to the building and destroyed part of it.
The martyrs who were thrown [off the roof] were then taken to an unknown location. Why did the occupation [Editor’s note: the IDF] take the bodies? It is a collective punishment to the friends and families of the victims and the whole population.
At the time of this article’s publication, the IDF was still holding the bodies of the three men thrown from the roof, meaning that their families were unable to hold funerals. The families of the other people killed in the same raid were able to bury their loved ones.
The IDF did respond to our questions about why they had taken these bodies away.
'Cruel and inhumane treatment'?
“There is no military need to do this. It’s just a savage way of treating Palestinian bodies,” Shawan Jabarin, the director of Palestinian rights group Al-Haq, told the Associated Press after watching the footage.
The soldiers’ actions do seem to break international law.
“IHL [international humanitarian law] has a long history of regulating the respect for and protection of the dead. In particular, IHL requires that the remains of those who have died during an armed conflict be handled with dignity and be properly managed,” writes the International Committee of the Red Cross in an article called Humanity after life: Respecting and Protecting the Dead.
Our team spoke to the Human Rights Watch organisation, which said that "throwing bodies off of a roof is considered cruel and inhuman treatment”. This treatment of bodies also runs counter to Article 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, alongside torture.
More than 700 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire in the West Bank since October 7, 2023, when Hamas carried out coordinated attacks on Israel. Israel was quick to retaliate in Gaza, Hamas’s home base, as well as the West Bank.
Thirty-six people died in the northern part of the West Bank in early September in one of the deadliest raids since the start of the conflict. The numbers were reported by the Palestinian ministry of health.
