Israeli soldier confesses to killing US elderly man in West Bank

A self-proclaimed soldier from “Israel’s” infamous Netzah Yehuda battalion has admitted that his unit killed 78-year-old Palestinian-American, Omar Asad, in January 2022, according to recordings obtained by The Grayzone.

However, after announcing plans to sanction the battalion, the Biden administration withdrew the decision without offering further explanation.

“Four of these units [Israeli units] have effectively remediated these violations, which is what we expect partners to do,” the US State Department claimed.

The fifth unit appears to be Netzah Yehuda, an all-male unit of Orthodox Jewish nationalists that operates exclusively in Ramallah of the occupied West Bank and is accused of crimes, including sexual assault and beating at least three older men to death while they were lying on the ground while in custody. 

Netzah Yehuda soldiers detained Asad and left him outdoors in harsh conditions, bound and blindfolded until he died. Instead of punishment, all the soldiers got was a slap on the wrist, and compensation was paid to Asad’s family. 

A report by Washington DC-based human rights organization, DAWN, found that at the time of the killing, the commander of the unit, Lt. Col. Mati Shevach, was promoted to Deputy Commander of the Kfir Brigade, which oversees the Netzah Yehuda formation.

Spokesperson Vedant Patel responded during an April 29 State Department press briefing to questions regarding why the administration had hesitated to sanction the battalion.

“This is an ongoing process,” Patel said, further claiming, “I’m not going to speak to it more specifically, but consistent with the memorandum of understanding that we have with the government of Israel, we are engaging with them, consulting with them as it relates to not just this broader process but additional information that they’ve shared.” 

‘Doing funny things’

The Grayzone obtained the glorified account of the killing of Asad, which according to the self-described soldier’s account, the unit brutalized Asad as punishment for supposedly interfering with a raid.

“This geezer who’s like trying to interfere with our operation, we’re going to like, f*** with him for a night,” the soldier said, as he called Arabs “murders, criminal animals” and boasted about killing and torturing Palestinians, likening himself to Americans who photographed themselves with dead Japanese soldiers during World War II, “doing funny things with their bodies.” 

“Yeah, I enjoy it because they’re our enemy,” he expressed.

The confession was uncovered during an argument between the unidentified soldier and a self-described “AI artist” and Palestine solidarity activist on the social media chat site, Discord.

The activist, known as NuclearDiffusion, recorded the conversations and gave them to The Grayzone on June 8, 2022. He told The Grayzone that the soldier, speaking in an American accent, volunteered that he had been posted to “the 97th Netzah Yehuda Battalion in the 900 Kfir Brigade in the 99th paratrooper division.” 

“My battalion,” he said, “is a specifically religious battalion that’s being investigated by the government. My battalion – the ID seven Netzah Yehuda battalion – is being investigated by the United States government for violations of the laws of war in order to potentially apply what’s called the Leahy Law to us.”

The soldier seemed to be a “Lone Soldier”, like many in “Israel’s” Kfir Brigade, being a foreigner who moved to occupied Palestine alone and volunteered for army service on ideological and/or religious grounds.

He demonstrated overt ethno-supremacist views. “Dude, my entire battalion is full of people like me,” he said. “We all hate homosexuals. We all are racist. We call each other n-gger like half the time man. We all, like, refer to each other by name. We’re like, ‘Yo, n-gga give me this. Yo, n-gga.’”  

Even though he refused to provide his name, he posted a photo of his rifle number – 113514604 and participated in Discord chats under the handle, Spremnost#9005, a name probably inspired by the weekly propaganda newsletter of Croatia’s Ustasha movement comprised of fascist collaborators who presided over the establishment of a Nazi puppet state during WWII.

Left in the cold 

According to NuclearDiffusion, the soldier claimed to be US-born to a Jewish mother, and his profile contained a phrase in Croatian that translated to, “We are always ready.”

The account of the killing showed that members of the Netzah Yehuda Battalion forced Asad from his car at a checkpoint in Jiljilya, on the morning of January 12, 2022. They then took him to a construction site 100 meters away then left him there bound, gagged, blindfolded, and exposed to the freezing cold. An hour later, he was lifeless on the ground, taken to a local doctor, and pronounced dead from a heart attack.

“This 80-year-old Palestinian man came out and was sort of accosting IDF soldiers,” the soldier said, noting, “And so as a joke, they like, arrested – they put him in handcuffs and left him out overnight. And then they came back and he was dead. And so it got everybody fired, and it got us in a bunch of trouble.”

Asked why his unit abused the old man, the soldier explained, “Because they were like, ‘Screw this, like, this geezer who’s like trying to interfere with our operation, we’re going to like, f*** with him for a night. And then they came back. And since he’s 80 years old, he died of the cold overnight, and so the point wasn’t to kill him.”

The soldier claimed the killing was an accident, “So no, the idea was like, it’ll like f*** with him and make him like, never want to do it again. And then they came back. And, you know, it was kind of a retarded idea. Because obviously, like an eighty-year-old man is not – it would probably be fine if this guy was like, 30. But he was 80. And so no, it didn’t work out.”

“I didn’t say it was his fault,” as he used the excuse for the killing as “a thing called collateral damage.” 

“… in a war, you have to remember that like her, it’s better that if 100,000. It’s better than if 100,000 of your enemy die than even a single one of your people gets hurt.”

He added, “I think until the war is over, it’s a total war, and we need to do whatever necessary in order to win. And once they’ve been completely defeated, then we can start looking at like a humanitarian kind of way.”