A documentary by Al Jazeera, in partnership with the Hind Rajab Foundation, has revealed new evidence in the killing of five-year-old Hind Rajab, her family, and the rescue team that tried to reach them in Gaza City.
The documentary, Ma Khafiya Aatham (Tip of the Iceberg), which aired on Monday, discloses previously unknown details about the killing of the Rajab family and others in the final days of January 2024.
Hind Rajab’s final hours – as she pleaded for help following the initial shelling that killed her uncle, aunt and three cousins in their car – were widely circulated on social media after the attack.
Defending its actions that day, the Israeli government initially claimed that none of its forces was present when the Rajab family was killed, later asserting that the 335 bullet holes found in the family’s car were the result of an exchange of fire between Israeli troops and armed Palestinian fighters.
However, a subsequent investigation of satellite imagery and audio from that day by the multidisciplinary research group Forensic Architecture, based at Goldsmiths, the University of London, identified only the presence of several Israeli Merkava tanks in the vicinity of the Rajab family’s car and no evidence of any exchange of fire.
The overall commander of the tanks present during the family’s killing was Colonel Beni Aharon of Israel’s 401 Armoured Brigade. Colonel Aharon is already the subject of a criminal complaint at the International Criminal Court (ICC) filed by the Hind Rajab Foundation, which uses social media footage captured by Israeli soldiers during operations in Gaza as the basis for war crimes prosecutions.
Investigations by the foundation have identified that, within the 401st Brigade, the company known as “Vampire Empire”, under the command of Major Sean Glass, was directly responsible for killing the Rajab family and subsequently tampering with the crime scene.
The Vampire Empire company – its English name suggesting a multinational composition – is part of the 52nd Armoured Battalion under the command of Colonel Daniel Ella, who the foundation alleges bears direct responsibility for the killings at the field level.
One of the company’s soldiers, dual Israeli-Argentine national Itay Choukirkov, is currently being sued under Argentinian law for his alleged role in the family’s murder.
According to the documentary, the 52nd Armoured Battalion, nicknamed Ha-Bok’im (The Breachers), was among the first Israeli units to enter Gaza in October 2023 and has since been involved in some of the Israeli army’s most lethal operations, including the destruction of several hospitals.
An Israeli army Merkava tank [File: Menahem Kahana/AFP]
“The government of Israel does not like these campaigns financed by organisations supporting the Palestinians,” Israeli security expert Yossi Melman told Al Jazeera in the documentary.
“Of course it worries them and gives Israel a bad name when some Israelis – especially military personnel – are prosecuted for war crimes in some parts of the world,” he said.
Melman added that such prosecutions are of concern not only to the Israeli army but also to its intelligence agencies – the internal Shin Bet and the external Mossad.
The Hind Rajab Foundation is pursuing several legal actions against individual Israeli soldiers, including Shimon Zuckerman, a self-styled “war influencer” who filmed himself and other members of the 8129 Engineering Corps razing the village of Khuza’a near Khan Younis.
The foundation says Zuckerman’s social media posts provide clear evidence of the genocidal intent that led to the killing of the Rajab family.
