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American Israeli Sniper Admits Killing Unarmed Civilians in Gaza
GV-Wire-1
By gvwire
Published 5 hours ago on
September 12, 2025

Israeli soldiers from Flotilla 13, a commando unit, walk to a sniper position in a private clinic outside Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, March 31, 2024. (Avishag Shaar-Yashuv/The New York Times/File)

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Daniel Raab is an American from a Chicago suburb who became an Israel Defense Forces sniper. In 2023, Raab killed an unarmed Palestinian teenager in northern Gaza and then killed the teen’s older brother, also unarmed, when he tried to retrieve the body.

“They’re thinking: ‘Oh I don’t think (I’ll get shot) because I’m wearing civilian clothes and I am not carrying a weapon’ and all that, but they were wrong. That’s what you have snipers for.” — Daniel Raab, an American sniper for Israel Defense Forces in Gaza

“It’s hard for me to understand why he (did that) and it also doesn’t really interest me,” Raab said in a video interview posted on X. “I mean, what was so important about that corpse?”

A five-month investigation by the Guardian, Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism and Paper Trail Media, Der Spiegel, and ZDF has identified six people shot by Israeli snipers on  November 22, 2023

Israeli snipers killed four members of the Doghmosh family that day, and injured two others. According to the Guardian, Israeli troops have repeatedly treated unarmed men between 18 and 40 in Gaza as targets.

“(This) reveals a complete lack of ability to see Palestinians as humans,” wrote Trita Parsi, co-founder and executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, in a Facebook post. “To him, the Palestinian he had just killed was nothing more than an insect, and as a result, Raab could not comprehend why the victim’s teenage brother was devastated by his death and sought to retrieve his body.

“So Raab murdered the brother, too.”

Raab, however, doesn’t second-guess his decision or question these “kill” shots.

“They’re thinking: ‘Oh I don’t think (I’ll get shot) because I’m wearing civilian clothes and I am not carrying a weapon’ and all that, but they were wrong,” said Raab, who majored in biology at the University of Illinois before joining IDF. “That’s what you have snipers for.”

The Daily Illini reported that Raab had a history of advocating for Israel at the university and in his reported hometown of Naperville, Illinois.

Read more at the Guardian.

 

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