‘Took Bodies Out of Graves’: CNN’s Jeremy Diamond Reports IDF Admitted to Digging Up Gaza Cemeteries
CNN’s Jeremy Diamond shared disturbing video Thursday of gravesites in Gaza that had been bulldozed or dug up by the Israeli Defense Forces.
“Today the Israeli military acknowledged that they rolled into a cemetery, took bodies out of graves, as part of what they say is a search for Israeli hostages’ remains,” Diamond said. “But as the Israeli military put out that statement, we were completing our investigation into the Israeli military’s desecration of cemeteries. And what we found is 16 cemeteries across Gaza damaged and destroyed.”
Diamond interviewed an ethics law expert who said that destroying graveyards violated international law — except under limited circumstances.
“Cemeteries are not military objectives. They are, in fact, what international law would consider an object normally dedicated to civilian purposes, like places of worship, generally. So, this is protected from intentional attack. It can only be intentionally attacked or destroyed if it becomes a military objective,” explained Janina Dill, co-director of Oxford University’s Institute for Ethics Law in Armed Conflict.
Diamond said he witnessed first-hand “the results of Israel’s bulldozing of graveyards while embedded with Israeli forces.”
“The Israeli military acknowledged exhuming bodies from the cemetery as part of the search for Israeli hostages,” Diamond said. “An IDF spokesman could not account for the damage to the 16 cemeteries identified by CNN, but said that in some cases, there is no other choice.”
Diamond said the IDF showed him a photo of a Hamas rock launcher at a cemetery in Gaza, although he could not confirm the location.
The IDF spokesman also said the following: “We have a serious obligation to the respect of the dead and there is no policy to create military posts out of graveyards.”
Through an English interpreter, one resident of Gaza said, “We are currently retrieving the corpses of the martyrs that are present in the cemetery. The occupation forces have run over most of them with their bulldozers, and, and we’ve only identified a small number of corpses. As for the rest their identities remain unknown.”
Watch the clip above via CNN.
