The Israeli army killed an Israeli civilian, Tom Godo, on 8 October 2023 while he was hiding in the safe room of his home with his wife and three daughters and covered up the incident, Channel 13 revealed on Sunday.
An Israeli spokesperson confirmed the report, saying that “the IDF [the Israeli army] determined that Tom Godo was apparently killed by IDF gunfire directed at the door of the safe room”.
Godo’s widow, Limor Havdala, described to Channel 13 the events that led to her husband’s death.
At 6.30am on 7 October, the Godo family rushed to their safe room in the kibbutz of Kissufim, near the Gaza border, following the launch of the Hamas-led attacks on Israel.
The army reached their home at only 4.20pm, Havdala said. When they left, the soldiers promised that more help was on the way and that the family would be evacuated by the army.
During the day, the army safely evacuated many of the kibbutz’s residents but nobody came to rescue Godo’s family, his wife said.
Then during the night, Israeli forces arrived and fought against Hamas combatants.
At 7.30am on Sunday 8 October, while the Godos were still confined in the safe room, they heard a knock on the door and someone requesting to open it.
Godo went to the door and asked who was there. In response, shots were fired at the safe room.
Havdala escaped with her three daughters through the window of the safe room and ran through the kibbutz until they met an army unit.
“I’m shocked by what the investigation revealed,” Havdala told Channel 13. “It turned out that those who killed Tom were IDF soldiers,” she said.
“For a reason that was not explained to me, [the soldiers] decided that there was a terrorist in the safe room.”
‘Disregard for human life’
According to the military debriefing presented to Godo’s wife, Israeli soldiers heard voices in Arabic coming from the family’s safe room.
Havdala said she was told that the soldiers “heard a girl’s scream, and then the force decided that there was a hostage situation inside the safe room”.
The killing of Godo is not the only case in which Israeli civilians and soldiers have been killed by Israeli military fire since 7 October.
Haaretz revealed last year that during the attack, when Hamas captured dozens of Israelis, the army was instructed to shoot at any suspicious target moving across the border with Gaza.
“Not a single vehicle can return to Gaza,” the army order read in accordance with the Hannibal Directive, a notorious Israeli military protocol that has been implemented since the mid-1980s to prevent the abduction of Israeli soldiers at any cost.
One of the most prominent incidents on 7 October took place in the Kfar Aza kibbutz, where 13 Israeli captives held by Hamas fighters were killed.
An army force under the command of Barak Hiram, who has since been promoted to commander of the Gaza Division, fired two shells at the house where the hostages were held.
The findings of the military investigation did not however unequivocally determine that the civilians were killed because of the shelling.
In Godo’s case, the army refused to hand over the file to the Military Police Criminal Investigation Division, the army unit responsible for investigating crimes committed by soldiers.
“How can I live in a country where the body that is entrusted with my security doesn’t want to check itself properly,” said Havdala.
She is asking for a comprehensive investigation into the military’s handling of the incident, not only “the shooting toward what the IDF identified as hostages” but also “the cover-up of the information for a year and a half”.
According to Channel 13, the soldiers who killed Godo knew, after they entered the safe room, that they had killed an Israeli civilian, but the information was not revealed to his family until last month.
According to Havdala, the delay in providing information “doubles the sense of failure and disregard for human life”.
“It doesn’t relate to my world of values when you shoot at the door while you heard there’s a girl behind it, and you hide that an innocent civilian was killed,” she said.
“If you find out that you killed by mistake, you go and say, ‘Come and interrogate me, I want to be held accountable for it,'” she added.
While the mother and her children have begun to reintegrate into a new kibbutz in the Beit She’an Valley, in the northwest of the country, they are now struggling to come to terms with the discovery that “those who killed Tom and threatened their safety were soldiers.”
Last week, Israeli media revealed that army and government officials are fully aware that military action in the war on Gaza has led to the killing of Israeli hostages.
As a result, some hostages’ families have asked the government to refrain from implementing the so-called ‘Gideon’s Chariots’ operation, a new plan for an expanded military offensive aiming to occupy the whole of Gaza and expel all its Palestinian residents to a small area in the south.
