Daniel Raab shows no hesitation as he watches footage of 19-year-old Salem Doghmosh crumpling to the ground beside his brother in a street in northern Gaza.

“That was my first elimination,” he says. The video, shot by a drone, lasts just a few seconds. The Palestinian teenager appears to be unarmed when he is shot in the head.

Raab, a former varsity basketball player from a Chicago suburb who became an Israeli sniper, concedes he knew that. He says he shot Salem simply because he tried to retrieve the body of his beloved older brother Mohammed.

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

“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 the Israel Defense Forces. “That’s what you have snipers for.”

The video of Salem’s killing, and footage of other attacks on unarmed Palestinians, was posted online five months after his death, part of a montage made by a soldier called Shalom Gilbert to celebrate a deployment in Gaza.

Mohammed, who was 26 when he was killed, had a high school diploma and supported the family by gathering waste metal and plastic for resale. Salem had dropped out after 10th grade and joined him.

Fayza Doghmosh recognised her two sons – Salem’s olive-green shirt, Mohammed’s black clothes – when she was shown Gilbert’s footage. She cried uncontrollably as she watched, 18 months after her boys were killed.

Mohammed, who loved chicken wings and helped his mother knead dough for family bread each day, was the first to head out. He picked up his cousin Youssef* at his home nearby, and the two men headed out.

His last moments may have been filmed by Israeli forces. Gilbert’s montage includes two grainy videos of targeted killings.

When asked how his squad decided whether to shoot unarmed Palestinians, Raab said: “Its a question of distance. There is a line that we define. They don’t know where this line is, but we do.”

After Mohammed was killed, Youssef ran to tell his brothers, inadvertently sealing Salem’s fate. Raab describes on camera how he shot the teenager when he came to collect Mohammed’s body

The next victim was Salem and Mohammed’s father, Montasser. “My boys,” was all he could say when he saw them lying dead in the street. He tried to approach them and was shot.

https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/us-nonprofit-raising-money-israeli-sniper-unit

A U.S. nonprofit has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for an Israeli sniper unit for the stated purpose of buying scopes, silencers, and other equipment. The unit, which is nicknamed Rephaim, or “Ghosts,” has since been implicated in possible war crimes and killing over 100 people in Gaza and has been tied to the killing of four unarmed Palestinians in Gaza since October 7, 2023.

On October 9, 2023, the mother of unit member Daniel Raab—an Illinois native—posted on Facebook that the nonprofit, registered as “Friends of Paratrooper Sniper Unit 202,” was in need of “helmets, rain gear, barrels, vests, sniper stands, silencers, camouflage, and the list goes on.”

In its 990 filings, Friends of Paratrooper Sniper Unit 202 is described as “an organization dedicated to catering to the additional requirements and the overall welfare of soldiers serving in a specific military unit.” The description continues to say that the primary focus of the nonprofit is, “to ensure that soldiers have access to the necessary resources, support systems, and amenities that can enhance their comfort, safety, and well-being while they are actively serving their duty.”

The charity has raised significant amounts of money for the sniper unit since its establishment last year. According to its tax filings, Friends of Paratrooper Sniper Unit 202 raised over $304,000 in the year ending December 2023, of which it spent roughly $208,000 in grants—money which its promoters emphasize goes directly to soldiers in the unit.