Letter: ‘Sport shooting’ is happening in Gaza regularly
Published 1:30 am Monday, August 18, 2025
Editor,
While living in Republic, Washington I received an invitation to Marine Bar Call at a local watering hole. Not being a Marine, I had little to contribute to the conversations. At some point I interjected that my older brother was an ex-Marine. The banter froze and someone said, “There’s no such thing as an ex-Marine.” I took my faux pas in stride and opted to spend the duration listening.
It wasn’t long before someone broached the topic of, “sport shooting,” which I assumed had something to do with hunting or performance on the local range. I soon found it to be an egregious affront to the rules of war, but apparently commonplace across the spectrum of global deployments these vets had been on. In general, sport shooting entailed shooting individuals randomly, devoid of any threat assessment. I heard a discussion about a shotgun blast that allowed light to pass through the wound before the victim fell dead. The commonality in all these stories was that the victims had not in any way provoked the shootings. They just had the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
These vets were purging themselves of haunting demons: Their sorrow, remorse and guilt for transgressions was overwhelming. Some shed tears, some fought them back. I was sweating profusely, avoiding eye contact and trying to breath without drawing undue attention.
That was 20 years ago. There is mounting evidence that sport shooting is becoming increasingly commonplace in Gaza. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) claims that collateral civilian casualties are primarily the result of Hamas utilizing human shields. In that scenario the wounds inflicted on civilians would be the result of exploding ordinance and blanketing gunfire, which would produce a broad spectrum of random multiple injuries. This has not, however, been the case at the Israeli/American Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) aid distribution sites.
Professor Nick Maynard recently told BBC Radio 4 he and his colleagues have experienced unusually high instances of gunshot victims – mainly teenage boys -at GHF aid sites needing treatment for similar injuries. “On one day they’ll all be abdominal gunshot wounds, on another they’ll all be head gunshot wounds or neck gunshot wounds, on another they’ll be arm or leg gunshot wounds, and then there are days children arrive with wounds targeting their testicles.” The GHF distribution sites are bait to fuel IDF sport shooting.
Jack Gribble
Oak Harbor
