Mohammed Abu Hashem left the Air Force because of US support for Israel

“It was extremely emotional for me to know that the amount of bombs being delivered to Israel was the cause of their deaths,” Abu Hashem, a Palestinian American, said in an interview after he retired from the military in June. “I knew immediately that I could not be part of the system that made this possible.”

Abu Hashem, 41, said he was compelled to enlist after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on his adopted country. Today, he is among a handful of experienced government officials and military personnel who have quit their jobs, disillusioned, they say, with the Biden administration’s handling of the Gaza crisis and its unwavering support of Israel in its campaign to destroy Hamas militants. His departure is the first known defection with such a direct link to the war’s staggering civilian death toll. Others have applied for conscientious objector status.

Saida Saleh Abu Hashem, Mohammed’s aunt, is at least the second Palestinian relative of an American soldier killed in the Gaza war. This report is based on interviews with the former pilot and people who know him, an analysis of messages he exchanged with Air Force superiors expressing concern about the attack on his relatives’ home, text and voice messages passed along by his family, and images of the damage to their Gaza home.

The Israel Defense Forces, which has been accused of using indiscriminate force throughout the conflict, told the Washington Post that its target that day was “a Hamas operational structure in a building” and that two “precise” weapons were used in the operation. “The attack was planned,” a spokesman said, to avoid too many civilian casualties. The Israel Defense Forces declined to provide further details.

Abu Hashem doubts this claim. “If this is true,” he said, “and my family’s house was hit by GPS-guided precision weapons, it would be no problem for the Israeli military to make the evidence and the names of the Hamas members public.” But this has not happened, he noted, and it has not been proven that the attack was “absolutely necessary.” Humanitarian organizations have said Israel’s tolerance for civilian casualties in attacks on militant targets is far too high.

Abu Hashem said he had spoken to Air Force superiors about his concerns that Israel, Washington’s closest ally in the Middle East, may have committed a human rights abuse, possibly using U.S.-sourced weapons. He called their response unsatisfactory and said it was a factor in his decision to end his government service.

“I cannot serve a government that ignores the facts,” he said, “and disregards U.S. and international law to justify and enable such horrific violence.”

An Air Force official who spoke on condition of anonymity about Abu Hashem’s interactions with his superiors defended their handling of the situation, calling their response “compassionate.” That official said a noncommissioned officer who joined Abu Hashem’s unit in December offered to help him, as did a predecessor, but acknowledged they didn’t know what to do.

“You acted as I would have expected,” the Air Force official said. “… However, as you know, no one in the Air Force has the ability to change foreign policy decisions.”

Both sets of Abu Hashem’s grandparents were farmers in Yibna, a village outside Tel Aviv. In 1948, he says, they were forced to flee when Israeli soldiers occupied the area. They were among more than 700,000 Palestinians expelled from their land that year after Israel declared independence and the first of several Arab-Israeli wars broke out. The family made it to Gaza, where his father, Saady, was born in a refugee camp.

As an adult, Saady Abu Hashem fled to Qatar, where Mohammed and five of his six siblings were born. Mohammed recalled meeting his extended family in Gaza as a four-year-old and touching their hands through the Egyptian border fence.

In 1991, when he was 8 years old, Abu Hashem’s parents moved their family to the United States, eventually settling in Ohio, where his father opened a successful jewelry store.

Abu Hashem said he joined the Air Force because he “felt I had to protect my family.” He worked on KC-135 tankers, a job that saw him deployed 10 times, including three deployments to Qatar, where he interacted with other family displaced from Gaza.

As his career progressed, Abu Hashem changed careers and became a first sergeant, a leadership position in which he advises commanders on training and quality of life issues. He said he enjoyed the role and worked for several units before arriving at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland in April 2023.

On October 10, Mohammed’s aunt, Saida Saleh Abu Hashem, was at home with her husband and two of her three sons in the Jabalya neighborhood in northern Gaza. At least two other families, including children, shared their home.

Three days earlier, Hamas fighters led a spectacular crossing into Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostages. Israeli forces fired a warning shot at a building two doors down the street that was loud enough for most residents to hear, Mohammed Abu Hashem said. The practice, known as “roof-knocking,” uses munitions with little or no explosives. Although the method has now largely been abandoned, it was designed to signal to civilians that an attack was imminent.

What happened next was described in voice messages sent to Abu Hashem by his aunt’s other son, also named Mohammed. He was attending school in Turkey when his mother was killed.

When the families heard the warning shot, they evacuated the house, but nothing happened. After waiting outside for about 90 minutes, they returned to their house. Saida Saleh Abu Hashem was in her living room when the bomb hit. She was 49.

“Suddenly stones started falling on them,” Abu Hashem’s cousin said in the recording, suggesting the Israelis waited until everyone was back inside and then “destroyed the whole house.”

In total, 23 people died as a result of the attack, according to Abu Hashem’s cousin. Among them was a family of six who lived in the same apartment building, according to a death register from the Gaza Health Ministry. The youngest victim was a one-year-old girl.

“I know everyone there and all of them are civilians working in civilian jobs, including teachers, drivers and a supermarket clerk,” Abu Hashem’s cousin said in the recording. “I am sure there are no resistance fighters or armed elements in this building.”

In its response to The Washington Post, the Israeli army did not address whether commanders believed the attack injured civilians or whether they were sure the right building was hit. Israeli and U.S. officials have said Hamas fighters are hiding among civilians, although there are significant disagreements between the two sides over Israel’s efforts to limit civilian casualties.

The house was probably by U.S. MK82s, 500-pound guided bombs or similar Israeli weapons, said Trevor Ball, a former U.S. Army bomb technician who reviewed photos and videos of the attack’s aftermath at The Post’s request. The MK82 is one of several American munitions supplied to Israel. The images captured by neighbors and passersby do not contain any identifiable munition components or fragments.

Abu Hashem said he tried channel your grief into something productive. He confided to a friend, a senior Air Force noncommissioned officer, that although he was struggling, he was hopeful that sharing information about the attack on his family home would lead to the discovery of a war crime or reveal to the Israelis that a tragic accident had occurred. His friend, he said, told him that she would pass the details on to her contacts in intelligence.

Nothing came of it, said Abu Hashem. His friend, who has since left the service, did not respond to a request for comment.

Frustrated by the inaction, Abu Hashem decided in late October that it was time to go.

As part of a program for military personnel transitioning into the civilian sector, he took a temporary job at a company in the Akron, Ohio, area. In February, he was introduced to a younger man who was also leaving the Air Force. They exchanged pleasantries, but Abu Hashem did not mention why he had left the military.

Days later, that pilot, Aaron Bushnell, doused himself in gasoline and set himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy in Washington. “Free Palestine” were some of his last words. Greg Kennedy, who supervised Abu Hashem’s work at the Leaf Home company, confirmed the brief encounter between the two men.

Abu Hashem said he wondered what, if anything, he could have done to put Bushnell on a different path, but his grief was too overwhelming to share. “I had the opportunity to talk to this young man about my life,” he said. “I chose to remain silent.”

Abu Hashem said his relatives in Gaza face an uncertain fate. They have been taken to a refugee camp in Rafah, the southern Gaza city where Israel began an offensive a few weeks ago that forced more than a million people to flee. His uncle spoke in a voice message of tents sweltering in the summer heat, of hepatitis infections and of starving people grinding corn and animal feed as a last resort.

Abu Hashem criticized the Israeli military for providing “no evidence of the reasons for the attack” on her house. There are “no checks and balances on their narrative,” he said.

“What we should really be asking here,” he said, “is why my aunt’s life and the lives of innocent children were considered so worthless that they could simply be considered collateral damage.”

Hazem Balousha in Cairo, Hajar Harb in London, Reem Akkad and Meg Kelly contributed to this report.