Adding to the mountain of evidence that Israel is engaged in a genocidal war on the Gaza Strip, Al Jazeera on Thursday aired footage of what the news outlet reported was an Israeli drone targeting four Palestinians in Khan Younis last month.
Those killed by the unmanned aerial vehicle in the rubble of the southern Gaza city appear to be unarmed teenagers or young men. According to a translation of the coverage, they were not identified in the reporting.
Tariq Kenney-Shawa, Al-Shabaka’s U.S. policy fellow, said: “This is among the worst footage I’ve seen. Not only were these boys clearly unarmed and present no threat whatsoever, but they were struck multiple times even after stumbling/crawling away. There is no way they could have been considered combatants. This is unreal.”
I want an objective, non-obsessive-downvoter, explanation as to how anyone in the world knows what really happened? I understand this question feels smarmy, but there so much emotion in this. But how do we know these guys weren’t Hamas?
Please just be chill, I’m not picking a fight or anything like that.
The video footage was from a month and a half ago, which means Al Jazeera should’ve been able to find out the identity of the men that were killed. They could definitely have gotten a comment from the IDF in that time frame.
Why didn’t they do that? Then we’d have confirmation that they’re civilian, or at the very least some explanation from the IDF. Whether someone is willing to believe what the IDF says is up to the viewer, but it should be included with the story. But they didn’t do that, and considered it unfit to air on their English language channels where it would face more scrutiny. Their Arabic channels are very different than their English language sites, and more willing to air straight up propaganda. The internet is also willing to share propaganda with no effort to verify they were civilians just an emphatic “there’s no way they can’t be cilivilians!!!” Most news organizations understand that Hamas routinely caches weapons and wear civilian clothing when thy move to other locations, but this isn’t given any consideration in this write-up.
Are they civilians? We simply can’t know because of the shoddy journalism at work here. But the point just seems to be to maintain outrage, and a lot of people aren’t looking for the normal information that should be there in a properly researched news story.
I agree with your points. I’m gonna reply to you but be talking to anyone reading too. Thanks for your comment and critique.
Flat out though, the IDF is killing civilians. This is known.
But based off the comments and videos, I don’t think anything is known at all, but it seems unlikely these were civilians. Bizarrely, nearly everyone in this thread, and everyone who is going to downvote me, seems to want them to be civilians.
I would assume people would prefer them to be Hamas, who are terrorists and at the very least complicit in the massacre and kidnapping of Israeli civilians.
Outrage eliminates critical thinking and then anything that reinforces that outrage must be true.
I trust Al Jazeera, and I mourned their closure of Al Jazeera America as I was a supporter. But I could never trust anything they wrote about Israel and Gaza. It was barely veiled propaganda. This video is incindiary sensationalism because we are given zero context, but lots of guessing. By releasing this grizzly footage without context, that shows intent to exploit emotions and let us fill in the gaps. People really suck at this.
I’m really glad a bunch people, especially people like you, replied. It was fairly easy to separate the wheat from the chaff (that doesn’t mean only people who confirmed my suspicions btw) They/you spoke in terms of fact, objectivity, not in guesses, assumptions, and emotion.
To anyone who reads this ramble: If any journalist, holy-person, video, podcast, head-of-state, or meme is demanding your outrage, do not trust them because that is what propaganda looks like. This is a foundational aspect of media literacy and resisting the influence of power.
The burden of proof is on those doing the killing
I don’t know how things work where you’re from, but where I’m from, the burden of proof is on those making accusations.
Lmao this isn’t small claims court. Those people were straight up murderer from long distance with missiles that American tax dollars very likely paid for.
So when there’s a murder case, the prosecution doesn’t have to prove someone committed murder, it’s the accused has to prove they’re innocent?
Yeah, it doesn’t when the accused admits it and says “but they were all Hamas”. Since that moment the murder is proven, and “them all being Hamas” is what the accused is expected to find some court-worthy proof for.
Didn’t see any such comment in the article. You’re assuming an answer that wasn’t given and wasn’t even asked for. You’re building a fantasy story to prove guilt in your mind.
Meanwhile in the real world, there was at least $200K worth of munitions used in that video. You have to be really naive to think the decision to use such munitions didn’t go through the chain of command. So multiple people decided to use some very expensive munitions to kill some random civilians? Why? Because Israel is just that evil?
Stop inventing narratives in your mind and try to think more critically. The IDF isn’t going to have a drone following some random civilians, and then use three expensive smart bombs to take them out for no good reason. There are a lot of civilians in the area, there’s no need to use allocate that much hardware if the goal is to kill completely innocent civilians.
Your narrative depends on Israel not only being evil but also incredibly stupid in their use of resources. Given the lack of information given, lack of even basic levels of journalism, it’s far more likely to be propaganda.
Burden of proof is on those making claims. If you claim this is Israel killing Palestinians, you need to prove it’s Israel. Otherwise it’s some poor guys who lost their lives from an explosive. I didn’t even see the bomb falling.
No, completely rational. This was probably Palestinian youths blowing themselves up to make Israel look bad. What was I thinking?
The problem is that according to due process, you need to prove somebody is guilty of something before they are jailed. These people weren’t jailed, they were basically executed from a distance. The burden of proof is on the Israeli military to prove that they WERE Hamas, not on people horrified by the footage to prove the negative. And so far (and historically) the IDF seems to not care to do so, and in lots of cases have given “proof” as justification for one action or another that later turned out to be bullshit.
Not to mention the numerous cases of the IDF killing people in “Press” vests and helmets, or people literally actively waving a white flag. In my opinion, they don’t deserve the benefit of the doubt given their record.
Staying on the topic at hand, and only that, this is war. Killing an enemy on the field has no system of public review. Everything is internal. Neither IDF or Hammas has to provide proof of anything to anybody for any reason except when propagandantistic PR is at play (like you mentioned). At least not now. There will surely be tribunals after this war is “settled.” The only direction proof goes is up the chain of command. I won’t pretend to understand the complexity of target selection and acquisition (especially foreign nations and certainly not terrorists), but I know that that’s how it works. There is no burden of proof, whatsoever.
Those are the cold facts.
Opinion, etc: I hope you don’t read this as some kind of defence or exoneration of any malicious, evil, callous, or accidental killing commited of innocents. I unequivocally do not want or excuse killing civilians. Anyone who does is hideously evil. However, I think a reality check is necessary.
The “burden of proof” is a security blanket most of the world enjoys and vaguely understands. When they see some horrible violence of war, fed to them without context by compromised sources, it’s easy to make assumptions and demand justice. And many of those times, you should, just ideally without the assumptions and propaganda. This isn’t one of this times. I know that the IDF is commiting war crimes, but this video is just war.
Killing obvious civilians is a warcrime. While there are circumstances where this is ambiguous, this example isn’t - Israel needs to overcome the very reasonable conclusion that these were civilians and prove that they were enemy combatants.
Understanding that 60-70% of the Palestinians Israel have killed are children, this will be a tall order.
What makes it obvious?
The video shows 4 people in civilian clothes casually wandering along chatting while unarmed.
Putting aside the thousands upon thousands literal children Israel has slaughtered in the past few months while spewing genocidal rhetoric (because Hamas?), what evidence do you have that this isn’t a warcrime and that they’re combatants? The video contains absolutely nothing suggesting anything of the sort, and no evidence has been presented.
When people say they want to commit a genocide, then kill tens of thousands of civilians, I tend to believe them - why are you so incredulous?
You still really don’t understand how evidence works, huh?
You kill a bunch of people, you’d better be damn sure it’s justifiable - you know - by looking at the evidence. Basic rule of law stuff.
Where’s the evidence? We both know there isn’t any - much like there’s nothing that would justify Israel’s broader genocide.
How do you think evidence works?
“Know” lmao.
“Basic”, but too complex for you to understand.
They don’t know, they are just making assumptions that people got killed in Gaza. Even location is just bombed houses, of which there are plenty in the region and doesn’t necessarily mean it’s Gaza. And you get down-voted for simply doubting because that’s what people here do, hate on Israel and grasping at straws. Meanwhile, no one asked why were they being filmed. How did the person filming know that bombs will fall on those 4 guys in 5 or so minutes. Why did that one guy keep walking in the same direction and not try to save his life by running somewhere and hiding. I personally find all those things suspicious. But that sort of thinking doesn’t fit into idea that Israel is having fun killing people. So you, and now me, will get down voted.
I would also like to know why this camera drone is there, and why it’s following these guys, and how the operator has the best luck getting perfect footage.
Edit: This seems to be leaked footage from an Israeli intelligence/targeting drone. If that’s true, then that would prove that at least one of these were military targets.
Based on the video and logical deduction, this scenario seems to be the most probable.
If someone has another hypothesis on this subject, I would be very interested to read it. Assuming you don’t just downvote and attack me.
Blocked, bye
This is insanity. To be blocked about what I asked? How I asked if? Unbelievable avoidance.
it was hamas IED not an IDF drone
the second projectile could also have been hamas as well
That’s speculation based on a tweet from Israeli propaganda. You can see the missiles in the video.