Won’t anybody ever learn the lesson of let’s wait and see?
You have likely already heard that the 26 May targeted assassination of senior Hamas terrorists in a jeep caused a huge explosion that killed dozens of civilians, including children, in tents in what is supposed to be a safe evacuation area. The world did not wait to blink before blaming Israel for the collateral damage and demanding we stop the war forthwith!
Bibi gave the stamp of approval on this outpouring of condemnation. The Times of India reported: “Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged Monday that a ‘tragic mistake’ had been made…” And this phrase reverberated around the world on countless mainstream and social media sites.
Paris is a good example of what happened after this.
Sarah writes on “X”:
Something historic is happening in Paris.
It is now past midnight, and the pro-Palestine protests are continuing in the French capital, slamming Israel’s massacres of refugees in Rafah.
France’s citizens have had enough of Israel’s depravity.
And she attaches a video to her post:
Similar posts abound. I wonder what all these demonstrators will say when they read what actually happened.
Here is a real-time video of a conversation between two Gazans who state that the fires were started by secondary explosions in the vicinity of the jeep carrying the two wanted terrorists targeted by Israel. They also speak of their fear of Hamas rockets being fired at them, indicating that there are rockets at the site.
It turns out that where the fire broke out was a weapons storage site.
If the strike took place outside the humanitarian zone (as shown in the IDF map below) and civilian tents were there [outside the designated safety zone] and Hamas stored weapons and ammunition in the vicinity of civilian tents, and the fires resulted, not from a direct hit, but from secondary explosions near the storage site, then . . .
then . . . is it still Israel’s fault?
Listen again to the video conversation between the two Gazan: are they afraid of Israel or of Hamas?
Now back to Bibi and his unfortunate “tragic mistake” statement. By calling it a mistake, he is already suggesting that Israel did something wrong. In this case, as in other cases in which Israel has been blamed for what turns out to have been Hamas-caused casualties, Israel did nothing wrong.
(Well, let me qualify that. Israel did nothing wrong other than being a sovereign state of Jews who refuse to roll over and die. Remember, the “occupation” we are being accused of maintaining, making resistance by any means legitimate, is over the entire State and not just Gaza and the so-called West Bank.)
So, while Bibi could have called the civilian deaths “tragic,” there was no reason for him to refer to it as a mistake. Calling it tragic does not imply it was our fault.
Now, I wonder if Sarah and all those like her who are sick of “Israel’s depravity” will reconsider. Naw! Probably not. I think Israel is still being blamed for the initially (mis)reported huge number of casualties at the hospital (parking lot) Hamas blew up with a missile they intended for Israel but that fell short.
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Now lets see main stream media reporting on that.
What exactly did Prime Minister Netanyahu say? I have read “mistake” but I’ve also heard “accident.” Either way, if secondary explosions are to blame for the fire, all he is copping to is that had they known the result ahead of time, they might have aborted the attack altogether or gone about it differently.
Under the Laws of Armed Conflict that is an important distinction because it’s the real time information that counts, not an after-the-fact evaluation of the results. I also get that this distinction is lost on our narrative-driven media.
If the IDF has drone images that show the strike, the secondary explosion and the fire at some distance away, it would be well advised to release it now.