The Guardian condescendingly reports:
A postmortem examination of the exhumed body of one of two Palestinian teenagers killed by Israeli forces at a demonstration last month has reportedly identified wounds consistent with live ammunition, despite the Israeli military's denial that it used live rounds that day.Yup, Israelis are a bunch of liars and are engaged in a massive conspiracy to hide its decision to shoot boys wantonly. It is so fortunate that none of the Israelis seen in the CNN video are running to testify to "Breaking the Silence."
The killings of 17-year-old Nadeem Nawara and 16-year-old Mohammad Salameh caused international outrage and calls from the US for a full investigation after their deaths were caught on video camera footage that made clear the boys posed no threat to Israeli forces at the time of their deaths.
This week Human Rights Watch issued a report suggesting that the killing of the two boys was a war crime. "The wilful killing of civilians by Israeli security forces as part of the occupation is a war crime," said Sarah Leah Whitson, the group's Middle East and North Africa director.
...Anonymous senior Israeli military officials quoted in the local media attempted in the aftermath of the killings to suggest the footage had been forged or a mystery Palestinian gunmen had actually killed the boys – shooting four rounds over a period of more than two hours, apparently without being noticed by several dozen Israeli soldiers and police.
Speaking of, although it has not been translated into English, I strongly urge you to read the Google translation of this lengthy article in Maariv. It is the real "Breaking the Silence." The reporter interviews dozens of IDF soldiers as to their frustration at their inability to defend themselves from Palestinian Arab rioters. The rules of engagement are so vague, and the consequences of firing against IDF policy so onerous, that many decide to just let themselves be attacked by stones and Molotov cocktails rather than fire back. Rioters climb on army jeeps with impunity. One waves his private parts at a soldier knowing he will not respond. Even tear gas and rubber bullets require special permission and can only be used under specific circumstances. More than one soldier describes himself as a "sitting duck."
I don't know the rules of engagement for the Border Police, but I imagine they are largely identical and their limitations are equally vague.
In short, while there are no doubt violations of the rules of engagement sometimes, the idea that these Israelis, with all the cameras around, would shoot two kids dead in the most open area possible is insane.
But that's not the main proof.
As we have shown, the Nawara's fall coincides with the police firing a rubber bullet. Of that there is no doubt. We can hear the sound of two separate firings, which sound identical, from two rifles. We see the paper wad after it is expelled from the rubber bullet attachment. We have synchronized the events and there is no way that the bullet fired then was live.
The many posts I have on this topic, and the comments with further research, and other people's work, all show this to be true.
So we have two verifiable, seemingly contradictory facts: Israeli forces didn't fire a live round at the time Nawara fell, and he was killed by a live round. How can these be reconciled?
Of course there was no Palestinian Arab gunman at the scene with a gun shooting Nawara on video. We would have heard that shot. Similarly, the idea that he was shot by Israelis 250 meters south, who were dealing with a different riot, at the exact same moment of the rubber bullet, is impossible, because the sound would have been different on the CNN audio.
When you eliminate the impossible, the remainder, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.
The only way to understand what might have happened is to recall the infamous Mohammed al Dura incident, where the boy that was supposedly killed by the IDF ignited the intifada. Al Dura became a poster child for Israeli brutality. All evidence shows that he was not killed by Israeli fire.
There are clearly some people who are not above killing a child in order to further their cause. And there are many people who want to spark a new intifada. There are people with the incentive to kill a Palestinian Arab youth and manipulate events to make it appear that Israel did it.
Nawara was not killed on camera. He was killed somewhere between the video and his arrival at the hospital. Maybe even by an M-16, which are available in the West Bank.
I think Nawara was probably hit by a rubber bullet, although perhaps he was instructed to fake a fall as soon as he heard a shot - we saw at least one other fake "victim" at the same incident only minutes before the Nawara incident, and his fall seems inconsistent with being shot in the chest with a live bullet, to say the least.
The final piece of the puzzle is that Palestinian Arab "witnesses" lie, constantly, for their cause. we've also seen that in this case (the bullet that Nawara's father showed CNN, for example, and other testimony in the case claiming that Israeli forces to the south were firing at the protesters, even though none of the protesters ever look in that direction.)
If Nawara would have been shot in the ambulance, or en route to the hospital, no one would be talking about it. Such a conspiracy of silence would be unthinkable in Israel or any Western nation, but unfortunately Palestinian Arabs know what would happen to them if they publicly go against the party line.
Far fetched? Yes. But we have motive, we have opportunity, we have a scenario where no witness would publicly contradict even the most stunning cold-blooded murder. No one wants to make such an incendiary claim and reporters don't want to go down that path, but if you want to reach the truth, that is the path that must be followed.
And these are the questions that are not being asked about the death of Nadim Nawara.