Goldberg hangs his thesis on the supposed fact that the IDF was lying and it knew that the boys were dead.... Once the boys’ disappearance was known, troops began a massive, 18-day search-and-rescue operation, entering thousands of homes, arresting and interrogating hundreds of individuals, racing against the clock. Only on July 1, after the boys’ bodies were found, did the truth come out: The government had known almost from the beginning that the boys were dead. It maintained the fiction that it hoped to find them alive as a pretext to dismantle Hamas’ West Bank operations.
The initial evidence was the recording of victim Gilad Shaer’s desperate cellphone call to Moked 100, Israel’s 911. When the tape reached the security services the next morning — neglected for hours by Moked 100 staff — the teen was heard whispering “They’ve kidnapped me” (“hatfu oti”) followed by shouts of “Heads down,” then gunfire, two groans, more shots, then singing in Arabic. That evening searchers found the kidnappers’ abandoned, torched Hyundai, with eight bullet holes and the boys’ DNA. There was no doubt.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu immediately placed a gag order on the deaths. Journalists who heard rumors were told the Shin Bet wanted the gag order to aid the search. For public consumption, the official word was that Israel was “acting on the assumption that they’re alive.” It was, simply put, a lie.
Nor was that the only fib. It was clear from the beginning that the kidnappers weren’t acting on orders from Hamas leadership in Gaza or Damascus. Hamas’ Hebron branch — more a crime family than a clandestine organization — had a history of acting without the leaders’ knowledge, sometimes against their interests. Yet Netanyahu repeatedly insisted Hamas was responsible for the crime and would pay for it.
...
The kidnapping and crackdown upset the balance. In Israel, grief and anger over the boys’ disappearance grew steadily as the fabricated mystery stretched into a second and third week. Rallies and prayer meetings were held across the country and in Jewish communities around the world. The mothers were constantly on television. One addressed the United Nations in Geneva to plead for her son’s return. Jews everywhere were in anguish over the unceasing threat of barbaric Arab terror plaguing Israel.
This, too, was misleading. The last seven years have been the most tranquil in Israel’s history. Terror attacks are a fraction of the level during the nightmare intifada years — just six deaths in all of 2013. But few notice. The staged agony of the kidnap search created, probably unintentionally, what amounts to a mass, worldwide attack of post-traumatic stress flashback.
Unless Goldberg has access to information that is different from what everyone else does, this is quite false.
The army knew that there were shots in the phone call. They knew that the boys were shot in the recovered, burned out car. But while they might have suspected that they were all murdered, they didn't know.
Because they also knew some other facts that Goldberg ignores. They knew that two Hamas-linked figures were missing since the night of the abduction. They knew that Hamas was been planning, and publicly calling, to kidnap Israelis for years. They knew that the entire Palestinian Arab populace was upset that the last batch of terrorists were not released in April when the peace talks fell apart and that they would support any kidnapping of soldiers of "settlers" making such an operation more feasible in the West Bank. They knew that the boys had been abducted, not shot and left by the side of the road, almost certainly for the initial purpose of kidnapping to bargain for prisoners.
There was a significant chance that at least one boy was kept alive - perhaps injured - for this bargaining. What purpose would have been served to tell the public, and the parents, that probably two of your boys are dead? There is no reason to extinguish that hope under these circumstances.
And if the IDF didn't know for certain that all the boys were dead, they would have acted exactly the same as they did. No pretext is needed to arrest and question major Hamas figures in the West Bank - that is what investigators do.
As far as whether the Hamas family was acting on orders from Gaza or not, again, Goldberg doesn't know any more than anyone else. Hamas was at the time supposedly part of the "unity" government and the idea that they would be anxious to make their presence felt on the West Bank is not so far fetched. A successful kidnapping would have boosted Hamas' popularity tremendously. Moreover, Palestinian Arab leaders are masters at using "rogue groups" to do what they want and give them plausible deniability. Arafat did it numerous times, and Hamas does it when it turns a blind eye to rockets from other Islamist groups in Gaza.
Goldberg pretends that he has brilliantly put these pieces together, but he ignores the pieces that don't fit his theory. That's what makes it a conspiracy theory,and not responsible analysis.
Now that Goldberg opened the floodgates of this sick quasi-conspiracy theory, others are joining in: The antisemites cannot be far behind, and they will be happy to point to the Jews who floated this to begin with for support.
Yet the basis of the theory - unless Goldberg has inside information about the investigation that no one else has - is clearly false.
See also Gil Lainer's response.