Nowhere in the video do we see any IDF soldiers.
Yet everyone reporting on this story, somehow, "knows" that Ramzi Abu Sahloul was killed by an "IDF sniper."
Not one news outlet asks a basic question: who gains more from a man being shot with a group holding a white flag? Israel or Hamas?
Add to that question: We know that Hamas' entire military strategy is based on using Gaza civilians as human shields. And their political strategy is based on pressuring Israel to stop fighting using world pressure, partially based on a spiraling death count that Hamas wholly controls.
Every Gaza civilian who is killed makes the IDF's job harder.
Any sniper who could take that shot could also clearly see the cameraman who was interviewing the victim shortly beforenahd, as well as the white flag.
Why on Earth would any IDF sniper do such a thing that would do nothing but hurt the war effort?
And, why on Earth would Hamas not want to kill a civilian in front of Western cameras? Does anyone think at this point that Hamas cares about the lives of Palestinians, when they have never lifted a finger to protect a single one, and on the contrary, they have done everything they can to endanger them?
There is zero evidence from this video of who shot Abu Sahloul. Hamas has huge incentive, and the IDF has huge disincentive, to kill him.
Michael Elgort adds:
1. Israeli army is right now about 6-7 kilometers away from the Al Mawasi humanitarian safe zone (see the recent map from January 21 below), the ground forces of IDF are not in Al Mawasi or anywhere near. There is no existing sniper rifle that can cover that long range (mostly they are good for along shot between 1000-1500 meters, rarely slightly farther)
2. We can hear automatic gun fire in the video, not a single shot fire that sniper rifle produces, which implies we hear a machine gun fire (like M-16 or Kalashnikov) and effective range for those are between 500 to 550 meters for M-16 and 350 meters for Kalashnikov.3. The clip is edited between the time we hear gunshots and we see the body - it misses several seconds of the footage and these are important seconds, because during these seconds the person was hit with a bullet4. We do not see on the video any armed person, we do not have a clear visual on the body either, the angle does not allow us to see where he was hit and from which direction, what we see is that he is covered with a white piece of cloth and dragged to a nearby area behind the fence
It is unconscionable that the media reports this story as if it knows how Abu Sahloul was killed. They don't. And all the circumstantial evidence we have points away from the IDF and towards Gaza armed groups.
Assuming that Abu Sahloul must have been killed by Israel is not journalism.
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