Bellingcat and Scripps News published a video report on the destruction of "heritage sites" in Gaza during this war.
Using satellite images and videos taken in Gaza, they identified over 150 such sites that have been either damaged or destroyed in Gaza.
The well-known anti-Israel group Forensic Architecture has a prominent role in creating 3-D graphics of some of the sites, showing evidence of Israel using bombs, bulldozers and other equipment. The report suggests that Israel may be violating international law by deliberately targeting these sites.
It is nothing short of antisemitic libel.
Pretending to be even-handed, the report briefly shows that Israel has found weapons caches and tunnel entrances in mosques.
 |
| Tunnel shaft in mosque |
But it immediately dismisses that as saying that IDF "claims can't be verified for every mosque." As if the IDF would publish videos of blowing up mosques for no reason.
The report doesn't mention Hamas using cemeteries as rocket launching pads. In fact, it only mentions Hamas twice, and one of those times was to complain that Israel had tested out flooding Hamas tunnels which is considered, of course, an ecological disaster - but Hamas actually building the tunnels under Gaza mosques, cemeteries and hospitals doesn't merit a single disparaging word.
War crimes require intent. The evidence that Israel intends to target Gaza heritage sites is exactly zero. Hamas brags that it has built hundreds of miles of tunnels under an area that is only 25 miles long and less than 8 miles wide, and Israel has uncovered literally thousands of tunnel shafts in mosques, cemeteries, hospitals and children's bedrooms. The idea that Israel is targeting the mosques and bedrooms, and not the tunnels and weapons caches and Hamas terrorists, is simply libelous.
Beyond that, it makes no sense militarily. Targeting is not a casual activity - it requires multiple levels of oversight, legal advisors, and approvals. To think that that all levels of the IDF are secretly scheming to destroy Palestinian heritage during a war, using expensive bombs whose supply is not guaranteed to last forever, is nothing less than an antisemitic conspiracy theory.
The clearest proof that this is nothing less than antisemitism can be seen in the report itself, when they describe how Hamas builds on top of archaeological sites, destroying them (a point I made when Forensic Architecture made the same absurd charges in 2022.) That is justified - because Gaza is under "occupation" and it is somehow Israel that forces Hamas to build on top of ancient Roman ruins. (See 5:40-6:20.)
Israel attacking heritage sites that have become military sites is terrible. Hamas using those heritage sites as military sites is justified, because where else can they do it - Gaza is so crowded!
Here's video of the IDF uncovering rocket launchers in a cemetery from January.
This wasn't shown in this report, because that violates the holy narrative that only Israel desecrates cemeteries, not the religious Hamas members.
רקטות בתוך בית קברות בעזה pic.twitter.com/NnHiANISRd
— יוני בן מנחם yoni ben menachem (@yonibmen) December 22, 2023
