Showing posts with label forensic evidence. Show all posts
Showing posts with label forensic evidence. Show all posts

Friday, July 14, 2023

The UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs of the Palestinian territories comes out with a report every month about imports, exports, entrances and exits from Gaza. 

In its report on June, it says:

In June, the Israeli authorities allowed 42,220 exits of people from Gaza (in most cases, travelers exited multiple times). This is 13 per cent higher than the exits in May, and 19 per cent higher than the monthly average in 2022. However, it is 92 per cent lower than the monthly average in 2000, before the imposition of category-based restrictions by the Israeli authorities. 
They are comparing the number of exits with 2000 - when thousands of Israelis still lived in Gaza and traveled freely in and out every day? Before the second intifada when checkpoints needed to be enforced? Of course the number of exits will never be nearly as high as in 2000; the borders were porous then. 

If they were to compare with any previous year, they should - and normally do - compare it to the time between Israel's withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, and when Israel started restrictions on Gaza after Hamas violently took over the territory in 2007. Otherwise it is comparing apples to oranges. 

So let's look at previous UN charts.

Here's a UN chart from 2016 that was already deceptive: starting in 2004 when Israelis left Gaza so part of the year there were many, many more exits; and showing that in March 2006 Israel started its restrictions on Gaza workers. So if there is any year that the UN should compare against, it is 2005. 


In 2005, the monthly average of exits was 31,424. Today, it is significantly higher - as mentioned, over 42,000 last month, and in fact earlier this year it surpassed 50,000 some months.

The headline should be that Israel now allows more freedom of movement for Gazans than at any time since Israel's withdrawal from Gaza in 2005. But the UN cannot have a headline that makes Israel look good, can it? So instead of comparing to 2004 or 2005, as it always did before now, it makes up a new benchmark: 2000, a completely artificial and irrelevant date.

Here is UN-OCHA's new chart where they, for the first time, added the year 2000 with its "0.5 million" figure  - just to minimize how much Israel is doing to make Gazan's lives easier.


This is lying with statistics. 

(correction on years h/t Irene)



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Monday, July 10, 2023



For the past week, Palestinian media has been filled with articles about how the Jenin Battalion defeated the IDF in Jenin. They don't quite explain how they come to the conclusion that 12 dead terrorists and much destroyed terror infrastructure is a "victory." 

Today, the Islamic Jihad-linked Palestine Today published a video of their latest "proof" of this illusory victory. 

The video shows an IDF armored D9 bulldozer clearing an area and being targeted with 3 IEDs.


The terror website claims that their explosives "disrupted" the bulldozer's work.

But the video shows that the bulldozer didn't even slow down while detonating these bombs. 

Israel has created many different armored versions of the Caterpillar D9. According to this Wiki page, in testing the D9R version withstood IED belly charges of 500 kg - more than 5 times the mass of high explosives needed to destroy a main battle tank!

The IDF has been using D9s since the 1950s, and the armored versions have been recognized as saving many lives. D9s prompted top Palestinian terrorists in Jenin to surrender in 2003 as the machinery would slowly dismantle the buildings the terrorists were in - and they had no defense against it, forcing them to surrender before the building would collapse. (It takes about a half an hour for a D9 to destroy a building.)

The terrorists released this video to pretend that they effectively countered the D9s - but in the end, they created an advertisement that showed that these bulldozers are effectively indestructible. 





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Tuesday, June 20, 2023

Haaretz reported about the clashes in Jenin yesterday, and fully accepted the idea that unseen snipers shooting towards the journalists were Israeli and not Palestinian. 

Abu Ahmed, a long-time camp resident, said he had the impression that the army was planning to undertake a large-scale operation in the city and its environs. Residents say that when the presence of Israeli forces was detected, calls went out from muezzins for armed militias to come out and confront them, which ultimately led to the heavy fire that followed
“I was in Al-Awdah Square on the edge of the Jenin refugee camp,” said Hafez, a journalist who was covering the raid. “I was in my car. They shot at random while I was photographing the clashes and the Palestinian fighters.” At a certain point, he said, three bullets were fired at his car. “Two of them I heard flying past me, but the third hit the car door on the driver’s side.”

He claims that the shots were not fired at him accidentally. “Our car is a marked journalist’s car and I was wearing a vest identifying me as press.”

Hafez said he was shot at a second time even though he was wearing clothing indicating he was a journalist. “We were about a kilometer away, on Haifa Street, on the road that leads to the Salam army checkpoint. We were eight journalists from the international and Arab media and we came under direct fire from a sniper in one of the buildings,” he recalled. “We were trapped there for 20 minutes and could only leave when it was all over.”

Jasmin – another journalist who was with a colleague of hers who was shot – confirmed the account. “We’re journalists and we were wearing clothing that identified us as such, [even donning] helmets,” she said. “They started shooting at us. We hadn’t done anything, we were only taking pictures. We fled but they kept shooting at us.”

She said that in the area the raid occurred there were no armed Palestinians, “just civilians, children and journalists.” Like Hafez, she said she and her colleagues were fired on “more than once on the same day.”
The journalists are implying that the snipers were Israeli and the story is being reported that way in Arab media. 

The Telegraph has video of journalists taking cover on a rooftop, although some are crouching opposite others, so there is no way to know from which direction the fire is coming. 


There appears to be some play-acting in this video - some journalists taking cover behind a wall while others stand around where they'd be seen by snipers, apparently unconcerned. But the gunfire is real, and the journalists certainly are not in a position to identify the source. 

While they are careful when speaking to The Telegraph not to claim they know the identity of the snipers, being that they are all Palestinian journalists, they of course will blame Israel when speaking to friendlier media. 

What is certain is that trained, professional soldiers do not fire wildly and randomly. They might mistake a target but they fire at targets. The random fire described in the Haaretz article is far more likely from Jenin terrorists, whom we know will fire without even looking at their target.





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The Palestinian Waqf issued a statement yesterday:

The Minister of Awqaf and Religious Affairs, Sheikh Hatem Al-Bakri, denounced the Israeli occupation forces’ raid on Al-Assir Mosque in the Al-Jabriyat area, in the vicinity of Jenin camp, on Monday morning. 

Al-Bakri said in a press statement that the occupation forces blew up the door of the mosque, broke all the windows, tampered with the mosque's assets and furniture, and destroyed the devices and speakers. 

He emphasized that this violation of our sanctities and mosques is rejected by heavenly laws and earthly laws, adding that this insult to our sanctities and mosques will be confronted by insisting on our adherence to our land and our right to Palestine. 

Al-Bakri called on the international community to work quickly and seriously to end these daily violations that attack our sanctities and our feelings, and to end these attacks that harm our rights as Muslims and Palestinians.
There is something missing from this statement.

Terrorists were firing weapons from the mosque they had barricaded themselves in.


The Waqf doesn't seem too bothered by Palestinians using a mosque as a military position.

Which shows that Israel has more respect for Muslim holy sites than Palestinians do. 

But we already knew that.


In fact, the muezzin in Jenin used mosque loudspeakers to call for terrorists to come out and battle the Israelis - meaning that many mosques in Jenin became, according to international law, military command and control centers and therefore legitimate military targets. 

Of course Israel didn't attack those other mosques, but the evidence is clear that Palestinians are the ones who treat mosques as military sites - and no one from the "human rights community" nor from the mainstream Muslim community is condemning that.





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Sunday, March 12, 2023

This frame appears to show a muzzle flash, but the WaPo can't see it.



The Washington Post has an article that they believe damns IDF troops - and they are so excited about it they took away the paywall so everyone can see their computer-modeled 3D analysis.

They did indeed document a war crime, but not the one they are pretending to have uncovered.

Israeli security forces in an armored vehicle fired repeatedly into a group of civilians sheltering between a mosque and a clinic after a Feb. 22 raid in the occupied West Bank city of Nablus, killing two people, including a teenager, and wounding three others, according to witnesses and a visual reconstruction of the event by The Washington Post.
For all the fancy 3-D modeling and hundreds of photos they claim to have used, the newspaper relies completely on one video, taken from above, showing a man with his arm extended with what appears to be a gun, and then running for cover. It is in the third part of this video:


The newspaper tries to claim that there is no evidence that the gunshot one can hear was from that gun, and even says, " The videos reviewed by The Post do not clearly show whether the man had a gun or fired, and none of the witnesses interviewed by The Post said they saw a gunman fire at the Israelis." Yet there appears to be a muzzle flash at the very beginning of the video (see photo above.)  It is ignored by the Post.

They consult two experts about the two bangs heard, who say wildly different things: one says that they are not gunshots at all, and the other says they are gunshots but come from the Israelis, without saying how he could make such a distinction. 

If two experts cannot even agree if a sound is gunfire or not, then what value do they add? The answer is that the WaPo can claim that they consulted audio experts when coming up with their foregone conclusion, even when they don't agree on anything!

When you look at the video of the man who appeared to be pointing a weapon then running to where the civilians are trying to avoid gunfire, it is obvious that he is holding something heavy like a gun. If his hands were empty he would not be running with his arms close together in front of him; his arms would be pumping at his sides the way normal people run.




Moreover, the civilians are running away before the IDF vehicle is shooting anything. (Look at the ones in the sunken plaza.) It appears they are running away from previous Palestinian gunshots, not Israeli.

The nature of open source forensics is that they are necessarily incomplete. We have no idea if there are any gunmen in the building behind the civilians, or on surrounding roofs, or across the street that may have shot the victims. The IDF did certainly fire in this video; we can see that some shots hit the pillar.  But even if the IDF did shoot at the gunman and accidentally hit the victims, it is not a war crime. It is a split-second decision based on the information the soldiers had - they were being shot at, the gunman went for cover behind a stone pillar, and they were responding to the likelihood that the gunman would resume shooting at them as they passed the pillar. It is unclear that the soldiers even saw the civilians on the top of the stairs before the gunman ran to cover behind the pillar.

The entire life and death decision needed to be evaluated and made in fractions of a second.

Under the laws of armed conflict, while the existence of civilians is one factor to be weighed in such a decision,  it is not the only factor. Troops are allowed and expected to defend themselves. A known gunman who runs for cover behind a pillar and who is about to be in line of sight is certainly a legitimate military target. 

In peacetime, police are held to this higher standard of doing everything possible to avoid accidentally hitting civilians even if it means the gunman gets away. For armed conflicts, the laws are different. But the Washington Post doesn't say that  - their entire article is geared towards the idea that the IDF had no right to target an armed man who was hiding among civilians. (And they know quite well that the civilians were not the intended targets.)

Isn't it interesting that the Post spent weeks and used four reporters with several experts consulted, and yet didn't even ask an international law expert whether Israel violated the laws of armed conflict? 

And that brings up the other omission in the Washington Post's coverage: the armed man ran for shelter among civilians, making them into human shields. I mean this literally - he placed himself behind civilian bodies knowing that he was a target, possibly even shoving one person aside. And that really is a war crime!

Apparently,  the reporters know quite well that the IDF didn't violate any laws. And that the Palestinian gunman did. And they don't want their readers to know that.

Remarkably, whenever the news media spends lots of time and money putting together elaborate 3D models of something involving Israel, it is always to say Israel is guilty. They try to replace honest investigations with razzle dazzle. And they are nearly always wrong.

When you put it all together, this article, like the others, is not meant to illuminate the truth, but to obfuscate it. 




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Monday, February 13, 2023

Muhammad Shehada is one of the most vocal defenders of Palestinian terror under the pretense of "human rights."  He is the Chief of Communication for the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor and is a columnist for the Forward, also having written for Haaretz, Vice and Newsweek.

He angrily denounced anyone who claimed that the car ramming attack on Friday that killed three, including two children, and critically injured others (including their father), saying that there was no evidence that the attack was deliberate. 



Somehow, it is a sheer coincidence that Palestinians happen to lose control of cars near crowds of Jews. And equally strange that they celebrate those accidents and canonize the poor people who all have faulty brakes due to the "occupation."





Dashcam footage has been released showing the attack. The blue car speeding to the left of the dashcam veers over two lanes to hit the bus stop. 



There will always be apologists for terror. But why does the mainstream media keep giving them a platform for their vile hate?





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Thursday, November 17, 2022




Renowned documentary filmmaker Pierre Rehov has released a film on the death of Shireen Abu Akleh that casts doubt on whether it was an IDF soldier that killed her.

It is called "Lies and Tears."


Using some of the evidence I had uncovered, and with some additional expert testimony, Rehov looks at the events in Jenin that day with a critical eye. He interviews Palestinians who themselves think that the Palestinian Authority had the incentive and means to murder Abu Akleh. 

The summary of the film:
UNPRECEDENTED CAMPAIGN: Since 1990, 2658 journalists have been killed in the line of duty. None of them has had the media coverage of Shireen Abu Akleh. The well-organized campaign launched by the Palestinian Authority around her death has almost no precedent.

UNFOUNDED ACCUSATION: Assuming that an Israeli soldier was really responsible for the death of the Al Jazeera journalist, the accusation that it was a deliberate shooting is unfounded. The film shows that at such a distance no one could see the “press” sign on Shireen’s bulletproof vest. Palestinian gunmen were firing at Israeli soldiers from all directions.

FALSE WITNESSES: The “witnesses” who were at the scene and first to accuse Israel of murder are claiming to be impartial journalists. They are, in fact, propagandists of the Palestinian Authority, as the film clearly shows.

DISTORTION OF FINDINGS: CNN, The Washington Post and Bellingcat, called on Professor Maher, a forensic specialist and sound analyst, to define the distance between the journalist and the shooter from videos shot at the time of the tragedy, but they distorted his report to accuse the Israeli army. Professor Maher’s analysis, which Rehov also obtained, describes a distance between the sound recorders and the shooter, not between the journalist and the shooter. This “detail” leads to a difference of more than 20 meters which places the shooter further north of the army’s most extreme position. Yet, this critical detail has been glossed over in all the official versions, concluding that Israel is responsible.

Professor Maher’s calculation was made for an M4, a weapon frequently used by Israeli soldiers. But if the bullet was fired from any other weapon with a longer barrel, the distance shortens again and places the shooter more than 40 meters north of the Israeli position.

OMMISSIONS: Witnesses, including one of the “journalists” who was near Shireen Abu Akleh at the time of the tragedy, mention the presence of gunmen in a house not far from them. These testimonies have never been taken up by the media. They describe “snipers,” but the film formally demonstrates that it was impossible for Israeli “snipers” to have been in these positions. There were men shooting at the journalists from the buildings. They could not be Israelis. So, who were they?

EXPERT TESTIMONY: The film gives the floor to high-level international experts, including a French GIGN officer, court-appointed forensic expert Alain Artuso, and physicist Nahum Shahaf. Each of them, according to their expertise, points out several mistakes made by those who accuse the Israeli army.  
At this point the IDF has all but admitted that it was their own soldier who shot Abu Akleh, and Rehov doesn't include in his distance analysis the additional factor of the extra time from the shockwave to the microphone which could indeed potentially include the place the IDF was known to be. Nevertheless, the idea that the IDF would deliberately kill a journalist is shown here to be as absurd as possible. And the "experts" from Bellingcat, AP, the NYT and Washington Post based their distance estimations on wrong data.

Rehov is also the first one to include my findings that there were Palestinian snipers in houses and on roofs.

It is worthwhile to watch.

(h/t Ian)






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Monday, July 04, 2022

The Palestinian Authority Public Prosecutor's Office has amazingly high tech equipment that can determine things that no other known investigators can. And they are surprised that the US investigators are too incompetent to properly examine a bullet. 

Really.


The findings of the Public Prosecution's investigations in the case of the assassination of the martyr Shireen Abu Akleh, which were previously announced, were based on a set of irrefutable evidence, which included technical reports, examinations and eyewitnesses' testimonies that conclusively determined that the assassination of the martyr Shireen Abu Akleh was a direct targeting by a member of the Israeli occupation army stationed in the area, and it proved indisputably that there were no manifestations or armed confrontations at the time and place of the crime.

The evidence included technical reports related to the bullet extracted from the head of the martyr Shireen Abu Akleh, which indicated that the 5.56-caliber projectile was armor-piercing and was fired from a distance of 170 to 180 meters with a firing path that corresponds to the location of the Israeli occupation army.
Except that the army was 210-215 meters away from the microphone, 195 meters away from Abu Akleh.

With regard to what the American side stated regarding the results of the technical examination of the presence of severe damage to the bullet that prevented reaching a clear conclusion, the Public Prosecution confirms that this is not true and was surprised by came in the statement since the technical reports of Public Prosecution confirm that the condition of the projectile could be matched to the weapon used.

Given that the weapon they claim that killed Abu Akleh is not in their hands, that is pretty amazing! 

Additionally, the fact that the targeting of the martyr Abu Akleh, according to the conclusive evidence, was intentional, and it is unacceptable what was stated by the American side that there were no reasons indicating that the targeting was intentional, especially since they were aware of the overall investigations of the Public Prosecution that confirmed the issue of a premeditated killing, whether what is documented by video recordings or through eyewitnesses, the path, distance and heights of the shooting, or by targeting those who tried to rescue the martyr, as detailed in the announcement of the results of our investigations in the press conference.

Since they haven't proven that the bullets came from the Israeli position by their own admittance in the first paragraph, then if there was any intentionality, it must have been from the real Palestinian shooters.

 The competent authority to conduct the investigation legally is the Palestinian Public Prosecution, and any results of investigations conducted by any other bodies are not legally binding. Based on the investigations, Israel bears full responsibility for the deliberate assassination of the Palestinian martyr Shireen Abu Akleh, and we will work to complete our legal procedures to prosecute Israel before international courts.  

 I just want to emphasize: the Palestinian security services did not do a crime scene investigation. They didn't close off the area of the shooting, they did not take photographs, they did not measure distances, they did not stop Jenin residents from dropping by the scene of Shireen's' death and take souvenirs. They do not know what direction she was facing, if there was a ricochet off the wall, what the angle was of the shot. They do not know which buildings in Jenin the terrorist snipers were. They do not even know the type of gun being used, claiming it was a mini Ruger that the IDF does not use. They did not publish a report showing where the other bullets landed, or how many there were. They relied on "eyewitness" testimony from known and established liars. 

Their investigation that they are claiming is so professional and superior to what the Americans could do is not merely amateurish. It is criminally incompetent. They decided on their conclusion and twisted evidence to reach it, ignoring any counter-evidence (like the actual distance of the IDF.) 

This bunch of incompetent clowns - who may have accidentally exonerated Israel by saying that the bullet was manufactured in the US, when Israeli bullets are made in Israel - are now accusing the US experts that came to Israel of not knowing anything about bullet forensics.




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How can these two facts be both true?
After an extremely detailed forensic analysis, independent, third-party examiners, as part of a process overseen by the U.S. Security Coordinator (USSC), could not reach a definitive conclusion regarding the origin of the bullet that killed Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. Ballistic experts determined the bullet was badly damaged, which prevented a clear conclusion.

In addition to the forensic and ballistic analysis, the USSC was granted full access to both Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Palestinian Authority (PA) investigations over the last several weeks. By summarizing both investigations, the USSC concluded that gunfire from IDF positions was likely responsible for the death of Shireen Abu Akleh.  The USSC found no reason to believe that this was intentional but rather the result of tragic circumstances during an IDF-led military operation against factions of Palestinian Islamic Jihad on May 11, 2022, in Jenin, which followed a series of terrorist attacks in Israel.
What actual evidence is this conclusion based on? Certainly the PA didn't provide any. In fact, so far, there has not been a single bit of evidence that the IDF was responsible, at least not publicly released, outside the admission that they shot in her general direction a handful of times. 

This appears to be less about finding out the truth and more about making the incident go away. Biden is coming to Israel and right now, both Israel and the US want to make sure that there aren't any ugly incidents. This way they don't rile up the Palestinians too much, and the White House can tell the 24 senators who demanded an investigation that it was done as best as possible, and the White House also takes some of the heat off Israel by saying it wasn't done intentionally.

The actual truth? The likelihood that Palestinian terrorists killed Shireen Abu Akleh? Those just get in the way of the upcoming trip. 

So the truth is buried.





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Sunday, July 03, 2022

As the US has finally pressured the Palestinian Authority to hand over the bullet that they claim killed Shireen Abu Akleh (and Israel is handing over the only weapon that they say could have shot in her direction on May 11,) it is worth looking a little more at how the main "eyewitness" to her death is a pathological liar.

We've already discussed how Jenin journalist Ali Samoudi was known decades ago to prompt "witnesses" to say whatever lies would be most dramatic in accusing Israel of crimes. There is no reason to think he would act any differently himself when he is the witness himself. 

On May 11, Samoudi said that this is what happened (CAMERA's translation:)

’After several minutes we heard the sound of bullets pouring on us from the direction where the occupation’s soldiers were concentrated, they were on the rooftops of the buildings in front of us. [This was] amidst the shouts of Palestinian citizens, calling us: get down to the ground, the snipers are targeting you.’

“Samoudi says: ‘I was hit by a bullet at the lower back, and Shireen shouted: ‘Ali was hit, Ali was hit.’ Not even a few seconds went by before Shireen fell on the ground after blood covered her face, and one of the colleagues carried us to the graveyard’s fence to protect us from the soldiers’ bullets, which went on for 10 minutes nonstop.’

“He said: ‘I was miraculously spared from certain death after a bullet hit me in the lower back, but the doctors described my condition as moderate. However the diagnosis requires hospitalization for several days, to make sure there are no complications in the coming hours.’
This is a series of lies.

There were two volleys of bullets. Ali Samoudi can be seen in this screenshot (7:06) right before the first volley, as one of the journalists with light colored sleeves in the background less than a second before the shooting:


Here is a video showing the above scene, and then a synced video showing Samoudi rushing to a car before the second round of shots.


Samoudi didn't witness Abu Akleh get shot. She was killed in the second round of gunfire, after trying to take cover. Samoudi wasn't helped by anyone. He wasn't pinned down for ten minutes of gunfire. 

And he wasn't hit in the lower back. He was grazed in the shoulder, as his own video at the hospital shows quite clearly, rushing from that same car to the emergency room where he videos everything.


Here you can see his wound on his left shoulder:


But AP reported weeks later, based on his "testimony:" 

Samoudi said the soldiers fired a warning shot, causing him to duck and run backwards. The second shot hit him in the back. Abu Akleh was shot in the head and appears to have died instantly, 

.... Samoudi says the bullet that struck him shattered, leaving some fragments inside his back. 
Sounds dramatic. And provably false.

The New York Times was somewhat more accurate in what his injury was, but still exaggerating it:
“They’re shooting at us,” Mr. Samoudi shouted. He turned around, he said, and felt his back explode as a bullet pierced his protective vest and tore through his left shoulder.

“‘Ali’s been hit, Ali’s been hit!’” Ms. Abu Akleh shouted, Mr. Samoudi recalled. It was the last time he would hear her voice.
No female voice can be heard in the video.

It appears likely that Samoudi was hit from the front in the first volley - he made up the story of a warning shot, turning around and being hit from behind because that makes Israeli soldiers look worse. (Later he said there were no warning shots.) 

He said that the soldiers were on rooftops of buildings before he knew that there were no soldiers in buildings - so that part of his "testimony" disappeared after May 11. 

And AP shows him, absurdly, in a wheelchair eight days later in the same spot. He clearly never needed a wheelchair - he ran quite quickly about 20 meters in ten seconds to the car after supposedly being "shot in the lower back."


His posing in a wheelchair is pure Pallywood.

By the time the New York Times interviewed him, it was already clear that he was an accomplished liar. Yet they still quote him as if he is a credible witness.

But here's the thing: Ali Samoudi is not an anomaly. Most Palestinian witnesses to events, when they give their names, will say what the Palestinian Authority or Hamas want them to say. They are conditioned to always blame Israel no matter what, even when evidence points to Palestinian terrorist culpability.  After all these years, one would think that reporters would treat Palestinian "eyewitness" testimony with the knowledge that they are often either enthusiastic accomplices in trying to make up stories about Israel (as Samoudi has been) or frightened of saying something that their leaders do not want to be said.

(h/t Gail)





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Remember Marc Garlasco?

Back in 2009, I discovered that Garlasco, a Human Rights Watch researcher who wrote that organization's typically one-sided anti-Israel reports, was an avid collector of Nazi memorabilia. 

He was forced to resign after it was discovered that he had written things like "The leather SS jacket makes my blood go cold it is so COOL!"

Now, NPR is rehabilitating him, interviewing him as an "expert" in a story about how Israel supposedly cannot be trusted to investigate itself in the Shireen Abu Akleh killing:

ESTRIN: Israel is similar to other militaries, which tend to protect their own when they ask troops to risk their lives for their country, says former Pentagon official Marc Garlasco, who has investigated war crimes around the world.

MARC GARLASCO: Militaries in particular have a very poor record of investigating themselves. It doesn't matter if we're talking about Israel or the United States, Myanmar. When organizations investigate themselves, they tend to either exonerate their personnel, or they'll go after the lowest-hanging fruit, and we very rarely see any kind of justice.
If so, why did the IDF immediately identify a possible weapon that could have killed Abu Akleh? Why didn't it do what the Palestinians did and insist that the other side must have killed her? 

The NPR piece is a typical example of choosing the narrative first and then finding an "expert" to support the already chosen outcome. In this case, they chose someone who used to use the nickname "Flak88" after a German anti-tank weapon that also happens to include the "88" dog-whistle that neo-Nazis use as a shorthand for "Heil Hitler" (H being the 8th letter of the alphabet.)

And someone who not only collects Nazi memorabilia, but wears modern sweatshirts celebrating Nazi-era medals.


(h/t Irene)



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Sunday, June 26, 2022

While the world is falling over itself to declare Israel guilty for the death of Shireen Abu Akleh, no one seems to be talking about how careless and negligent the Palestinian Authority has been in its "investigation."

I've watched lots of videos from the spot where Abu Akleh was killed in Jenin, but I have not seen one that shows the Palestinian police.

Think about every crime scene you have ever seen, in person or on TV. Reporters and residents are kept away, while the police try to preserve the scene, tag and photograph the position of all the bullets, and do everything a proper forensics unit does.

But in Jenin on May 11, there was no hint of police. 

Here is where she was killed, not long thereafter, before the tree turned into a full fledged memorial. 


Where is the caution tape? 

More importantly, the audio shows that there were at least a dozen bullets seemingly from the same source. The PA has one of them - the one that hit Shireen. Where are the rest of them? Any one of them could show that the IDF had fired in that direction - why doesn't anyone seem to have them?

Either the Palestinian police - funded by the West - is spectacularly incompetent, or they are hiding important data from the public.

The people who are investigating using open-source tools don't seem to be bothered by the fact that there is so little information being shared from the supposed side of the victim. 





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Friday, June 24, 2022

The UN High Commissioner of Human Rights pretended to investigate the death of Shireen Abu Akleh, and it came to its pre-ordained conclusion with a minimum of pretense that it was being objective.

In accordance with our global human rights monitoring methodology, our Office inspected photo, video and audio material, visited the scene, consulted experts, reviewed official communications and interviewed witnesses.  
As with the other faux investigations, they never seriously considered that there were any Palestinian militants around, even though they were pointed out at the time.

The most obvious proof that the UN did not do any sort of serious investigation comes from this laughable lie:

At around 06h30, as four of the journalists turned into the street leading to the camp, wearing bulletproof helmets and flak jackets with “PRESS” markings, several single, seemingly well-aimed bullets were fired towards them from the direction of the Israeli Security Forces.  
There are between 12 and 18 sounds of bullets audible on the videos of the scene. One hit Abu Akleh. One grazed the shoulder of Ali Samoudi. Three hit a tree. No one seems too interested in what happened to the rest of them - there has not been a word about the PA investigating it, and the scene was never closed off for any sort of investigation. (People visited the site immediately and created a shrine to Shireen with no interference from the Palestinian police, and indeed I have not seen a single photo of the Palestinian police at the site at all. Compare to any shooting scene in any other place in the world.)

So how, exactly, were these bullets "well-aimed"? Any shooter who hits a tree more often than a target would not be considered exactly a competent shot.

However, if you look at how Jenin terrorists shoot their weapons , their barely aiming at their targets (as this May 13 video below shows), it is far more consistent with the shooting pattern towards the journalists.



The words "well-aimed" for volleys of bullets that are anything but proves, as if we needed any more proof, that the UN "investigation" is a sham. 

Which is why it is not at all surprising that the UN doesn't even mention that the PA is refusing to allow the bullet that killed Shireen be analyzed by anyone else. They don't mention it at all. If they really wanted a thorough investigation, they would demand the bullet be handed over to a competent authority. 



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Wednesday, June 22, 2022

As we've seen, all of the "investigations" of Shireen Abu Akleh's death that blame the IDF hinge on a single piece of evidence: audio analysis of the bullet sounds on different videos to determine the  distance from the shooter to the camera. 

Every single analysis makes the same wrong assumption: that the estimates by the experts consulted has some wiggle room that would allow the IDF to be within the range of the source of the gunfire.

Every investigation noted that the IDF was outside the range of what they had asked their experts to determine.  Every one fudges the data from the experts to indict the IDF. Crucially, not one of them went back to these experts and asked whether their calculations could possibly support the IDF shooting Abu Akleh.

Here is a short lesson of the physics and assumptions made by the experts to calculate the distances.

The guns used by both sides shoot bullets much faster than the speed of sound. Objects that travel faster than the speed of sound create a shockwave (in the case of aircraft, a sonic boom) that can be heard by those near the path of the object. This is an illustration of a shockwave for something traveling 1.4 times the speed of sound:



Most bullets travel significantly faster than the speed of sound. Here's a photo of the shockwave from a bullet.


The easiest way to picture this is to think about the wake of a speedboat on a lake.  The faster the bullet, the narrower the "wake." When the wake passes by one's ear or a microphone, you hear a clap sound. If the bullet is not shot in the general direction of the ear or microphone, no shockwave sound is heard at all.

The muzzle of the gun also produces a sound when the bullet is fired, the "bang." That bang travels at exactly the speed of sound from the gun, at the same speed in all directions. 

By measuring the difference in time between the "clap" and the "bang," we can calculate the distance of the gun.

Everyone agrees that Abu Akleh was killed by a 5.56mm bullet. Everyone agrees that both the IDF and militants in Jenin use weapons (M4s and M16s) that use those bullets. 

To determine the distance of the gun to the microphone, we need to know a few things:

* The speed of sound.
* The speed of the bullet between source and where the sounds are heard.
* The time gap between the sound of the shockwave to the sound of the gunfire.

Assuming that the listener/microphone is reasonably close to the bullet path, this gives a very good approximation of the distance. 

We know the speed of sound at various temperatures. 

We know the time gap from the videos - between roughly 295 ms and 310 ms.  Here are the last two gunshots from the first set of gunshots from audio analysis tool Audacity:


The speed of the bullet is variable, depending on the gun type. And keep in mind that since bullets sllow down, we want to know the average bullet speed at that distance for this calculation, not the muzzle speed which is always faster. This chart shows the speed for 5.56 mm bullets using various types of guns at various distances.  


The speed at 100 yards would be roughly the average speed of the bullet that traveled a total of 200 yards/meters, so it is a good approximation. Also, the slowdown slope over distance is pretty linear so we can take a good guess that an M16 with a muzzle speed of 960 m/s would have an average speed of about 880 m/s over 200 meters, and an M4 with a muzzle speed of 905 m/s would have an average speed of 824 m/s. 

This is the data that was used to determine the distance of the shooter to the microphones, with each investigation using somewhat different assumptions on bullet speed - but all of them came out with a range of between 155 meters and 195 meters for the distance to the gun from the microphone.

Rob Maher, one of the experts consulted by Bellingcat, CNN and the New York Times, emailed me the formula and his assumptions of the range from the CNN article, so you can do this yourself with a spreadsheet:

Measured time-of-arrival difference between shock wave and muzzle blast:  Time_D

  Speed of sound:  c

  Bullet average speed:  V

  Distance of firearm to target:  D


      Time_D = D/c - D/V  = D*{(1/c) - (1/V)}


  Solving for D, we get


      D = Time_D / {(1/c) - (1/V)}


So with Time_D = 0.306, c= 347, and V= 762, we get D = 195 meters.

Or with Time_D = 0.306, c= 347, and V= 884, we get D = 175 meters.


As we've shown, the IDF was most definitely outside those ranges.  (This modified NYT graphic uses yards and a more generous range.)



The experts chose the most expansive ranges they could to account for all the variables, and even then, the IDF is well outside the possible range.

Which means that the IDF couldn't have fired the shots that killed Shireen Abu Akleh - unless they moved within range when no one was looking, or there was a hurricane level wind gust going south at the moment of the gunfire, or if the IDF uses a gun with a much slower bullet velocity than of any known gun that uses 5.56mm bullets.

To be very accurate, we also need to know:

* The temperature
* The wind speed
* The distance from the ear/microphone to the path of the bullet. The further away they are, the longer it takes the shockwave passing by to hit the listener, and that makes the calculations a bit more complicated.

Those factors cannot possibly explain the discrepancy between the ranges calculated by the experts and the IDF position.* (see update) Yet not one of these analyses bothered going back to the experts and asked them if there was some other X factor that could explain the discrepancies.

One other important fact: You will notice that there is quite a difference between the time gaps of the two gunshots I placed in my graphic above - 295 ms and 306 ms. Assuming that the source of the gunfire is the same position (which is reasonable), this indicates that the shooter was not shooting each bullet with the same trajectory. If he was shooting wildly, and the direction of the bullets changed by a degree or two, that would explain such a discrepancy - the distance from the shockwave to the camera would change if the bullets were being sprayed across a larger area, and that would easily account for such a discrepancy in gunfire from the same gun.

Dr. Maher was nice enough to illustrate this for me as well:




Such a wild shooting pattern would be far more likely from Jenin terrorists than from the professional soldiers of the IDF, in my opinion. (Indeed, we saw bullets sprayed on the tree, on Abu Akleh and Ali Samoudi, in a radius that is far larger than that of a trained shooter aiming at a target.)

(I had also asked Dr, Maher if a bullet stopped by a tree or person would have a different time gap, but the answer is no - the shockwave "wake" would continue on to the microphone exactly the same way even if the bullet stopped somewhat short. If it stopped too short, there would be no shockwave sound at all.)

The media didn't ask the experts whether there was any factor that could account for the IDF shooting Abu Akleh at this distance. They didn't ask about the discrepancies between the audio gaps. They were trying to fit the data to their preconceived verdict that the IDF fired the weapons.

The liberal elements in the media often disparage the more right-wing media as not believing in science. This is science. And all the supposedly objective media - Bellingcat, the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN and AP - literally ignored the science and fudged the data to make it appear that the IDF was in the range indicated by the audio forensics.  

It wasn't.

Every one of these media outlets tried to hide the science that would exonerate the IDF according to their own experts.That is a scandal. 

UPDATE: Rootclaim tweets that the distance from the mic to the bullet may indeed put the IDF guns in range.

 the calculation doesn’t account for the distance from the arriving bullet to the microphone. 
The bullets are known to have hit the journalists and a tree that were 10-15 meters from the camera. That means 30-45 milliseconds should be added to the 300-310 ms delay measured in the soundtrack. 
This chart shows the distance to the shooter, as a function of the average bullet velocity. The blue line is the erroneous calculation and the red line shows the corrected distance (using 10m correction).Image
Most rifles used by both sides are around the 800 m/s range (after deceleration in air), meaning an increase of ~20 meters, to a range of ~200 meters, which better matches the IDF’s location. 
We publish this specific finding ahead of our full analysis as it is widely used in public discourse, causing confusion. However, we generally advise against using a single piece of evidence as a “smoking gun”, since they rarely are (as demonstrated here…). 
Only a detailed probabilistic inference, using all evidence, and accounting for all possible sources of error, can provide a reliable assessment of a hypothesis’ likelihood. We’ll be publishing our full analysis soon. 
The math here is a little beyond me, but I had asked Dr. Maher about this specifically. Here are excerpts of his response on how to calculate the distance when the mic is further away:

If more precise geometry is to be used, you might choose to take into account the Mach angle of the bullet’s shock wave near the microphone.  If the bullet has slowed to, say, some velocity between 690-790 meters per second as it reached the area of the microphone, the Mach angle is then somewhere between 26 and 30 degrees.  Here is a plan view sketch of what I am referring to.



If you have a good prediction of the bullet’s speed and its trajectory, AND if you assume the bullet passed by without striking anything before passing the microphone, you could use the time of the shock wave arrival to back-track where the bullet was at various times before and after the shock wave arrival.  I haven’t done any of that work in this case because of all of the unknowns about speeds, trajectories, and positions. In other words, I assumed the microphone was sufficiently close to the bullet’s trajectory that the shock wave propagation time to the microphone was negligible.

10-15 meters is not negligible, but there are still a lot of unknowns that make the calculations difficult.

And more recently he wrote something that indicates that Rootclaim's numbers may be in the right ballpark:

My sketch below is intended to show a simple plan view, with the firearm at the left and the bullet traveling to the right.  The black circles labeled 1 and 2 are indicating possible microphone locations.  We don’t actually know the microphone location relative to the bullet path.  The circular arcs are depicting the path of the muzzle blast sound moving outward from the gun.  The red lines are depicting the ballistic shock wave of the bullet at two different moments.

 



 

Assuming the two microphone positions are roughly the same distance from the firearm, the time-of-arrival of the muzzle blast at each position will be essentially the same.  However, the arrival of the ballistic shock wave will be different at the two positions.

The arrival of the shock wave at position 1 will be essentially the time it takes the supersonic bullet to travel from the gun to position X, which is essentially position 1.

The ballistic shock wave arrival at position 2, however, will be delayed because the timing consists of the time required for the bullet to travel to position X-Δ, plus the time it takes the shock wave to travel at the speed of sound from X-Δ to position 2.

For example, if I imagine a scenario which X is 180 meters from the gun, the average bullet velocity is 884 m/s, and the two possible microphone positions 1 and 2 are separated by 5 meters, then Δ=2.9 meters, the distance from X- Δ to position 2 is about 5.8 meters, and so the delay between the shock wave and the muzzle blast is about 321 milliseconds at position 1, but 308 milliseconds at position 2.  Since we don’t actually know the relative position of the microphone and the bullet’s trajectory, we have over 10 milliseconds of uncertainty due to the 5 meters uncertainty of trajectory difference.  If we do the same scenario but with an average bullet velocity of 762 m/s, the shock wave-muzzle blast delay is 289 ms at position 1 and 276 ms at position 2 (13 ms difference).

Keep in mind that a bullet that was shot a few meters over the heads of the individuals making the recording has this same sort of timing adjustment. 

I hope this helps give an idea of why there is uncertainty in the analysis, and why I tried to be very clear with all of the reporters and with you about the need to combine this acoustic  evaluation with physical evidence, witness accounts, and all the rest.

I was a bit overconfident in my analysis above, assuming that the distance to the mic was not great enough to affect the calculations mush. It appears I was wrong, and that there is a significant additional uncertainty to the distance calculations. I believe that the angle of the bullets to the target relative to the microphone would also be a factor - a bullet from the southeast would pass somewhat closer to the mic to the north.

If Rootclaim's numbers are correct, and up to 20 meters can be added to the calculations, then rifles with slower bullets could barely include the IDF position. Al Jazeera identified the IDF guns as M4s which do have a slower muzzle speed than M16s. 




Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

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