Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: forensic evidence

Showing posts with label forensic evidence. Show all posts

Friday, May 27, 2022

There was gunfire before Abu Akleh was killed - including one towards reporters, seemingly from the southeast

Middle East Eye released an entire seemingly unedited video of the scene in Jenin before and during Shireen Abu Akleh's death. (They mislabeled it as May 13, but it is clearly May 11.)

It provides additional evidence that the Jenin militants to the southeast shot and killed Abu Akleh, not IDF soldiers.

Here is a crucial 90 second excerpt that ends about three minutes before Shireen is shot:

It starts off with three gunshots that the reporters don't seem too concerned about (2:41 in MEE video). There are occasional gunshots audible throughout the video, so the widespread reporting that there was no gunfire in the area before she was shot is not true.

At 0:15 (2:55 in MEE) the camera looks up the street. There is the lead IDF armored car there, although a little hard to see.

At 0:21 (3:01) we hear a gunshot. The reporters duck, unlike the earlier three gunshots, so they heard the bullet shockwave.

This gunshot has a similar audio signature as the gunshots that were analyzed in the Bellingcat and CNN reports that they claim came from the from the IDF. But the sound gap between the shockwave and muzzle shot is a bit longer.

Although we have not verified that the militants to the southeast were videoed at this exact time, they were walking north. Also, they were coming down a hill - it looks like higher up the hill was a pretty good line of sight towards the reporters.

Without a real reporter going to Jenin and photographing this street and the surrounding areas, we cannot know for sure if there was a line of sight. But the next thing that happens in this video is most interesting.

Unlike the later gunshots, the reporters seem amused at this gunshot. You can hear them laughing. Then, at 0:34 (3:14) one points to the southeast, where we have seen the militants, apparently to show where the gunshot came from.

My source tells me that the journalist is saying that there are both IDF snipers and "shebab" - the "youth" militants - shooting.

My other source thinks that they are talking about Israeli snipers in a building, but the other one corrects him and says, no, those are Palestinians.

It sure looks like he is pointing to militants who are in their line of sight (otherwise, why point?) at that time. And when the reporter is pointing, he is referring to the "shabab" according to my source.

If they are referring to someone in a building, presumably on an upper floor - and there were no Israeli troops in that direction - then there was definitely line of sight from a building to the reporters.

Other gunshots are heard in the seconds after this as you can hear them again say "shebab."

Afterwards, they return to the street Shireen ended up on, and zoomed in on the IDF vehicles. I'm still not certain that the lead vehicle had a clean shot at where Shireen was, here's the best I could do from the angle of where the tree is, compared to what it looked like from the middle of the street. In the first picture from the street corner, even the taxicab was not visible, and I cannot see the IDF vehicle unlike the shot from slightly further east. It doesn't look like we can even see the corner of the block in the first shot. (There are artifacts from the camera moving.)

I'm not as certain that the IDF had no angle - we don't know how far in the street Shireen was, although we know where the tree is, and of course bullets could go through foliage but I'm still convinced that the bullet hole at the top of the tree (see my previous post, update 1) would not look like that from that angle.

There is at least one other gunshot to be heard in the MEE video, whose source seems to be more than twice as far away as these, at 5:02 of the MEE video, with 800 ms between the shot and the muzzle blast. There may be an additional gunshot at 6:38, less than 30 seconds before the shots we've all seen.

In short, this video shows that:

* There were other audible gunshots in the minutes before Abu Akleh was killed, not as wass reported.

* At least one was recognized by the reporters as being shot near them, and it came from around 220 meters away.

* There were no IDF soldiers anywhere near the reporters, which means that it is entirely possible that the militants saw figures moving, perhaps some with helmets, and took a shot directly towards them.

* The reporter referred to the "shebab" and pointed towards the southeast, seeming to point where the shots came from. (And any reporter and witnesses who know this will never, ever admit it to CNN.)

The idea that Shireen was shot by trigger-happy terrorists to the southeast is not only plausible - it is likely.

(h/t Ibn Boutros, DigFind, Gail Ellis)

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UPDATES: It appears that the gunshot that killed Abu Akleh came from Jenin militants

On Tuesday night, I wrote up an analysis that explained why I felt that it was likely that the IDF had accidentally killed Shireen Abu Akleh.

I was very bothered all day, because I simply couldn't figure out a plausible way for Palestinian militants in the areas we knew them to be to have fired the shots that was consistent with the audio analysis I had been doing, calculating the distance of the gunfire using the roughly 300 millisecond difference in time between the shockwave from the bullet and the muzzle sound (the bullet is much faster than sound.)

After I wrote it up, I realized something that bothered me far, far more. Two of the gunshots that were heard later on in the video had a similar audio signature, and those were the ones that seemed to be aimed at the reporters trying to retrieve Shireen's body. That appears to be targeted fire towards the reporters, not a mistake from aiming elsewhere. There is simply no way the IDF would be deliberately aiming at the reporters as CNN and Bellingcat and AP believe - but I could not find a plausible alternative theory.

But thanks to Jon C., writing at Israellycool, there is not only a plausible theory - but a far better one.

He notes that there was another group of militants that were in the area at roughly the same time, to the southeast, as seen in this video taken facing north:

They were located in this tweet. Light blue is the position of the photographer, yellow is the direction they are walking, purple is where they are, red is where Abu Akleh was killed.

Ground-level photos of the area are not complete. The ones I have seen show a wall, one reason I didn't look closer at this yesterday, and also because I assumed that they would be firing towards the IDF convoy directly to their west - a very visible target. The audio analysis did not support that scenario.

However, that video is only a point in time. Further north, for example, there is an opening in the wall to the north and there are very possibly others. And sometimes there are holes in the walls of the area that can be used for firing positions.

Furthermore, we know from other video that at least some militants were firing from roofs. There are plenty of buildings there that could be used as a firing position, either from a roof or from windows. The video above, after all, was clearly made from an upper floor or a roof.

The point is that the area of the militants in this video are at the correct distance to fit the audio analysis.

Jon C. makes a very salient point:

I have been extremely curious about the possibility that Palestinian gunmen could have mistaken Abu Aqleh and her team for IDF soldiers. If they saw helmets just above the wall, from the side, through the brush, it could be easy to mistake them for soldiers.

We know that the militants from the south shouted out that an IDF soldier was down. They might have themselves seen Abu Akleh fall from the roof, but they might have also heard it from a cellphone or walkie talkie from the militants we are looking at.

This is what the scene looks like from where Abu Akleh was towards the southeast. The tarp and brush across from her would seem to allow lots of partial views of her and the reporters - reporters that made sure the IDF knew where they were but who didn't tell the other side.

From a distance of 170 meters, without a scope and in the heat of battle, and with bushes and trees partially obscuring the view, it is very plausible that trigger happy Palestinians were shooting at anything that looked vaguely military - meaning reporters in flak jackets with helmets. And if they were convinced that they shot a soldier, then they would also want to shoot at anyone who went to help that downed soldier.

This is exactly what Palestinian terrorists would do. This is not what the IDF would do.

Also, I was bothered by the speed of the volleys of gunshots - that did not appear to fit the IDF pattern of one shot at a time. I couldn't figure out any alternative explanation. Palestinian terrorists with the same M16 guns, though, would squeeze off as many shots as they could. And this also explains the inaccuracy of the bullet holes in the tree next to Abu Akleh - a professional soldier from 200 meters away would not shoot so wildly.

B'Tselem had someone on the scene within hours to debunk the theory that they (falsely) claimed the IDF floated that the gunman in one video was actually shooting at Abu Akleh. But there are no NGOs or reporters who have gone on the scene in the past two weeks to look at evidence that Palestinians could have shot Abu Akleh, including from AP or CNN. They went to confirm their biased ideas, not to look objectively at the possibilities.

The firing patterns, timing, and evident aiming at helmeted figures by non-professionals fit this pattern better than what I had written. We are missing pieces of the puzzle - namely finding a line of sight from the southeast and then measuring exact distances - but this is a far better and more likely theory than my earlier thoughts that only the IDF was the appropriate distance away.

UPDATE: CNN shows the location of the bullet holes in the tree that was next to Abu Akleh. The top one could not have easily come from the direct south where the IDF was, it came more from the east. The only way all three bullet holes make sense is firing from the southeast, not due south.

UPDATE 2/3: Adin Haykin noticed something that makes it seemingly impossible for the IDF to have shot the bullets at the tree.

The tree is behind a building from the south!

Here's the tree from the north in one of the last scenes where Abu Akleh is alive:

It is hard to tell from that photo that the trunk is set back from the street and behind the building, but this Bing satellite view makes it very clear:

There appears to be no angle to allow a shot from where the IDF was to hit that tree!

This is not 100%. This screenshot shows the tree and an IDF armored vehicle (h/t DigFind.)

But from this angle it is hard to tell where the building edge is - it is behind the foliage. We cannot assume that the center of the tree in the satellite image is the trunk. But between this and the bullet hole on the east side of the tree, chances of IDF fire hitting it are low.

UPDATE 4: Here's the best angle I can find of the tree, and it still isn't clear if the tree could be hit by IDF fire (but people in the street certainly could.)

UPDATE 4A: Parts of the trunk do seem to be line of sight (although the angle is suspect), so until I find out more this is not a fruitful avenue.

UPDATE 5: Bellingcat's analysis of the distance from the gun to Shireen says that the gun was between 177 and 184 meters away, and it draws this picture that showed that the IDF position is about 20 meters outside that radius:

They don't address that discrepancy, saying, "This estimate more closely aligns with the approximate distance between the IDF position and the site of the journalist’s killing than between the latter and the location of the armed groups."

In other words, since it is a relatively small discrepancy and they cannot think of anyone else who might be in that range, we have to accept that the scientific calculation is a little bit off.

However, the distance that they should be measuring is from the camera (whose microphone captures the sounds) and not from Shireen. Moreover, they need to extend the radius to not only include the street going south, but all potential places that terrorists can be.

So their map should look like this:

The IDF is now some 40 meters outside the range. The differences in muzzle velocity and temperature would not account for that large a discrepancy.

But the range does include the places we saw the militants in the video above.

UPDATE 6: Like the first few seconds of this video, showing at least 15 militants in that exact area shown above. Do they look like a disciplined crew, or do they look like people who are hunting soldiers and who will shoot at anything they see with a helmet? (h/t Jonah B)

We still don't have proof of line of sight, but all we need for that is someone from a major media company to go and check it out, because they are sworn to uphold objectivity and to dig for the truth, no matter where it takes them.....right?

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Sorry to say, I think it was an IDF bullet that accidentally killed Shireen Abu Akleh (UPDATE: Not any more!)

I was live-tweeting my analysis of the CNN report suggesting that Israel targeted Shireen Abu Akleh.

The targeting part is absurd. CNN based its analysis on "eyewitnesses" who are biased. It makes no sense that the IDF would target reporters under any circumstances, and certainly not during fighting - and there was fighting before Shireen was killed, although not immediately before.

But while much of CNN's analysis was biased and based on an "expert" who is known for his anti-Israel "research," the examination of the audio by a professor at Montana State University seems legit. He states that based on the time differential between the sound of the gun firing and the bullet hitting, he can calculate how far the gun was when it fired. CNN stated that the sound differential was 309 milliseconds, and stated which gunshots they believed killed Abu Akleh.

I examined the audio and found the gunshots CNN was referring to. But the other gunshots in that same video (the original one released that showed Abu Akleh on the ground) did not match the sound of the initial ones, so I thought perhaps those were the ones that hit her.

Here was my thread:

I found the gunshots that @CNN says were the ones that killed Shireen Abu Akleh on video, with the secondary sounds to identify the distance. It starts at :08 of this @DigFind video. There are 7 or 8 high pitched shots.

The secondary sound is indeed about 300 ms from the primary shot sound, and I'll trust the Montana State professor that says that indicates it is 190m away or so

According to CNN, these are the shots that killed her, based on witnesses that they are trusting to remember those kinds of details. But we don't know if she was killed before or shortly after.

This is important because you can hear yourself that nowhere else in this video can you hear such high pitched shots. And the same witnesses swear that they were pinned down, not able to aid Shireen, because the IDF kept firing.

I can find no other shots that have the same audio signature in that video.
At about 0:15 you her three clear lower register shots, not from the same gun and without the same "echo."

And automatic fire at :26 or so.

But no more of the shots that the witnesses swear was from the same shots that were in the beginning of that video.Clearly, they are wrong about at least one of volleys.

However, after writing that I then realized that some of the sounds of that video overlapped with audio from the other video released later that showed the reporters milling around and then reacting to gunfire.

I lined up the audio of the two videos:

Based on looking at the audio patterns, it was clear that the initial shots in the "reporters mulling" video had the same audio signature (slightly shorter time lag) as the "200 m" shots in the other video. (Here's the graphic showing the consistent time gaps between the two bangs in the initial volley.)

Assuming that the IDF was around 200 meters away as other sources indicate, my amateur and tentative conclusions are:

1) The initial shots that the reporters heard were from the IDF. There was no firefight at that immediate time.

2) The same kind of gunshot killed Shireen. There were no other weapons heard until we see her on the ground.

3) The IDF did not pin down the reporters with gunfire after she died as the reporters claim; after the initial volley there was other gunfire, presumably from militants towards the IDF after hearing the IDF fire, and the reporters assumed that it must be Israel.

The idea that it was an IDF sniper, as CNN claims, makes no sense. A sniper that would be good enough to hit Abu Akleh's forehead right below her helmet would not be at the same time so bad as to hit a tree three times separated by two feet. Plus IDF sniper rifles have a different sized bullet.

There is no possible way that the IDF would target reporters.

So the most reasonable explanation is the one the IDF floated, saying that there was another militant or group that was north of the IDF perhaps waiting in ambush. The IDF fired towards them and the gunshots reached/ricocheted to the reporters.

I am definitely an amateur at this. One part I don't quite understand is that the IDF gunfire, while not automatic, is much faster than I thought usual for single shots. But at this point in time, I believe that a forensics analysis of the bullet would show it was from an IDF gun. Which really sucks, because without bodycam footage or something showing another target, the liars will run with this as proof of "deliberate murder."

That is impossible. There is nothing to be gained by the IDF targeting journalists and lots to be lost. "Silencing" journalists makes no sense. The soldiers are a very visible target in the middle of an urban area, they are going to worry about who is targeting them, not about shooting Shireen Abu Akleh. Also, there was fighting in Jenin before this incident, so the troops were definitely concentrating on the enemy, not the reporters.

Since the incident, the IDF has been honest about the chances that it was responsible for Abu Akleh's tragic death. It is the only side that cares about the truth, no matter how the facts shake out.

I hope that I can also always be on the side of the truth tellers.

UPDATE: Jon C. at Israellycool wrote up a better theory on how Abu Akleh could have been killed by Palestinians that fits with the audio analysis I was relying on. I summarize my thoughts concurring with it here.

And since then I have amassed a large amount of evidence that this post, based on very incomplete information, is wrong.

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Abu Akleh: The world prefers definite lies about Jews to honest doubt

Before my Twitter ban, I tweeted:

One side: "Let's look at the evidence, transparently, with all parties, and find the truth."

Other side: "WE DON'T NEED PROOF! YOU ARE COLD-BLOODED MURDERERS!"

Why is there even a question here of which side to support?

Despite all the accusations by the PA, B'Tselem, Ken Roth and others that Israel cannot possibly hold an objective and honest investigation, as of this time the IDF investigators say that there is a possibility that Shireen Abu Akleh was killed by a shot that was aimed at a terrorist jeep that was near her.

The military’s investigation into the death of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh has been narrowed to focus on one particular exchange of gunfire between IDF troops and Palestinian gunmen on Wednesday in Jenin, according to a report Thursday.

This particular incident in question “took place about 150 meters from where the journalist who was hit by gunfire and killed was positioned. The incident took place at the time [that she was hit],” Channel 12 news reported.

The IDF says that one soldier fired several shots through a slit in the armored vehicle at a group of terrorists in a jeep, andit was in the direction of Abu Akleh who was behind the terrorists.

It says the other possibility is that there was massive firing from Palestinian positions towards the north where Abu Akleh was. "As part of the attempt to hit the military force, massive Palestinian gunfire was fired, in which hundreds of bullets were fired from several targets" towards where Abu Aklen was.

Given that there were several shots around Abu Akleh, including the tree and her coworker, it seems unlikely that all the IDF bullets missed and hit near her, but the IDF says it is one of two possibilities.

It is asking the US for help in getting the PA to hand over the bullet and/or her helmet, from which it can determine whether it was one of their bullets.

So far, the PA has refused.

Why?

It is quite obvious that only one side is interested in the truth, and the other only wants propaganda. Which is the entire conflict in a nutshell.

But the larger question is why do so many people immediately assume that Israel is covering things up when it is blatantly clear that the only side with no interest the truth is the Palestinian side?

It seems to be human nature that people prefer to listen to the clear-cut, black and white narrative instead of the honest truth. But that especially applies when there is a pre-existing bias towards one side.

The answer is the same answer it has been for thousands of years. Jews are assumed, ab initio, of being liars and cheats. That age-old stereotype is what is behind the libels of today, and it is part of the reason that so many people swallow a clear-cut narrative over the ambiguous truth.

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The PA admits that it has no intention of finding the truth about the death of Shireen Abu Akleh

These tweets from leading Palestinian official Hussein al-Sheikh tells you everything you need to know about how biased the Palestinian Authority "investigation" of the tragic death of Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh will be:

#Israel has requested a joint investigation and to be handed over the bullet that assassinated the journalist Shireen, we refused that, and we affirmed that our investigation would be completed independently, and we will inform her family, #USA, #Qatar and all official authorities and the public of the results of the investigation with high transparency. All of the indicators , the evidence and the witnesses confirm her assassination by #Israeli special units.

They already have the verdict of "Israel assassinated her" before the sham investigation.

It is obvious to all that the Palestinian Authority intends to hide and bury any evidence that does not conform to their pre-determined conclusion.

This is the pattern of "investigations" by modern antisemites, from Amnesty to HRW to the UN and the PA. They go into the process with the intent of finding Israel guilty. They gather lots of evidence - but only report on evidence that supports their conclusions, and ignore the rest. (In the case of the UN, they create a framework that only admits evidence that supports one side.) People who casually look at their reports only see one side of the evidence and assume that the investigators are acting in good faith, so they accept the conclusions that were written before the first piece of evidence is discovered.

The people from the Palestinian Authority to Rashida Tlaib to Susan Sarandon who have already concluded that Israel is guilty of a premeditated assassination with zero evidence are, by definition, Jew-haters. They know ahead of time that Jews are guilty and they will ignore any evidence that contradicts that.

Only rarely are they so obvious about it as Hussein al-Sheikh.

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Bullet math - it is more likely that Palestinian bullets killed Shireen Abu Akleh

Based on this Haaretz article, assuming that the numbers are accurate, it is highly likely but certainly not absolute that Palestinian bullet killed Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh.

It is still unclear whether Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was killed by Israeli fire or Palestinian gunmen while she was covering a military raid in Jenin on Wednesday, according to an initial investigation conducted by the Israel Defense Forces.

The probe shows that Abu Akleh was about 150 meters (328 feet) away from Israeli military forces when she was shot and killed.

Soldiers from the elite Duvdevan Unit fired a few dozen bullets during the raid in Jenin, the investigation shows, but whether it was Israeli or Palestinian gunfire that killed the Al Jazeera reporter is unknown.

Wednesday evening saw feverish rounds of communication between Israel and the Palestinian Authority regarding whether the bullet removed from Abu Akleh’s body would be turned over for examination in Israel.

The bullet, which struck her in the head, is 5.56 millimeters in diameter and was shot from an M16 rifle. But since such rifles are used by both the Israel Defense Forces and Palestinian cells in the West Bank, the information is insufficient to determine which side fired the bullet.

IDF sources say that in the course of an arrest outside the Jenin refugee camp, hundreds of bullets were shot at Israeli troops, who responded by firing dozens of bullets at specific targets. These include a gunman who they spotted on the roof of a house, an armed man peering from a window and others.

Most of the Israeli fire was directed southwards, while Abu Akleh and a Reuters photographer who was wounded were positioned to the north of the Israeli forces. Nevertheless, it appears that some Israeli fire was directed northwards as well.

Some educated conjecture:

No one targeted Shireen. Neither side would benefit from killing her. She was likely killed by a bullet that was aimed at another target.

The article says "hundreds" of bullets were shot at IDF troops, while the Duvdevan unit only fired "dozens" of bullets. Based on the audio of the fighting, this seems likely.

From the geolocation analysis people were doing on Twitter, most of the Palestinian fire was towards the west or northward. This article says only "some" Israeli fire was aimed northward, towards Akleh.

So, let's say 300 Palestinian bullets, only half of them northward - 150 bullets in that direction.

Let's say six dozen Israeli bullets, 30% aimed northward - that is 22 bullets in that direction.

So, back of the envelope calculation says 87% of the bullets aimed northward were Palestinian bullets.

The chances that an IDF soldier shot the bullet that killed her becomes far less likely when you consider that professional soldiers under central command and with an awareness of the laws of armed conflict and the repercussions of a mistaken gunshot do not fire randomly and shoot at very specific targets. Palestinians in Jenin with rifles are ar more likely to shoot in a general direction hoping to hit any soldier.

The odds are overwhelming that Palestinian bullets hit the Al Jazeera reporters and the tree they were near.