The report was that children playing on the beach were shelled by an Israeli vessel and killed. What really happened?
If you do a search on the incident, you will find conflicting reports. One account says that the boys were playing football, another that they were collecting scraps of metal. The photograph of the alleged site of the incident shows a beach but not the kind of beach where people would relax in deckchairs and play games. There was a container which was reportedly targetted by the Israeli gunners, and there seem to be various other bits of industrial debris lying around. There was a report that the Israelis would carry out an investigation but no report of the results of an investigation seems to turn up if you search for it.
The worst is indeed possible: that the boys were shot and killed for fun. Other possibilities are that they were in front of the actual target and the shells fell short - which happens constantly when firing from a vessel at sea. What else was on the beach or in the line of fire? The boys may have been carrying pieces of scrap metal and the Israelis assumed they were weapons. They may even have been using them as pretend weapons, and the Israelis may then have decided that they had hostile intentions; after all, it is not unknown for quite young boys to use substantial firearms, rocket launchers, etc.
Like so much in this wretched war, it will be a very long time, if ever, before the truth emerges. Hamas exploits the circumstances of the war to portray it as a genocide, which it obviously is not, whilst the IDF web site tells a story that it is fighting a perfectly clean war, which is just too good to be true.
You cannot believe anyone.
If you do a search on the incident, you will find conflicting reports. One account says that the boys were playing football, another that they were collecting scraps of metal. The photograph of the alleged site of the incident shows a beach but not the kind of beach where people would relax in deckchairs and play games. There was a container which was reportedly targetted by the Israeli gunners, and there seem to be various other bits of industrial debris lying around. There was a report that the Israelis would carry out an investigation but no report of the results of an investigation seems to turn up if you search for it.
The worst is indeed possible: that the boys were shot and killed for fun. Other possibilities are that they were in front of the actual target and the shells fell short - which happens constantly when firing from a vessel at sea. What else was on the beach or in the line of fire? The boys may have been carrying pieces of scrap metal and the Israelis assumed they were weapons. They may even have been using them as pretend weapons, and the Israelis may then have decided that they had hostile intentions; after all, it is not unknown for quite young boys to use substantial firearms, rocket launchers, etc.
Like so much in this wretched war, it will be a very long time, if ever, before the truth emerges. Hamas exploits the circumstances of the war to portray it as a genocide, which it obviously is not, whilst the IDF web site tells a story that it is fighting a perfectly clean war, which is just too good to be true.
You cannot believe anyone.
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