Robert Inlakesh
The New York
Times recently published a piece admitting that an unprecedented amount of
“collateral damage” has been permitted by the Israeli military. However, in
order to sanitize the revelations it claims to be uncovering, it omits key
statistics that were previously revealed.
FILE PHOTO. A woman holding a girl reacts after Israeli airstrikes hit Ridwan neighborhood of Gaza City, Gaza. © Ali Jadallah/Anadolu via Getty Images
Presented as a
bombshell piece, the December 26 article reveals that Israel had sent through
an order that permitted killing up to 20 civilians for each low-level Hamas
target. “The order, which has not previously been reported, had no precedent in
Israeli military history,” the article reads.
However, in
early April of 2024, an Israeli media outlet called +972 Magazine had not only
published this fact, citing sources within Israel’s military, but uncovered
much more damning figures detailing what was to be considered “acceptable”
collateral damage.
The +972 article
revealed that the Israeli airstrike that killed Hamas’ Shujaiya Battalion
Commander, Wisam Farhat, was authorized to kill 100 civilians. Even more
shocking was the infamous case of Ayman Nofal, the commander of Hamas’ Central
Gaza Brigade, where, according to the sources, “the army authorized the
killing of approximately 300 civilians.”
The +972 report
was mentioned in passing by The New York Times, with the caveat that Israel’s
military had denied it. However, +972 Mag’s investigative work on this topic
did not begin in April. In fact, a piece published in November of 2023 cited a
source who claimed the following:
“The numbers
increased from dozens of civilian deaths [permitted] as collateral damage as
part of an attack on a senior official in previous operations, to hundreds of
civilian deaths as collateral damage.”
So, while a big
deal is made of the fact that such high numbers of collateral damage have “no
precedent in Israeli military history,” the IDF has been knowingly writing off
civilians as collateral damage for years. One need only look at literally any
UN report on Israel’s past military conduct to see it.
It isn’t only in
Gaza that such horrendous “collateral damage” has been normalized, it has also
been the case in Lebanon. When Israel carried out the assassination of
Hezbollah’s Secretary General Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah, it openly announced that
it estimated the total death toll to be around 300, as a result of leveling a
number of civilian buildings in southern Beirut.
There is
literally nothing in the article published by The New York Times that is new;
all it does is affirm what has already been reported, yet it is done in a way
that works to water the killings down by omitting key facts and repeating old
tropes.
For example, it
repeats as proven fact the widespread allegation that Hamas purposely embeds
itself amongst civilians to use them as human shields, a point that has been
found at least questionable before.
What is
undeniable however, is that Israel uses Palestinians as human shields, as has
been copiously documented throughout the war and used to be an accepted part of
Israel’s military doctrine.
“From November
2023 onward, amid a global outcry, Israel began to conserve ammunition and
tighten some of its rules of engagement, including by halving the number of
civilians who could be endangered when striking low-ranked militants who posed
no imminent threat”
states the NYT. The question here is, where did this information come from?
According to the article itself, the sources are all Israeli soldiers and
officials.
The only
evidence presented is the words of the Israelis. Was there any analysis done or
examples cited to prove that the IDF would only kill ten civilians on average
for every low-ranking Hamas fighter? Absolutely not, because not even Israel
can present this information to the public, nor the names of the thousands of
supposed “Hamas fighters” it has targeted.
If we go by
Israel’s official figures for the number of alleged Hamas militants killed,
they rise at such a rate that it doesn’t match the death toll figures accepted
by the United Nations. While the official death toll in Gaza is nearly 46,000,
with 10,000 missing and presumed dead, the only way Israeli “Hamas fighter”
figures make sense is if the toll is much higher. However, accepting a higher
death toll in order to give Israel’s claims about Hamas fighters more
legitimacy would mean that The New York Times would face another issue: they
would then have to wrestle with the fact that the killing only escalated in
November of 2023.
In addition to
all this, the +972 article from April 3 provides a much more in-depth insight
into the artificial intelligence systems used by the Israeli army and points
out that the targets it generated were highly inaccurate. The investigation
discovered that when the Lavender system chose junior Hamas targets, the
Israeli army would actually use its more lethal unguided munitions, because
“you don’t want to waste expensive bombs on unimportant people.”
Furthermore,
+972 noted that while a human has to verify targets chosen by the AI before a
strike is ordered, eventually this boiled down to simply making sure the target
is male – spending about 20 seconds on average before pulling the trigger.
Nowhere in the
New York Times article is there any mention of the slaughter of civilians where
no military target is located, there is no mention of the mass torture, sexual
abuse, or demolition of homes for the pure vanity of soldiers. Everything is
framed as a military that went a little overboard after the Hamas-led October 7
attack.
Radio
Free Europe Radio Liberty
(
RFE/RL ) – New Syrian de facto leader Ahmad al-Sharaa told the Saudi-owned Al
Arabiya television channel that he wants relations with Iran and Russia, but he
insisted any ties must be based on mutual “respect.”
Russia
and Iran were major allies of Syria under the regime of President Bashar
al-Assad until the totalitarian leader was ousted by rebels in early December.
The
West is closely watching the new ruler’s actions, including the depth of any
future ties with Tehran and Moscow.
“Syria
cannot continue without relations with an important regional country like
Iran,” Sharaa told Al Arabiya in a wide-ranging interview on December 29.
But
relations “must be based on respect for the sovereignty of both countries and
noninterference in the affairs of both countries,” he added.
Sharaa
urged Tehran to rethink its regional policies and interventions and pointed out
that opposition forces protected Iranian positions during the fighting to oust
Assad, even though rebels knew Iran was a major backer of the president.
Sharaa
said he had expected positive overtures from Iran following these actions but
said they have not been forthcoming.
Sharaa,
previously known by the nom de guerre Abu Muhammad al-Jolani, said that while
he expects Moscow to withdraw its forces from Syria, he also spoke of “deep
strategic interests” with the “second most powerful country in the world.”
“We
don’t want Russia to exit Syria in a way that undermines its relationship with
our country,” he told Al-Arabiya, without providing details.
“All
of Syria’s arms are of Russian origin, and many power plants are managed by
Russian experts…. We do not want Russia to leave Syria in the way that some
wish,” he said.
According
to flight data analyzed by RFE/RL, Russia is reducing its military footprint in
Syria and shifting some of its assets from the Middle Eastern country to
Africa.
To
offset the potential loss of its air base in Hmeimim and naval base in Tartus,
Russia appears to be increasing its presence in Libya, Mali, and Sudan,
although experts say the loss of Syrian bases is a major blow to the Kremlin.
Meanwhile,
Sharaa also said that organizing elections in the country could take up to four
years and that a new constitution could require three years to be finalized.
The
leader expressed hope that the new U.S. administration under Donald Trump — set
to take office on January 20 — would lift sanctions on his country.
“We
hope the incoming Trump administration will not follow the policy of its
predecessor,” Sharaa said.
The
rebels who ousted Assad were led by Sharaa’s Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)
Islamist group, a U.S. and EU-designated terrorist organization.
Sharaa
has publicly pledged to adopt moderate policies regarding women’s rights,
national reconciliation, and relations with the international community,
although world leaders say they remain wary of the new rulers pending concrete
actions.
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