Thread by @Archivepaletc

Thread: As expected, the IOF accuses journalist Hossam Shabat of being a member of the Al-Qassam Brigades, specifically a sniper. This follows a pattern that began with the murder of journalists Hamza al-Dahdouh and Mustafa Thuraya in January 2024.
archive.ph/JXWXa

When these two journalists were killed, the IOF first claimed that they were targeted because they were posing a threat to its troops. IOF spokesperson D. Hagari then stated on NBC that it was a mistake and that the deaths of journalists are always a tragedy.

aljazeera.com/news/2024/1/10…

But then the IOF accused both journalists of being militants endangering Israeli troops and published a very poor-quality scanned document purportedly from Palestinian Islamic Jihad, where Al Dahdouh was listed as an active fighter. archive.ph/XQJpR

The title of the document was in both Arabic and English. The BBC presented the document to several experts on Islamic Jihad, who expressed serious doubts about its authenticity:

"Two regional experts told BBC Verify that the use of English alongside Arabic in the document was unusual. Erik Skare, a researcher at France's Sciences Po university who has written a book on PIJ, said: "I regularly visited the website of the al-Quds Brigades...

I have read their martyr biographies, their books etc, and I have never seen the combination of English and Arabic text."
bbc.com/news/world-mid…

Months later, The Washington Post published an investigation that dismissed the entire narrative presented by the IOF about the murder: they analyzed the drone footage the journalists were operating, tracked their movements that day, and interviewed several witnesses.

They concluded that the journalists could not pose any threat to Israeli troops, among other reasons because they had never were close to them. They also found that "both journalists passed through Israeli checkpoints on their way to the south early in the war;

Dahdouh had recently been approved to leave Gaza, a rare privilege unlikely to have been granted to a known militant".
washingtonpost.com/world/2024/03/…

In short, the IOF was caught falsifying documents about journalists they killed to justify their murder by falsely portraying them as "terrorists."

Then, when they murdered Al-Jazeera journalists Ismail al-Ghoul and Rami al-Rifi, they also presented an Hamas document where al-Ghoul was listed as a combatant.

This document is difficult for me to understand, as it had several columns, one titled "Military Rank History" and another "Date of Recruitment."

Ismail al-Ghoul's name had 2007 as the date under "Military Rank History" (al-Ghoul was 10 years old in 2007) and 2014 under "Date of Recruitment" (when he was 17). archive.ph/rOENj

The IOF's history of presenting false lists to justify the killing of civilians by presenting them as combatants is not unique to journalists. They did the same several times, for example, to justify attacks on schools sheltering displaced families.

In August 2024, the IOF committed a massive massacre at the Tab'een school in Gaza City. They killed around 100 Palestinians, and outrage ensued. The IOF therefore published a list of the names of 19 Hamas members allegedly targeted in that incident.

This, too, turned out to be a falsification, not least because: "It was discovered that 3 of the 19 names listed by the Israeli army as "terrorists who were eliminated" had already been killed in earlier Israeli bombing attacks"."
euromedmonitor.org/en/article/643…

And "three elderly civilians who had no connection to the military action were also among the victims".

And before that, the IOF presented another blatant falsification to justify a massacre at the Al-Sardi school in Nuseirat in June 2024. They killed around 40 Palestinians and then published a list of the names of the 17 "fighters" who were killed.

But only nine of those names matched hospital death records, and one of the suspected militants was an 8-year-old boy. This is from an AP article:"The army released the names of the militants it said were killed in Thursday’s strike. However, only nine of those names matched

with records of the dead from the hospital morgue.
One of the names Israel listed as a militant was an 8-year-old boy, Shaheen Mahmoud Ibrahim Abu Sharif, according to the hospital records. Two boys on the morgue’s list, age 10 and 14, had names that suggested they were sons

of a man Israel identified as a slain militant, although he was not listed among the hospital’s dead". apnews.com/article/israel…

Gaza officials also claimed that the list submitted by the Israel Defense Forces contained the names of people who had already died in the past, people who were still alive after the massacre, and people living abroad: "The Israeli list contains names of Palestinians who were

killed before the attack on Thursday in the Nuseirat refugee camp, including Majd Darweesh who was killed on Wednesday by the army in the Maghazi camp; Maher Fadel and Motasem Shaqra, both killed on Wednesday in Bureij camp and Jamil al-Maqadma, an elderly man who died in 2017,"

Palestinian officials in Gaza revealed. The Israeli "kill list" includes names of three Palestinians who are still alive, including one who has been living abroad for years, the officials said".
trtworld.com/middle-east/is…

It's very easy for Israel to create these kinds of falsifications, because it has controlled the population register since 1967, both in the West Bank and in Gaza. But they could certainly have done better, because this is all one botched job after another.

The countless falsifications Israel has presented to justify crimes against the civilian population of Gaza are further proof of its genocidal intent.

With this, they aim to criminalize the civilian population by linking journalists, doctors, municipal workers, humanitarian groups, the UNRWA... to the Palestinian resistance and presenting them as legitimate targets.