Cui Bono, Or, Who Killed Ramzi Abu Sahloul?

As Israel’s defensive war against Hamas continues, it is more important than ever to call out the longstanding media bias against Israel, which is largely responsible for the present conflict. So great is the animus against Israel in the international media that ITV, followed by AP, UPI, AFP and others, has left the clear impression, without the slightest evidence, in coverage of the shooting in Gaza of Ramzi Abu Sahloul, a man who was holding a white flag, that an Israeli sniper had killed him. More on this claim, plucked out of the ether, can be found here: “Media assumes every Gaza civilian shot was killed by Israel – but they never have any evidence,” Elder of Ziyon, January 24, 2024:

…We know that Hamas’ entire military strategy is based on using Gaza civilians as human shields. And their political strategy is based on pressuring Israel to stop fighting using world pressure, partially based on a spiraling death count that Hamas wholly controls….

And, why on Earth would Hamas not want to kill a civilian in front of Western cameras? Does anyone think at this point that Hamas cares about the lives of Palestinians, when they have never lifted a finger to protect a single one, and on the contrary, they have done everything they can to endanger them?…

When Hamas launches rockets from schools and mosques and apartment buildings, or stores its weapons in such places, knowing there will be Israeli strikes on those sites, it shows its complete indifference to the civilian loss of life. The more civilians that are killed, the happier Hamas is, as it spreads the news worldwide of an ever increasing number of deaths it attributes to the “genocidal” IDF.

No Israeli sniper was within range of being able to target Abu Sahloul. The best snipers can hit a target as far away at 1000-1500 meters, but the IDF forces were 6,000-7,000 meters away from where Abu Sahloul stood in the Al Mawasi “humanitarian safe zone.” It was thus physically impossible for an IDF sniper to have hit him. The audible evidence of several shots again argues against an Israeli sniper being responsible for Abu Sahloul’s death.  Instead of getting off a single shot as snipers ordinarily do, the gunman shot twice, in his first volley, and then seven seconds later, got off another four or five shots. That is not what snipers do. And the IDF was much too far away for one of its snipers to be able to target a Palestinian.

Michael Elgort adds:…

The clip is edited between the time we hear gunshots and we see the body – it misses several seconds of the footage and these are important seconds, because during these seconds the person was hit with a bullet….

Might the clip have been edited out because it contained sounds of more shots being fired, clearly eliminating a sniper’s rifle as the fatal gun?

It is unconscionable that the media reports this story as if it knows how Abu Sahloul was killed. They don’t. And all the circumstantial evidence we have points away from the IDF and towards Gaza armed groups….

The IDF has every reason to protect civilians and Hamas has every reason not to protect them. The war in Gaza has clearly shown all the ways the IDF tries to warn civilians to avoid harm and move to safer parts of the Strip, from dropping six million leaflets to making 14 million prerecorded phone calls, while Hamas bases its entire defensive strategy on the deliberate use of civilians as human shields, deemed expendable by Hamas.

There is no possibility that an Israeli sniper killed Abu Sahloul. There is every possibility — indeed a certainty — that Hamas decided that one of those in the group was expendable, in order to score a propaganda victory over Israel. One of the Hamas gunmen, at most 550 meters away from the target, took aim with his semi-automatic M-16 or Kalashnikov, and shot into the group, killing Abu Sahloul. That’s the real story. But at this point, what news source, given the widespread anti-Israel animus, is going to scrupulously examine the evidence and declare that not the IDF, but Hamas, was responsible?

We have seen all this again since the war began: not just Israel’s scrupulosity in avoiding civilian casualties, but the same media lies and distortions that led up to the conflict in the first place.