Killing of 5 Foreign Aid Workers from the World Central Kitchen

[cherryjamontoast]

I've just seen on social media graphic videos of 5 dead aid workers from Australia, Austrian and British. The WCK are the people responsible for the ships coming into Gaza at the Jetty to distribute food. This was the second ship that departed from Cyprus a few days ago. Once arriving at the jetty they had to distribute the food. They were targeted in an armoured vehicle in Deir el Balah by the IDF. Its now being pick up by the press.Very sad.

Doesn't say if there will be any trials, or if anyone will be charged with the deaths.

''The army said the colonel and the major were dismissed, while three other officers were reprimanded. It said the results of its investigation were turned over to the military’s advocate general, who will decide whether the officers or anyone else involved in the killings should receive further punishment or be prosecuted.''

Guardian

Just a couple more quotes from the Guardian article

''The army could not say exactly where the communication about the convoy’s plans had broken down.'' - this seems an important omission in terms of preventing further incidents

''Army officials claimed that drone operators could not see that the cars were marked with the words “World Central Kitchen” because it was nighttime.'' doesn't generous US military aid provide night vision equipment to avoid exactly this? Otherwise no deliveries after night-fall can be safe and probably other innocent civilian' activities too

.

So why then have they been bombing at night at all if now they tell the world they can’t see
Surely they’ve known this from the start!
Thousands of people have been killed in night time raids!

So on the 2nd April the convoy was intentionally hit because the IDF suspected it was carrying a Hamas fighter and now it was an accident due to a break down in communication and darkness.

And yes they do have night vision equipment otherwise it means they were able to track, target and score a direct hit on three moving vehicles, in darkness, purely by chance.

Surely no one believes this bullshit.

IDK perhaps some drones/drone operators have night vision equipment and others don't because I remember seeing some drone footage* apparently taken at night with reasonable if not perfect detail

*IDF drone captured by Hamas

Thank you for clarifying this - it didn't sound right at all - drones fly all night [disturbing peoples sleep] which would be pointless if they couldn't 'see' anything

So yet again they are constantly changing their excuses for killing innocent civilians.

So transparent!

If drones don't have night vision, I really don't think they'd be able to, you know, operate at night. Which they have been.

WCK are demanding an independent investigation into the incident

We demand the creation of an independent commission to investigate the killings of our WCK colleagues. The IDF cannot credibly investigate its own failure in Gaza

The United Nations Human Rights Council has adopted a resolution calling for Israel to be held accountable for possible war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Gaza.
Twenty-eight countries voted in favour, 13 abstained and six voted against the resolution.

*
Is the above due to the WCK aid workers being killed?

US not happy with the investigation either - Blinken's reaction

''In addition, he called for an “independent, thorough and fully publicized investigation” into the recent killings of aid workers.''

And Ben-Gvir decries the disciplining as unsupportive of IDF

No surprises there, he's also furious that the decision was made to allow more aid into Gaza

There can be nothing but an independent investigation otherwise the IDF throw a few soldiers and comanderrs under the bus and tell us all to move along nothing to see here! Nah not good enough, you wouldn't accept it from any other organisation to investigate themselves

In this video from 16 minutes on, Owen Jones, talks about the drone technology and the latest IDF excuse. Apparently the murders were due to some IDF soldiers ignoring instructions and disobeying orders. The whole video is worth a watch, it goes right back to Gallant's "total siege' remarks on 9th October to give full context to the attack on the WCK convoy.

@FOJN bbc news is reporting that one of the soldiers mistook one of the aid workers bag which he was carrying as a gun. And therefore thought a gunman was travelling with the convoy and that's why carried on striking all the cars in the convoy until they were all dead. That explanation is even worse than the initial one.

MP Alicia Kearns from the Conservative party rightly pointed out that this was not an accident, and also how many Palestinians must have been killed like this adding the only reason this has so much attention is because the aid workers were foreign.

Not a tory fan but well done MP Alicia Kearns for not being afraid to tell it like it is

From bbc

No footage of this moment was provided, but the military investigation concluded that it was a “misclassification. . . they saw that it’s a rifle but at the end of the day it was a bag”.
Under the mistaken belief that one vehicle now contained a gunman, authorisation to fire a missile is sought, and granted by superior officers. At 23:09 the first vehicle is struck, two minutes later the second, and at 23:13 the third final, fatal strike is launched, the IDF says.

To be fair Yoav Gallant did tell the IDF, at the Gaza border on 12th October, that he had "released all restrictions". Detailed in the video linked above. The IDF is only doing what they have been told they are allowed to. Ben Gvir is correct in his assessment as unpalatable as that is. You can't give troops permission to do whatever the hell they like and then sack them when they do just that.

A few token sackings for PR won't change a thing. I suspect the "sacked" soldiers have been paid off and are relieved to get out of Gaza.

Wow so we've returned to "it was intentional because Hamas".

They must know the ever changing excuses make their lies very apparent.

At this point there needs to be independent investigations into the killings of every humanitarian aid worker in Gaza. This incident can't be taken in isolation. How many other aid workers had bags? If these weren't foreign aid workers what would we be told of this? Would the aid workers be Hamas, if Israel said that they were Hamas would anyone question it?

There are too many questions and Israel haven't provided the answers. It's time independent investigations are carried out and the families of every aid worker killed gets to find out why their loved ones were killed whilst bravely carrying out humanitarian work.

I listened to those reports at lunchtime on the radio today.
The IDF saw someone nearby with a gun and then later saw the same gun man in an different area but because he had previously been close to where the aid convoy set off from it was assumed that a Hamas member was travelling with them or some such nonsense. The American apologist who was interviewed made my blood boil as well

A lot of people on mumsnet believe it, very sadly.

It seems the idf sees hamas everywhere and finds them nowhere.

Have the IDF/Israelis ever actually been honest about anything at all?