Blaming Israel For the Stampede Deaths in Gaza

Rushing to judgment, many political leaders, and much of the world’s media, have uncritically accepted Hamas’ claim that the IDF is responsible for the deaths of 104 Gazans on February 29 at a site where a convoy of more on 30 aid trucks was trying to make its way to a distribution point, when thousands of Gazans swarmed over the trucks, trying to loot them and carry off their cargo of food aid. What is not in dispute is that a great many Gazans died, though the Hamas figure of 104 may be an exaggeration. What is also not in dispute is that the IDF fired some shots and that thousands of Gazans swarmed over the aid trucks, trying to loot them. The Israelis say they did not fire into the crowd. First they fired warning shots into the air, and then, when a group of Gazans failed to be dissuaded by those warning shots and continued to move menacingly toward them, the IDF shot “fewer than ten” Gazans. The IDF maintains that the vast majority of those who died did so when they were either trampled upon in the stampede to loot the trucks, or actually fell under the wheels of the trucks that continued to move, albeit slowly, forward. More on this incident can be found here: “US blocks Security Council motion blaming Israel for deadly Gaza aid convoy incident,” Times of Israel, March 1, 2024:

Amid American opposition, Arab nations failed Thursday overnight to get immediate support for a UN Security Council statement that would have blamed Israeli forces for the more than 100 reported deaths as Palestinians in northern Gaza swarmed an aid convoy.

Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian UN ambassador, told reporters after an emergency closed council meeting on the deaths, that 14 of the 15 council members supported the statement put forward by Algeria, the Arab representative on the body.

Algeria’s draft declaration expressed “deep concern,” and stated that the situation was “due to opening fire by Israel forces.”

The shots fired by IDF soldiers had nothing to do with the stampede of thousands of Gazans besieging the aid trucks, and pushing aside those around them in a wild attempt to get to the aid and make off with whatever they could.

The United States did not support the statement and US deputy ambassador Robert Wood told reporters: “The parties are working on some language to see if we can get to a statement.

“The problem is that we don’t have all the facts here,” he said, adding that he wanted the wording to reflect “the necessary due diligence with regards to culpability.”

The Americans at least were not joining the rush to judgment. But what explains other members of the Security Council, such as the U.K. and France, supporting the Algerian resolution before all the facts on the stampede are in?

Hamas has blamed the Israel Defense Forces for a reported 104 deaths in the early morning hours. The military said it did not fire at the crowd rushing the main convoy of aid trucks that entered northern Gaza early Thursday morning. It acknowledged that troops opened fire on several Gazans who moved toward soldiers and a tank at an IDF checkpoint, endangering soldiers. It argued most people had been killed in a stampede and asserted that fewer than 10 of the casualties were a result of Israeli fire….

Does Israel have a record of lying, as Hamas does — or does it have, rather, a record of studiously telling the truth? Surely that matters, when we are trying to decide between two competing versions of events.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Thursday the deaths required an effective independent investigation.

The trouble with a so-called “independent investigation” presumably to be conducted by the UN, an organization that is suffused with anti-Israel animus, is that it is almost certain to reject Israel’s version of events – however much the evidence supports that version – in favor of that presented by Hamas.

Speaking in St. Vincent and the Grenadines ahead of a regional summit, Guterres said he was “shocked” by the latest episode in the Israel-Hamas war.

Guterres said worsening geopolitical divides have “transformed the veto power into an effective instrument of paralysis of the action of the Security Council.”…

What Guterres, the most anti-Israel Secretary-General of the U.N. since the Nazi war criminal Kurt Waldheim, means is that the American veto prevents the Security Council from becoming a kangaroo court where Israel is perennially declared to be guilty. He is infuriated that the Americans stand in the way of anti-Israel resolutions being adopted by the Security Council, which, unlike the General Assembly, does have an enforcement mechanism.

France also wanted an independent inquiry, Foreign Minister Stephane Sejourne said Friday. “We will ask for explanations, and there will have to be an independent probe to determine what happened,” Sejourne told the France Inter broadcaster.

The French Foreign Minister’s demand for “an independent inquiry” is a signal of French mistrust of the IDF’s conducting the inquiry. Why? Has Israel given the “international community” reason to distrust its findings in the past? When has Israel ever lied about its role? Did it not investigate thoroughly the killing of the Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, and took responsibility for her death, though it also explained it had been an accident; she had not been the independent target. Doesn’t the IDF investigate the deaths of all those civilians whom the Palestinians claim were “murdered” — and in almost every case, has found either that the “innocent” civilian was a member of a terror group, or was linked in some way to terrorists and their hideouts?