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By: David Litman
(Continued from last week)
Consider this information. Hamdi, a military-aged male, and “several others” – presumably the three bodies unidentified by CNN but consistent with military-aged males – were killed by gunfire shortly before the bombing, which the IDF said was carried out in response to gunfire from the location.
Does CNN know the identity of the others killed in the warehouse? Did the reporters look into this question? Did they ask the surviving members of the Abu Jibba family who else was staying with them in that small warehouse annex? Surely the reporters could have figured it out. The article mentions they obtained records from the hospital where the bodies were taken.
Given these unaddressed questions about the reliability of the evidence presented, it’s deeply irresponsible for CNN to level the accusation against the IDF without further investigation.
White Flags, Writing on the Building, and Drones
Another key question is whether the IDF knew, or should have known, that the warehouse was being used as a civilian shelter.
In fact, there’s a question of whether the warehouse annex was a significant shelter at all. The authors never say how many were sheltering there, not even an approximation. Footage suggests the warehouse annex was a relatively small space that would not have been able to accommodate more than a dozen or so. It seems safe to say that no one was staying in the main part of the warehouse, given that the only bodies referenced are those found in the annex. Notably, this raises its own questions as to why no one was staying in the main part of the warehouse. With all of that space, one wonders why so many displaced Gazans were forced to pitch tents in an open field down the road instead of under the roof of the warehouse. Once again, it’s unclear if the reporters considered and probed this question.
On the other hand, the ceramics and tile factory across the street was sheltering approximately 95 displaced Gazans, according to the article. It’s not difficult to understand how any reasonable aerial observer might mistake civilians in the vicinity as staying in the much more prominent, visible factory shelter, without realizing the small annex building across the street was also being used.
Which brings us to the claim made by just one witness, Sumaya Abu Jibba, that the words “displaced persons” were written on the building, that white flags were displayed, and that IDF drones had been observing the area for a while.
Yet again, there are several crucial, but answered, questions about this claim
First, where were the white flags displayed? Where did they write “displaced persons” on the building? Did they write it on the roof? Which roof? The warehouse roof, or the annex roof? What did they write with? How large was the text? Was it in a prominent color? Sumaya says “the families” wrote the text on the building, and yet the only family mentioned in the warehouse annex was the Abu Jibba family. Was she perhaps referring to families staying at the ceramics and tile factory across the street?
Indeed, what matters most is not whether the writing and flags existed, but whether they would have been reasonably visible. Yet we’re given zero details about this question.
This is especially curious because the authors make extensive use of satellite imagery. Assuming the writing was directed toward the drones Sumaya mentioned, one wonders whether such writing might have been visible on the rooftop. Does any satellite imagery show the writing? On that note, why do the dates of satellite imagery CNN reference not include imagery for the crucial dates of January 1-4, the days leading up to the incident and the day of the incident itself?
Relatedly, could any trace of the writing be found on the remains of the warehouse? CNN’s footage of the aftermath shows that the roof, while collapsed, appears in relatively clean condition.
Even if there were writing and white flags, and even if they were prominently displayed, were they visible in the conditions existing at the time of the incident? One of CNN’s witnesses, al-Hinnawi, recounted that when he escaped from the shelter across the street, “there was so much smoke that when he looked down, he couldn’t see the fingers on his hands.” If al-Hinnawi couldn’t see his own fingers, could the IDF have reasonably seen any writing on the building?
This is not nitpicking. CNN has alleged, in conclusive terms, that the IDF committed an “atrocity.” This particular question – whether there were visible markings indicating the building was a civilian shelter – is crucial when it comes to determining whether a crime was committed in this instance. This is a basic question that the journalists should have asked and thoroughly examined before making such an allegation.
It’s also worth noting that even if there were writing on the building, and even if an IDF drone saw it at some point prior to the incident, the IDF has indicated the airstrike was not a pre-planned operation in which the commander had time to review all available intelligence, but rather an urgent strike made in the chaos of combat. Israeli soldiers were being fired upon. The commander was expected to act reasonably given the existing circumstances, not based on perfect conditions with all the time in the world to review intelligence.
Does the Evidence Stack Up?
Given all these inconsistencies, open questions, and contradictory evidence, consider what the authors had to do to reach the conclusion they did: that the IDF “indiscriminately” bombed the warehouse, committing an “atrocity.”
The authors needed to disregard the IDF’s statement in its entirety. They also needed to disregard several statements by their own witness, al-Hinnawi. They similarly needed to disregard the abundant evidence of Palestinian terrorists operating in the vicinity around the time of the incident. They needed to assume that even though the warehouse was built in the middle of one of Hamas’s most important strategic sites, the terrorist organization was not operating in the vicinity.
Meanwhile, the authors needed to assume everything that Sumaya Abu Jibba said was entirely accurate. On top of that, they needed to make unsupported assumptions about Sumaya’s claims, such as that the writing on the building she mentions was clearly visible. They also needed to assume that the witnesses in the warehouse annex were in a position to know what was happening in the warehouse itself, notwithstanding there appears to have been a wall between the annex and the warehouse.
This is not the behavior of impartial journalists interested in the truth. To the contrary, the lack of curiosity into the unaddressed questions suggests a disinterest in truth-seeking.
Instead, this is the behavior of partisan activists who seek to paint one party to a conflict in the most unforgiving light possible.
Misleading on the Facts
Beyond making horrendous conclusions based on flimsy evidence, several factual errors in the report raise some concerns about the story.
Perhaps most telling is the authors’ references to distances.
Consider these two sentences in the article:
“The nearby tent encampment is gone – replaced by military vehicles, tracks, and bulldozed earth. Israeli military vehicles can be seen about 213 feet away from the warehouse.”
“According to the map, a building just 250 meters (820 feet) northeast of the warehouse where the Abu Jibba family was staying was used by Hamas for weapons manufacturing.”
In fact, the tent encampment, where the Israeli military vehicles were seen, is approximately 200 meters away from the warehouse, or approximately 800 feet, based on Google Maps.
For context, returning to the color-coded map, the tent encampment is the blue area to the northeast of the Abu Jibba marker. Meanwhile, the “building just 250 meters (820) feet northeast of the warehouse” is the red area to the east of the tent encampment. Clearly, the authors erred, and in doing so, overstated how close Israeli military vehicles were to the warehouse.
Worse, the authors deceived their audience about how close the known Hamas sites were to the warehouse. The “building just 250 meters (820 feet) northeast of the warehouse” was connected, by a terror tunnel, to another building being used by Hamas for weapons manufacturing which was only about 175 meters north of the warehouse. That is, the authors used the building further away in such a way that misleads the audience about how close Hamas’s infrastructure was to the warehouse.
The authors also perniciously imply that the IDF used bulldozers to bury the displaced Gazans in the warehouse. They quote one of the witnesses saying, “They left us in the room and started bulldozing, and then bombs started falling on us.” They then immediately quote the IDF as saying “allegations of shooting at civilians who were sheltering in the area or any trampling of civilians with the help of bulldozers or any other vehicle are baseless.”
But CNN’s own satellite imagery seems to disprove that any bulldozers were used on the warehouse. The imagery shows what appear to be some type of tracks next to the building to the warehouse’s north, but never approaching closer than approximately 50 meters.
The inclusion of these quotes, once again, seems designed to imply cruelty on the part of the IDF, which is unsupported by the actual evidence.
Meanwhile, it’s worth also pointing out the game CNN is playing with its “expert” witnesses. To support its claim that the damage was caused by a “2,000-pound bomb,” the authors turned to three organizations, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and PAX. All three are notorious for their anti-Israel activism. But what is especially notable is that the individual “experts” from the first two organizations are clearly identified (Mark Hiznay and Brian Castner), whereas no individual is specifically mentioned from PAX. The likely explanation is that the individual was the expert from PAX that CNN has repeatedly turned to before, the avid Nazi memorabilia collector Marc Garlasco, who is notorious for making blatantly false claims about Israel, as has been repeatedly documented by CAMERA.
It appears that CNN is sufficiently embarrassed about being exposed for turning to someone as notorious as Garlasco, and yet refuses to give up turning to the biased “expert” the journalists know will give them the expert testimony they want to hear.
Misleading on the Law
In addition to getting the facts wrong, the authors also get the law wrong in such a way that undermines their conclusions.
Consider this passage from the article:
International humanitarian law protects civilians in armed conflict and requires attacking forces to warn civilians of planned attacks if possible. Under the principle of proportionality enshrined in the UN charter, warring parties should not use more force than is needed to respond to a threat. The testimonies collected by CNN and imagery of the damage to the building raise serious questions about whether the IDF made any efforts to avoid harm to civilians, and the proportionality of the attack.
Where to begin?
First, there is no “principle of proportionality” enshrined in the UN Charter, and second, the authors are confusing two different concepts.
It seems that the authors are referring to the right of self-defense, which is enshrined in the UN Charter, and which forms a part of what is known as jus ad bellum, which deals with the law of resorting to war, and which does involve a principle of proportionality.
However, that principle of proportionality has nothing to do with individual strikes. Rather, this principle of proportionality provides that a state engaging in a war in self-defense must “limit defensive force to that required to defeat the armed attack and likely follow-on attacks.” It deals with how much force Israel is allowed to use to defeat Hamas, not how much force it is allowed to use in any individual strike.
When discussing the “proportionality of the attack” on the warehouse, however, an entirely different principle of proportionality is used under the law of armed conflict. Under this principle, commanders are instructed to assess an attack which may be expected to cause incidental harm to civilians, and to decide whether the military advantage anticipated from the attack justifies that incidental harm.
That is, not only did CNN rely on thin and contradictory evidence to accuse Israel of having committed a war crime, or an “atrocity” as they put it, they even used the wrong legal principle to judge the IDF.
If CNN can’t be relied upon to produce an accurate picture of the facts, or to give the proper analysis of those facts, then can CNN be relied upon as a serious journalistic entity at all?
The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA) is an international media-monitoring and educational organization founded in 1982 to promote accurate and unbiased coverage of Israel and the Middle East. CAMERA is a non-profit, tax-exempt, and non-partisan organization under section 501 (c)(3) of the United States Internal Revenue Code. To learn more or receive our newsletters please visit CAMERA.org
