How Israel Killed Its Own Soldiers, Blamed Hamas and Violated the Ceasefire again
By Robert Inlakesh
Israel has a long history of violating agreements, currently ceasefire agreements in both Syria and Lebanon and, now, in Gaza. Western mainstream media always portrays Israel as an eternal victim.
After routinely violating the Gaza ceasefire on a daily basis since its implementation, killing dozens of civilians in the process, this Sunday, Israel decided to temporarily abandon the agreement altogether, before later deciding to re-implement it. Despite the entire incident being Israel’s design, the Western corporate media labeled the Israeli violations as a “test”.
This Sunday, reports suddenly emerged that a group of Israeli soldiers had been ambushed by Palestinian fighters in Rafah, located behind what is being called the “Yellow Line,” where the Israeli army is refusing to withdraw from. The incident almost immediately triggered Israel to begin launching a new wave of intense air raids across the besieged coastal enclave.
In total, it was declared that at least 100 airstrikes were committed against Gaza. Israel’s Walla News and others had reported on the “collapse” of the ceasefire at the time, claiming that the occupying military decided to attack tunnel infrastructure previously untouched throughout the two-year-long genocide.
On Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went on to boast about dropping “153 tons of bombs” on sites throughout Gaza, which had killed at least 44 civilians. He also announced the closure of all entry points to the besieged territory and total blocking of humanitarian aid, before suddenly reversing these measures. All of this supposedly in response to the deaths of two Israeli soldiers.
Yet, reports from on the ground suggesting a very different picture from what Israel has presented had emerged throughout the day on Sunday. Initially, Hamas had released a statement denying any involvement in the killing of the Israeli soldiers.
Then, a range of Israeli, Palestinian, and American journalists, all citing their own sources, began reporting that what had actually occurred was that the two Israeli soldiers who were killed had accidentally run over an unexploded ordnance. It was admitted that at least three other Israelis were injured in the incident, one whose condition was considered serious.
As of now, it is unclear whether the unexploded ordnance had been repurposed as an IED and previously left behind by Palestinian fighters, or if it was one of tens of thousands of such bombs that had failed to explode upon impact when it was initially dropped. On Israel’s part, its “military censor” has placed a gag order on reporting about the incident internally, only releasing the names of the two soldiers killed in the incident.
According to Palestinian reporter Younis Tirawi, the reason for such tight censorship over the incident was due to the remaining injured Israelis being non-military and, instead, civilian contractors stationed in the Israeli-controlled portion of Gaza in order to help carry out demolition work. The Israeli authorities, therefore, want to cover this up.
Tirawi’s assessment, based upon his own anonymous sources, would indeed align with the facts on the ground.
Although the issue has gone largely under-reported, the Israeli Defense Ministry has enlisted private contractors to aid in their demolition efforts in what was previously referred to as Israel’s Gaza buffer zone. Ads posted on Facebook had even advertised jobs to Israelis that pay up to $882 per day to drive bulldozers and aid in the demolition efforts. The Israeli military is also working alongside Israeli companies to hire their heavy excavation equipment.
Haaretz News previously reported that this new demolition industry costs at least 30 million dollars per month. In other words, and considering that some 60,000 businesses have closed, Israel’s tourism industry – especially in the north and south – has taken significant hits, the demolition industry is actually serving as a lucrative business for many Israelis.
Combine this with the evidence posted to social media by Israeli soldiers continuing to demolish remaining civilian infrastructure on their side of the Yellow Line, and it would make sense that civilian contractors are still being used to carry out demolition work. Evidently, this represents not only a violation of the ceasefire, of which the Gaza government’s media office has reported 80 so far, but also a clear issue in terms of the Israeli military actively paying its own people danger money to carry out such operations, putting their lives in danger.
Nevertheless, the Israeli narrative remains that Hamas was responsible for the incident and that they “responded”, despite Israeli media outlets admitting that Israel was the first to violate the ceasefire agreement. As for the claims of the Israeli military that it struck tunnel infrastructure that it had not previously targeted over the past two years, there is no evidence for this, and it appears unlikely, to say the least.
In addition to this, Israel’s Security Minister, Itamar Ben Gvir, spoke to Channel 14 News in order to advocate for “opening the gates of hell” on Gaza after receiving the rest of their captives. This aligns with the rhetoric coming from various other officials who see the return of their prisoners from Gaza as a green light to strike the besieged coastal territory with more force than ever.
Meanwhile, the mainstream Western corporate media demonstrated again that it is nothing more than a contingent of stenographers for their wealthy Zionist funders and Israel’s foreign ministry. The Associated Press even published a story entitled “Israel strikes Gaza in first major test of ceasefire”.
While this may be simply dismissed after two years of similarly atrocious reports on the Gaza genocide, from outlets across the corporate media spectrum, it is important to continue highlighting the racist double standards employed. The Associated Press must be forced to answer for its dreadfully biased reporting.
Israeli soldiers should not have been demolishing Palestinian civilian infrastructure during a ceasefire. If they were not continuing to order their soldiers to carry out such missions and truly adhered to the ceasefire, two of their men would not have died. Then, knowing full well that Hamas had not ordered an attack, it proceeded to violate the ceasefire in a major way, which Israeli media interpreted as a return to war itself. This is not a “test”.
Such violations of the Gaza ceasefire should not come as any surprise. After all, Israel has committed over 5,000 violations of its Lebanon ceasefire agreement and began violating it from the first day it was adopted by the Lebanese side.
Now, nearly a year later, Israel is refusing to leave southern Lebanon, instead deciding to expand the zone it illegally occupies. In neighboring Syria, it also abandoned its previous ceasefire agreement and is currently continuing to occupy more territory there, too.
While both Palestinian and Israeli media have their evident biases – inherent in all media, as objectivity is not a possible standard – the Western corporate media is in a class of its own in terms of public deception.
These corporate media outlets do not represent a Palestinian or an Israeli perspective. They curate a fictional depiction of what is going on that is slanted to deliberately deceive Western audiences by publishing content tailor-made to convince them that Israel is correct.
These media outlets present Israel as both the eternal victim, while also being the hero. In this work of collective fiction, representing a parallel universe, this hero sometimes does wrong, but is always the authority, always deserves the benefit of the doubt and is never capable of being the instigator of war.
(The Palestine Chronicle)
– Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. He focuses on the Middle East, specializing in Palestine. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.
The views expressed in the article do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of The Palestine Chronicle.
Israel lies. The zionist criminals are being killed by the unexploded bombs. So many bombs, so much opportunity to kill off zionists doing their dirty work. Had Israel not performed carpet bombing, there would be buildings still standing. Annihilation was the objective so payback comes sooner.
We all know Israel lies , lies and lies again
We all now know how Israel kills its own people - as the Music Festival proved when after years of asking for it to run for an extra day and being refused , it was suddenly granted for 07/10 ? And how their own Apache helicopter gunship mowed down the festival goers and attackers alike as well as its missiles striking cars full of people getting away from the attackers . This is documented by film from the helicopter itself
Why did the IDF get called away from the area completely before that night ?
One would be drawn to imagine that it was expected after Egypt warned them twice the attack was coming and so Israeli lives were sacrificed to steal the entire Land of Gaza by murdering all its people and levelling the ground as if no one ever existed there apart from its people and the Israeli captives buried below its surface
No action is too low for Israel