The Friday incident which spelled an end to the 72-hour Gaza ceasefire just 75 minutes in continues to be officially revised by the Israeli military, with yet more questions emerging about what actually happened.
The Israeli military has now backed off claims of a Hamas “suicide bomber,” and say the Hamas “attacker” simply had a rifle and kept shooting until he was killed. The Hamas gunman was inside a Hamas tunnel which Israel was attacking, even though the ceasefire gave them no specific permission to attack tunnels.
The putative kidnapping and apparent death of British-Israeli soldier Lt. Hadar Goldin is also continue to take shape, with Israel conceding that they put the “Hannibal protocol” in effect.
The protocol, a secret Israeli directive dating back to 1986, orders the military to dramatically escalate attacks in the vicinity of any kidnapping, even if it means putting the kidnapped soldier at direct risk of being killed.
After reports of Goldin’s capture, Israel pounded the residential neighborhoods nearby, killing scores of people, mostly civilians but also including two Hamas fighters who were supposedly his abductors.
Unspoken in all of this is if Goldin was actually killed “in combat,” which is the official rabbinical declaration, or if he was briefly taken captive and killed, along with his captors, in an Israeli salvo. The official statements make no mention of this any longer, despite no body ever being recovered, and the Israeli military seems loathe to dig too deep on the question of how he actually died.
Israel’s use of this tactic at the expense of civilian deaths, as well as the likely death of the soldier, has been a matter of no small discussion in Israel. During the 2009 invasion of the Gaza Strip, a soldier was wounded in house-to-house fighting, and even though he had yet to be captured the military ordered the house he was in shelled to “prevent his capture.” Officially, he too was labeled killed by Hamas gunfire.
goldin would be the second soldier hannibaled in this conflict, oron shaul being the first.
It's like they are really playing at "Aliens vs. Colonial Marines".
Sure makes sense from a strategic viewpoint. Before the guy can become a long-running political liability ("no-one left behind", MIAs etc.), it's easier to paste him immediately. This will also cause the grunts to be extra-careful.
"Kidnapping", "abductors", there's no need to parrot Israeli propaganda language. Soldiers get captured in war, by captors.
It is easier to kill than to subdue. Captured soldiers have usually surrendered. The youthful officer was not the Lindbergh baby. The IDF propaganda handouts have wrapped Goldin in a diaper rather than a shroud. His mourning family should be insulted.
S'pect they find it embarrassing how well IDF captures are treated, comparably…
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The suicide-bomber in the tunnel was the silliest claim I ever heard.
So was Barabas instead of Jesus
Interesting scene, that one.
The most likely theory I've seen to explain it is that Barabas = "bar Abbas," aka "son of the rabbi." The rabbi likely being Jesus, who was crucified by the Romans for rebellion against Rome, and the crowd choosing to preserve the Davidic dynasty rather than its instant figurehead.
Didn't think that was strange at all. The competition had to go. Just like shooting Palestinian soccer players twice in each foot, Adelson looking to legislate against online gamblers, …Italian organized crime, … , illegal drugs generally, …
"We had to kill him to save him". Sounds familiar.
Yankee style.
It'll certainly be interesting if he does show up alive…
The kind of regimes, as the Israeli, is no secret that they will create scenario to start a war or a confusion or just pure propaganda to hide the nature of their wrong doing. USG is the master and they are very cooperative in these kind of deception.
"The quintessence of evil" That my friends is the nature of the beast from their inception