Comment by bawolff
1 month ago
I think the only defense here would be if the soldiers came up with some reasonable explanation of why they thought the vehicles were hostile. Its kind of hard to imagine, especially with shooting the follow up vehicles, but motive seems like the only unclear part where there is any potential for a defense.
One part that is really confusing, is if they knowingly intentionally targeted the ambulance because they thought they could get away with it if they destroyed the evidence, why leave witnesses alive? If you assume the motive was an intentional massacare with point blank executions, it doesn't entirely make logical sense to leave witnesses.
The motive was pretty clear i.e. to murder aid workers helping Palestinians and assumed to be Palestinian. The report is very clear that the IDF could see the vehicle lights the entire time, making it clear they were protected aid workers. They attacked the first ambulance, the follow up ambulances, the UN truck, and the UN bus, before and after dawn, with plenty of time between. If this were a movie, there could be a clever twist to show some other motive, but in the real world, this is as clear as you get without confessions to tell you what was in their heads.
Why didn’t they murder everyone? As testimony says [0], when one of the survivors called out that his mother was Israeli, the IDF soldiers lowered their weapons and helped him up. It seems to me that these are soldiers that have decided that Palestinians are less than human, or that Palestinians will never coexist and it is “them or us”. This mindset happens in many wars, but actual incidents depend on leadership at all levels and how much it is implicitly allowed. I think their cover up actions speak the loudest to how widespread these things are. The on the ground commander clearly wasn’t worried about destroying any and all evidence or leaving witnesses. Buring everything was to make it too difficult for outsiders confirm what happened, not to prevent leadership from putting them in jail. They were counting on being protected, and they were. A letter of reprimand for the commander, and losing his position as deputy commander (not loss of rank or being kicked out of the military) is little more than a speedbump to their military careers.
[0] Page 36-37 of report
> One part that is really confusing, is if they knowingly intentionally targeted the ambulance because they thought they could get away with it if they destroyed the evidence, why leave witnesses alive? If you assume the motive was an intentional massacre with point blank executions, it doesn't entirely make logical sense to leave witnesses.
Couldn't the ability to make this very argument be a reason why?
Without the witness we probably wouldn't be having this conversation at all.
We probably would.
The most concrete evidence of this incident is clear video, not eyewitness testimony. It was obtained about a year ago from the dead when the grave was unearthed.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/04/world/middleeast/gaza-isr...
> A video, discovered on the cellphone of a paramedic who was found along with 14 other aid workers in a mass grave in Gaza in late March, shows that the ambulances and fire truck that they were traveling in were clearly marked and had their emergency signal lights on when Israeli troops hit them with a barrage of gunfire.
Intimidation tactics do not work well without someone to tell the story.
I think people being murdered is pretty good intimidation frankly.
Maybe it's like a kind of brag?
Like, it the monsters massacre people and no one's left to report on how awful it was then they kind of "lose the gloat value" to a degree?