Comment by bawolff
1 month ago
> Upon reaching the aid workers, the soldiers moved between them and the vehicles and executed some of the aid workers at point blank range, as close as one meter away." -> we know not all the aid workers were killed. I believe two were taken alive.
This is the part that gives me the most pause. The FA report makes it sound like they went on a murder spree for the hell of it and then tried to cover up the evidence (i.e. they knew it was an ambulance and intentionally targeted it). But if that was the case, and they had no qalms about killing people, why would they leave witnesses and then release said witness a month later. If the motive was some ethnic hatred fueled revenge, why leave witnesses?
You leave witnesses because a) you know nobody will prosecute the IDF, and b) it allows people like you to question whether the clear mass murder was a mass murder.
> you know nobody will prosecute the IDF
Then why bother with the cover up at all?
FWIW, to me what it looks like based on the very limited information we have, is initially the soldiers thought (for whatever reason, possibly unreasonably) the vehicle was an acceptable target. At some point it becomes clear it wasn't and they have an "oh shit" moment and engage in a cover up after the fact.
If this is actually what happened (obviously,very big if), whether or not a war crime was comitted would come down to what the soldiers knew when they attacked the vehicle (and what would have been reasonable for them to have known at that time) since war crimes do have an intent element.
Which to be very clear, even with all the above, its very plausible a war crime was comitted. But i'm not sure its certain based on the publicly available information.