Thomas Wictor

Peter Beaumont of the Guardian is one angry journalist! He’s also a scurrilous maligner and a bearer of false witness. We’ll get to that in a minute.

But first, I must address something I’m being asked: No, I won’t “debunk” the Israeli Defense Forces’ conclusion on the case of Ismail Bakr, Mohammed, Bakr, Ahed Bakr, and Zakaria Bakr, said to have been killed on the beach at Gaza, July 16, 2014. I can’t debunk it because I don’t have all the information. The investigators were tasked with determining whether or not members of the Israel military committed a crime. That’s it.

Hamas and the global media are not members of the IDF. Whatever they may or may not have done is irrelevant to the question of whether or not the IDF acted criminally. People need to understand that my feelings aren’t hurt. There’s nothing personal in this. The IDF doesn’t owe me anything, and you also need to accept how toxic I am. Here’s a message I got today.

I have no idea what this means, but I can promise you that if the IDF had mentioned ANYTHING that I’ve talked about, here’s how every single interview with Lieutenant-Colonel Peter Lerner would go for the rest of his career.

“Did you get that from Thomas Wictor? Huh? Huh? Huh? What does Thomas Wictor have to say about it? Did he tell you about his ghost cat? Did Thomas Wictor stop taking his medications long enough to tell you where he’s currently locked up?”

We need to face reality. Journalists are lying sacks of manure when it comes to Israel. The first person to interview me about Pallywood is a man named Ali Gharib, who deliberately misled me into believing that the story would appear in the Nation Institute. He kept calling me a “source,” and I kept telling him that I’m not. A source provides factual information; I interpret images. No matter. Gharib referred to me as an unreliable source, and just about every day someone sends me his quotes about how crazy I am.

This is the way things are. Even people who support my efforts think I’m insane. I therefore have no bones to pick with the IDF. Let’s dump the idea that they somehow acted in bad faith, okay? Thank you.

Peter Beaumont, on the other hand, works for a publication that employs cartoonist Carlos Latuff, a man who venerates cold-blooded mass murderers.

Latuff also specializes in Holocaust inversion.

To fit in at the Guardian, Beaumont lies as blatantly as Carlos Latuff.

Israel exonerates itself over Gaza beach killings of four children last year

Israeli investigation says missile attack that killed boys aged between nine and 11 was ‘tragic accident’ in findings contradictory to journalists’ reports from scene

The Israeli military has cleared itself of culpability in one of the most controversial incidents in last summer’s Gaza war: a missile attack that killed four children on Gaza beach and injured a number of others.

No. Here’s what the Israeli investigators said.

The Military Advocate General found that the professional discretion exercised by all the commanders involved in the incident had not been unreasonable under the circumstances. However, it became clear after the fact that the identification of the figures as militants from Hamas’s Naval Forces, was in error.

So, here on planet earth, the Israelis did the opposite of what Beaumont claims. They said that they erroneously identified children as terrorists. How is that “clearing itself of culpability”?

Beaumont goes on.

An account of the investigation, posted late on Thursday by military spokesman Lt Col Peter Lerner, said the strike had targeted a “compound” which had been known as belonging to Hamas’s Naval Police and Naval Force (including naval commandos)”.

But journalists who attended the scene in the immediate aftermath of the attack – including a reporter from the Guardian – saw a small and dilapidated fisherman’s hut containing a few tools where the children had been playing hide-and-seek.

Those are lies. It was a steel shipping container, not a “small and dilapidated hut.”

Before it was put next to the police post, it sat below the terrace of the Adam Hotel.

More Beaumont.

Although the attack was witnessed by a Guardian reporter, no attempt was made by the Israeli military investigators to seek a statement.

Beaumont is referring to himself. I’ll tell you why Israeli investigators didn’t contact Beaumont: He was worthless as an eyewitness.

The first projectile hit the sea wall of Gaza City’s little harbour just after four o’clock. As the smoke from the explosion thinned, four figures could be seen running, ragged silhouettes, legs pumping furiously along the wall. Even from a distance of 200[sic] metres, it was obvious that three of them were children.

Jumping off the harbour wall, they turned on to the beach, attempting to cross the short distance to the safety of the Al-Deira hotel, base for many of the journalists covering the Gaza conflict.

The breakwater is 328 yards (300 meters) from the al-Deira Hotel. That’s a short distance? I took a photo of my brother Tim standing 328 yards away.

There’s no smoke, and adrenaline isn’t flooding your system, but can you tell his age and gender?

Back to Beaumont’s “eyewitness account.”

Three others who were injured made it to the hotel: Hamad Bakr, aged 13, with shrapnel in his chest; his cousin Motasem, 11, injured in his head and legs, and Mohammad Abu Watfah, 21, who was hit by shrapnel in his stomach.

A man who had been near them reached the hotel terrace first, scrambling up a steep sandy bank. A skinny man in his 30s, he groaned and held up a T-shirt already staining red with blood where he was hit in the stomach. He fainted and was carried to a taxi waved down in the street as he grew pale and limp.

Here’s what Beaumont tweeted.

Well, the problem is that four boys—not two—arrived at the al-Deira.

Muntaser-Motasem Bakr.

Hamad and Younis Bakr.

Nasser Bakr.

Stefanie Dekker of al-Jazeera took a photo of the four boys running from the breakwater to the al-Deira.

You can see that the clothing of the runners matches that of the boys at the al-Deira, not the outfits worn by the dead children. Also, the man who was put in the taxi is Mohammed al-Watfa, not a “a skinny man in his 30s.”

There was no skinny man in his thirties. And if Beaumont attended to Hamad Bakr as he claims, maybe he can explain why they bandaged his ankle before his BLEEDING CHEST WOUND.

Now we return to Beaumont’s outraged piece on how Israel “exonerated” herself.

The Israeli claims appear at odds in several details with what journalists were able to see at the time.

The breakwater is both easily accessible from a side lane and also is located on one of the busiest parts of the public beach in Gaza port and accessible not only to the fishermen who use it, but local Palestinians who come to sunbathe and swim within feet of it.

No. The breakwater was fenced off, and the boats were always moored at a distance from it.

It was very inaccessible, due to concrete barriers put up next to the sand.

In fact the breakwater has been kept separate for years.

And so what if the beach is busy? Is Beaumont seriously arguing that Hamas scrupulously avoids placing its military installations in close proximity to civilian areas?

Here’s how Beaumont ends his screed.

What is not clear from the Israeli report is why Israeli targeters had failed to identify that children had been playing on the beach prior to the attack.

There’s no evidence whatsoever that children were playing on the beach prior to the attack. No photos or videos have surfaced; every “eyewitness” told a different story; and each “surviving” boy told a different story. Some of the eyewitnesses told multiple stories.

Gallagher Fenwick of France 24, July 16, 2014.

“A first strike took place before our eyes on a structure at the edge of the port of Gaza, near the hotels where much of the international press is positioned,” reports the special correspondent of France 24 in Gaza Gallagher Fenwick, who saw the corpse of a child taken out of the rubble of a sort of hut.

“Then, about thirty meters away were found the lifeless bodies of three other children on this deserted beach,” he says.

Gallagher Fenwick, July 17, 2014.

We witnessed the incident. The first strike occurred, and we went out onto our balcony… And after that first strike happened, we saw four very young children running away from the point of impact on a completely empty beach, so very clearly visible from a distance. And that’s why—that’s when, excuse me, there was a second strike that obviously hit the other children, so leaving four children dead on that beach—a very shocking incident given that, again, these children were clearly simply playing around and were very, very clearly visible from a distance.

The Israelis were investigating the violent deaths of four children, not prostituting themselves for attention. I wouldn’t have interviewed a single journalist who claimed to have seen what happened. It would’ve been a total waste of time, unless my goal were to try and discover how pathological these people are.

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