Thomas Wictor

On July 21, 2014, I wrote a post titled “A fake atrocity video from Gaza,” referring to a hoax that accused an Israeli Defense Forces sniper of shooting a Palestinian civilian three times until he died. The video is entirely bogus. Last night an Irish Twitter user named Voodoo Criminology sent me a link to an NBS NBC News report that showed more lies in the form of the retrieval and burial of Salem Khalil Salem Shammaly, the sniper’s victim. I wrote a piece titled “Update on phony Gaza sniper video” that pointed out even more fraudulence that I discovered when I watched the original video again. Today I will definitively debunk the fake Gaza sniper video.

First I have to admit that I was extremely angry when I wrote last night’s piece. Today I removed the profanity and a tasteless joke. I’m angry because I can’t deal with irrationality. The most virulent Israel-haters in the world are the Irish. Since I was nearly murdered by the Irish Republican Army in the Regent’s Park bombing of July 20, 1982, it’s hard for me to put up with being lectured on morality by an Irishman.

You know what else? Nobody understands what it’s like to miss a terrorist attack by a couple of minutes. Even worse, nobody wants to understand. They aren’t interested in how it makes you fearful of even going outside your house. The only thing that matters to most people, apparently, is that Israel is defending herself. You wouldn’t believe the pressure I’m under to stop debunking Palestinian fakery. Even people who call themselves my friends disapprove.

My deepest paranoia was that everyone in the world was insane. It sure seems like it now. Maybe I’ll move to Israel. I wouldn’t mind being targeted with rockets and missiles, as long as I lived among the rational.

Anyway, here’s is the definite proof that Salem Khalil Salem Shammaly was not shot by an Israeli sniper on July 20, 2014. I found this proof today, after the Irish Twitter lunatic sent me a message.

The man is irrational, so I won’t insult him. He believes what he believes because he hates Jews. Recently a woman friended me on Facebook for the express purpose of assaulting me. After three e-mail exchanges, she began insulting my viewpoints and demanding that I explain myself. The subject was the deaths of my parents and my traumatic background. What I write presses her buttons, so she had to punish me.

Like Voodoo Criminology, she’s irrational. The late psychiatrist Dr. David Viscott said that the sicker people are, the more generic they become. Those who have idées fixe use a standard “debating” technique, to which Voodoo Criminology and my new Facebook “friend” subjected me: They ignore or distort everything you say, and then they respond with “I’m just _______.”

“I’m just asking questions. I’m just trying to help your investigations. I’m just trying to give you advice.”

The most savage personal attacks always contain sentences that begin with “I’m just.” It’s the “tell” that the person knows they’re out of line but don’t care. Their goal is to inflict damage because you don’t share their sickness. And believe me, they’re sick. They’re generic, which means they’re massively pathological.

Gaza sniper video

For your reference, the original fake Gaza sniper video.

To recap from last night, two pieces of evidence show that this video is staged. One is that the shadows change. We go from midday to late afternoon in five seconds. I’ve used red arrows to mark the shadows of a pipe on a concrete pillar.

The image on the right is part of an unedited length of tape that ends with the “shooting” of Salem Khalil Salem Shammaly. As you can see, the image on the left was taken much later. Although the sun is no longer directly overhead, less than five seconds separate the time of day captured in the image on the left and in the image on the right, according to the International Solidarity Movement.

This alone is proof that the video is fake, but there’s much more.

The Palestinians claim that Salem Khalil Salem Shammaly was shot from the alley on the right. However, where he’s lying, he’s out of the line of fire from down the alley.

The image on the left was taken from video shot at a much lower angle than the image on the right. With the steel pot as a reference point, I’ve used a red line and a red “X” to mark the approximate place that Salem Khalil Salem Shammaly would be lying. His position would be blocked by the telephone pole and the wall of the alley itself.

Also, see the green arrow in the photo above? It identifies a piece of rusted metal that you can see in this image, marked with another green arrow.

The picture was taken with a telephoto lens, which compresses distances. Salem Khalil Salem Shammaly is lying far beyond that rusted metal. He’s a least six or seven feet (two meters) from it. The position of that piece of metal confirms that he’s out of the line of fire from the alley, which proves that he wasn’t shot as he lay on the ground. A sniper firing down the alley couldn’t have hit him.

Now I’ll show you where he was when the first “shot” that “hit” him was fired.

These chairs are last seen at 2:17 in the video. Salem Khalil Salem Shammaly is standing beside them, talking.

“There’s something moving; it’s taking its time, strolling in the place, taking its time. A tank or…”

The camera keeps filming, panning to the right. There’s no edit, and nobody moves forward until the first “shot” is fired at Salem Khalil Salem Shammaly. This happens at 2:22.

Since there was no edit, and since nobody moved from where they were at 2:17, we can all agree that Salem Khalil Salem Shammaly was standing beside those chairs when he was shot. That’s what the video evidence shows. Salem Khalil Salem Shammaly is talking, we see the chairs, the camera pans to the right, nobody moves forward, and then the shot is fired.

Well, here’s the location of the chairs.

I’ve marked them with a red arrow. As you can see, they’re nowhere near the alley. The only way an Israeli could’ve hit Salem Khalil Salem Shammaly from the alley would’ve been with a Corner Shot.

But then everyone would’ve seen him, and the photographer and videographer would’ve caught him on film. The International Solidarity Movement and Salem Khalil Salem Shammaly’s family insist that he was killed by a sniper firing down the alley.

It’s not true. The video is self-debunking. It provides the forensic evidence need to prove that it’s fake.

Thank you, Voodoo Criminology, for giving me the impetus to take closer looks at this baseless fraud.

Update

The things you see when you’re looking for something else.

After I posted the photo of the fine rear end above, I realized something: The band of actors actually crossed the alley first, turned around, and then came back and staged the death of Salem Khalil Salem Shammaly (SKSS from now on).

You can tell because they first jumped over the square pillar and pipe.

I’ve marked the pipe with red arrows. Also, SKSS wasn’t with them. The first “gunshot” is heard at :59. And lookee here! This is the screen at :59.

Didn’t notice that the first few times around. After that white screen, SKSS has joined the alley-sniper chicken players. Also, there’s an edit at 1:15 that I didn’t catch before.

Since I now had all the components, I was able to make an in-scale collage of SKSS’s tragic non-death scene.

There they are: the alley wall, the telephone pole, the rusted metal thingie, the steel pot, and SKSS. He’s clearly out of the line of fire of a sniper down the alley. Also, now that you can see the wall, it’s obvious that SKSS’s pals could’ve pulled him to safety without endangering themselves. All he had to do was reach out the arm holding the fake-blood container.

The concerned members of the International Solidarity Movement made a couple of refinements to the set. Initially there was lots of rubble where SKSS would lie. So to speak.

They cleared away the big pieces before he went supine. See how flat and comfortably he’s lying? So to speak.

And finally, can you spot the difference between the photo on the left and the one on the right?

Who brought the brightly colored plastic shopping bag stuffed full of goodies? It wasn’t there when our ladyfriend with the nice bottom clambered over the cement pillar earlier. Was it SKSS’s reward for being such a fine corpse?

I now believe that this video was filmed over several days.

What do you think are the odds that the International Solidarity Movement will turn all their video over to the Israeli Defense Forces for analysis?