Thomas Wictor

In my attempt to find out what happened to Ismail, Mohammed, Ahed, and Zakaria Bakr on the Gaza beach, July 16, 2014, I’ve taken many wrong turns. Yesterday someone sent me a link to NBC News footage that proves that I was wrong about a screen grab. However, the footage explains all the bizarre actions Hamas took on that day. It has to do with a torso lying in the grass.

Before I get into that, I need to explain something: None of what I’m writing will make a difference. People are under the misguided impression that if certain authorities read my posts, something wonderful will happen. Well, they’ve read my posts, and they’ve dismissed them. As I knew they would.

So, if I write something that you think is going to “ruin my reputation,” you need to understand that I have no reputation to ruin. I have no credibility. Nothing will come from my posts.

Therefore save your anger and rudeness. The rudest person who ever walked the earth was my father, Edward.

He said exactly what he wanted, when he wanted, and he was indifferent to how his words made people feel. I tolerated it for fifty-two years. However, my father is dead. I won’t tolerate rudeness from anybody, especially not social-media contacts. The surest way to get ejected from my life is to be rude to me because I disagree with you.

You’ve been warned.

The torso on the beach

My opinion is that the NBC News footage shows Hamas operatives and New York Times photographer Tyler Hicks standing around the torso of a Hamas bomber who blew himself to pieces as he set off the explosive that mutilated the bodies of Mohammed, Ahed, and Zakaria Bakr. TF1 New broadcast footage of an explosion that may be the one in question (green arrow).

There are several reasons why I believe that the object on the ground at Tyler Hicks’s feet is a torso and not the body of Ahed Bakr. First, we need to know what I’m talking about. It’s the object marked with a red arrow.

The head points to the left (red arrow).

If that were Ahed Bakr, his legs would be pointing to the left. I see no evidence of legs. When the man in the white shirt walks behind the object, his shadow falls on the sand where there should be legs.

Ahed Bakr filmed from that angle looked like this.

To me, this object bears no resemblance to Ahed Bakr.

Other photos show no sign of Ahed’s bright-red shirt.

Physically, the object in the grass does not resemble Ahed Bakr. Also, not a single photographer or videographer took images of the three boys lying together in the sand. You’ll find Mohammed and Zakaria, or Zakaria and Ahed, but never all three. When Tyler Hicks (red arrow) arrived, he never even looked at the object at his feet (green arrow).

Was he just told to not take a photo?

Hicks photographed the wounded man being taken out of the tent.

He also photographed a man reacting to Ahed Bakr’s body.

The NBC News video shows us that Hicks took the photo above after Mohammed Bakr’s body and the wounded man were put in the ambulance that had parked beside the Avenue Restaurant and Coffee Shop. Here’s Hicks going up the hill to the ambulance.

You can see in the above image that the man Hicks photographed later reacting to Ahed Bakr’s body hasn’t even arrived yet. This is the same guy in a different photo, with a different reaction to Ahed’s body.

He’s a pretty trustworthy member of Hamas because he rode in the ambulance to the hospital with the corpses of Ahed and Zakaria. Here they are closing the door on him and his distinctive shirt (red arrow).

Now he’s getting out at al-Shifa Hospital, having helping offload the bodies of Ahed and Zakaria Bakr.

I believe that the man marked with the red arrow stood guard over the torso to make sure nobody except for the official Hamas cameraman took photos of it.

He didn’t move from that place until the paramedics came and took away Ahed and Zakaria.

If the object in the grass is the head and torso of a Hamas bomber who accidentally blew up himself and his colleague while trying to mutilate the already-dead Mohammed, Ahed, and Zakaria Bakr, then everything makes sense. All the strangeness becomes understandable.

1. There are no photos or videos of the bodies of Mohammed, Zakaria, and Ahed Bakr together. This is because the bodies never were together.

2. Hamas cleared all the foreign journalists from the beach after the recovery of Ismail Bakr’s body from the breakwater. The riskiness of this move did not seem to be justified by the desire to place the bodies of the three boys in the sand unobserved. It would’ve been much better if there were an explosion that left the bodies in the sand before the journalists arrived.

If the two bombers blew themselves to pieces, that would require Hamas to clear the area so that they could find the boys’ bodies and collect the parts of the dead bomber.

3. The second ambulance arrived and parked in front of the Roots Hotel and Orient House. The paramedics ran to the beach, turned around and came back.

They then parked on the corner of the Avenue Restaurant and Coffee Shop. You can see the ambulance about the “C” in “Casualties of War.”

I knew they were waiting until the boys’ bodies were produced, but it seemed like an amateurish glitch in this sophisticated operation. The waiting and the chaos become understandable if you accept that the Hamas bombers unexpectedly exploded themselves all over the beach.

Mohammed Bakr—the boy in the green shirt—was the first of the three children removed. However, MSNBC’s footage shows that Zakaria’s body is present (red arrow) while Mohammed’s has not yet appeared in the sand.

I believe that the explosion threw Mohammed and Ahed’s bodies into the tents. The bodies had to be located, which took time.

A premature explosion would also explain why every single eyewitness tells a different story. Some people saw a group of running boys hit by a projectile, most or all of them killed. Others saw a group of running boys survive a near-miss by a projectile and arrive safely at the al-Deira Hotel. Not a single person saw two groups of running boys, both of whom were fired on.

Not only did experienced journalists run right to the beach and into danger, they lost the ability to report an incident coherently, and not one of them filmed the boys dodging explosions for 328 yards (300 meters). Foreign journalists in Gaza were not only under pressure from Hamas, they had their peers breathing down their necks.

“Yeah, that’s right! I saw an explosion right behind the boys, not way off to their left!”

What I’ve discovered is that most people simply want you to conform to their will. The topic doesn’t matter. It’s necessary that you agree with them. If you don’t, they’ll hate you.

Go ahead and hate. I’m already two-thirds into the next world. Though I enjoy posting about Israel, I’ll stop if it gets too unpleasant.

And I won’t miss it, since I have other things to occupy my time.