Haaretz: Did the IAF bomb a Gazan welding truck or a Hamas Grad transport?

[laststeamtrain]

Did the IAF bomb a Gazan welding truck or a Hamas Grad transport?
By Amira Hass, Haaretz Correspondent
Tags: Israel, Israel News, Hamas

Just before midnight, on December 29, the Israel Defense Forces Spokesman's Office posted an urgent headline on its Web site: Truck packed with weapons attacked near Jabalya.

The subheadline went on to read: "At around 6 P.M., the Israel Air Force attacked a Hamas truck carrying dozens of Grad rockets." According to the article, the rockets in the truck caused a secondary explosion, shooting pieces of weaponry in all directions. The rockets were being transferred, said the article, due to militants' fear that their present storehouse would be attacked by the IAF, as well as to be put to use for launching at Israel.

The article was accompanied by a video just over 2 minutes showing the IAF's perspective from the sky, until just a moment before the explosion. The video shows 15 white figures casually milling between two vehicles. Three long black objects appear between their hands and the white figures lay these objects down on what seems to be a truck. The second vehicle takes off at a certain point and suddenly an explosion sounds and flames cover the screen. An eyewitness said the explosion was caused by an overhead drone.

Human rights groups' investigations, however, present a different testimony altogether.

According to B'tselem and the Mezan center for human rights, the truck belongs to Ahmed Samur, 55, and is still standing, burnt, beside his workshop in the Jabaliya refugee camp. Next to it hang scorched oxygen balloons, a blade and cables. Nobody dares move the truck or the accompanying accoutrements for fear that the UAVs filming every detail from above will bomb whoever approaches.

"Everything is still there on the ground," said Samur on Thursday. "We only moved the dead."

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http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1052258.html

[EFerrari]

1. I saw this man on an NBC report last night.

He looked like he was about collapse from his pain. He said the men around the truck were his family and he said some of them burned to death and he couldn't help them.

[Name removed]

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[Igel]

3. The actual facts don't much matter ...

except for those that expect perfection.

The footage showed what seems to be a reasonable target: They might be carrying rockets/missiles, they might not be. However, given that there's a good chance (given what's known at the time--not what might eventually be known), it's a reasonable decision to assume that they were missiles.

If they were right, and the secondary explosion was from exploding missiles, then it's not only a reasonable, but a good, target. If they were wrong, and the secondary explosion was from the petrol tank or from a gas canister that exceeded its design specs, then it was a reasonable, but bad, target.

Hindsight provides much clarity. If we only do things that we know, in hindsight, worked out well, then we're either omniscient or clairvoyant. I am neither, and fairly regularly do things that work out poorly ... in hindsight.

I figure it's the old "intent doesn't matter" canard, even though in daily life intent routinely matters in many ways. However, if intent matters, it means we can't be good judges or have to do some work to be able to judge, since we're not omniscient or clairvoyant. That's unbearable, it seems, so it's best to hold others to standards that we reject for ourselves.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

4. The IAF has said that there was more than what was on the released video, but they have not shared

it with the world. Without it, its just speculation either way. Those that see the IAF as souless thugs will draw one conclusion, those that see Hamas as souless thugs with draw another.