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Reminds me of a Saturday Night Live joke from years ago...
"Russia announced today that 31 people died from the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, but they would like to remind everyone that, while tragic, it's still a far cry from the 400 who died during the Stalinist Purges."
Yeah it is really funny when they have to make human bodypart puzzles to find out how many people died and also analyze the charred remains of people that were bound together and then burned so they couldn’t say the if it was just one dead person or more.
My understanding was that the burnt bodies were from the IDF shelling of buildings with militants and hostages in them. Did you have additional evidence I didn't catch?
Those articles partly talk about the burn victims. The Snopes article is primarily about beheaded infants though.
https://www.snopes.com/news/2023/10/12/40-israeli-babies-beheaded-by-hamas/
Right. So we're not going on much here.
I don't know if you're referring to Gaza or Israel on October 7th, but here's a press conference about the burned bodies.
Yeah, I saw it.
I keep reading descriptions of these scenes on social media, but none with links to corroborated reports from reputable outlets. I am reluctant to believe these stories since the '40 beheaded babies' claim was debunked. Do you have a link to a good report, preferably without a pay wall?
Here's a PBS video https://youtu.be/jRccpmfQrEE?si=lv3pfejLk1n9E7sg
It's probably a lot more than 40 in various states of intentional or indirect dismemberment, burnings, decapitations, or complete disintegration to the point where only teeth remain.
There are also various archives with have images and videos corroborated by this report and other news outlets, like Haaretz, NYT, the Guardian, and others.
EDIT: Ah this was about Palestinian burned bodies not Israeli, my apologies.
Thanks. The video is an interview with Greame Wood, and I was able to find his article in the Atlantic describing the footage collected and presented by the IDF, dated October 23. It's certainly horrifying. He specifically remarks that the presentation featured no signs of rape, apparently in reference to earlier, uncorroborated claims. There's also no mention of victims being tied together and then deliberately set on fire, which is the unsourced allegation I have seen going around lately. Frustratingly, he doesn't say one way or the other whether the footage shows that any of the attackers were "looking for kids to kill them" as implied by the IDF presenter.
Ah this was about Palestinian burned bodies not Israeli, my apologies.
What did you mean by that? It's been suggested there's been some difficulty figuring which remains belong to the attackers versus the victims, which seems plausible, but I haven't seen any sources confirming that that's the situation.
The allegation of victims tied together and set on fire is absolutely true. I saw the images, and here is an article with it.
This article is corroborated by The Guardian, who was at the same press conference, but chose not to post that picture, but a couple other ones.
I saw another image of this mother and child as seen at the scene of the crime too in an archive curated by first responders at the scene.
Many, many of the victims were burned alive.
Edit: Haaretz was probably at the press conference too.
I'm not so sure about that The Media Line link. I searched The Guardian and only only came up with this article, which describes an adult and child having died in a fire while holding each other with no mention of being restrained with steel wire:
Kugel showed journalists an image of one burned and almost unidentifiable collection of bones collected from a saferoom in one kibbutz, then a scan of those remains.
In it, two spines and two sets of ribs were visible, one smaller than the other, which he said told a painful story of their deaths. “This is an adult with a child. They are sitting together and hugging,” Kugel said.
The Media Line article interviews the same Dr. Chen Kugel, head of Israel's National Center for Forensic Medicine, but omits his above description and does not attribute the steel wire claim to any sources. It's also vague about whether the victims were directly set on fire or whether they died in burning buildings. In comparison, the Guardian article clearly states as follows:
With some less damaged bodies found in burned buildings, soot in the trachea showed that victims were alive when a fire was set and probably died of smoke inhalation, Kugel said. He wants families to know that victims would have died from smoke inhalation before flames reached their bodies.
The Media Line article even ends by quoting an obvious lie that "No one who was alive and encountered them [the Gazan attackers] remained alive. No one."
I've never heard of The Media Line before today and I don't know what they're usually like, but I have to question the agenda of an outlet that would publish these embellishments. What the attackers actually did to civilians was bad enough for reasonable people to understand an IDF response to hurt the capabilities of the Gazan armed resistance and maybe try to extract some of the hostages. However, embellishing what happened serves the purposes of distracting from the IDFs failures and further dehumanize Palestinians in order to manufacturer consent for something more drastic and ghastly than measured retaliation against Hamas et al.
Actually, it's not embellished at all, in fact, if you've seen the archives, most reports under-sell the atrocities. You have to wonder why both The Media Line and The Guardian were at the same press conference, yet The Media Line chose to show the picture with the metal wire.
It's because The Media Line clearly has an agenda to garner an emotional response from its audience?
That can certainly be true.
Another point of view is that sources like The Guardian are irresponsible for not showing the images when many people are accusing Israel of embellishment.
Yes there is a picture and there is a metal wire there and there are more, multitudes more.
There are trucks filled with burnt bodies, there's images of a burnt child running and falling. There's videos of smoke still rising from the bodies as first responders reach the scenes.
But you know, if you want more, here you go.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67165128
https://www.haaretz.com/0000018b-3313-dff1-a5eb-ffffee6f0000
Now you have BBC who corroborates the metal wire, and Haaretz that describes the beheaded babies as accurate, both well known and trusted sources.
If you actually want the archive with the first responder telegram that corroborates all this too I can PM it also.
Images of the steel wire are conspicuously missing from the media line report.
The Haaretz article doesn't corroborate the beheaded babies allegation. It just repeats the hearsay:
According to the people involved in handling the bodies, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s description of beheaded babies is accurate.
The BBC also just repeats a claim:
One of the team said the bodies of more than 20 children had been found nearby, tied together and burned.
I wouldn't expect BBC or Haaretz to actually show photos like that, but neither mentions seeing photos or other evidence and verifying the claims. The organizations presumably have access to the Telegram archive and have the means to verify the worst alleged excesses of the attack, but so far they haven't.
Well look.
If this were any other country in Europe or the US, no one would be questioning the doctors, the first responders, and news outlets who report their claims. Because ultimately, that's what's going on here.
If you acknowledge that this is an unconventional response to such overwhelming proof, I will reserve my pure bewilderment.
And if you're still questioning the Metal wire, yes, it's in the Media Line report. Check the scanned image. It's literally right there, bottom right of the scan you can see the metal loop, and follow it around the bodies.
Do you want the Telegram archive? I have access to 2. One that shows live killings, as corroborated by the BBC, NYT, who were shown the same footage at a screening in Israel, and one that shows images and CCTV uploaded by first responders.
If this were any other country in Europe or the US, no one would be questioning the doctors, the first responders, and news outlets who report their claims. Because ultimately, that’s what’s going on here.
I'm not sure what you're getting at. There were some big allegations of mass rape and infant decapitations, which received a lot of attention and credulity and then turned out to be unsubstantiated. It's happened before in other conflicts where unsubstantiated claims of specific attrocities have been used to dehumanize enemies and build support for war. The Nayirah testimony comes to mind as an infamous example. So, when I hear wild stories of victims bound together with steel wire (of all things) and then directly set on fire, I am rightfully skeptical.
The image of the CT scan the The Media Line shows something next to the torsos, but we don't know what it is because there's no quote from Dr. Kugel or any other expert to tell us. This report also omits a detail that the Guardian report includes, which is that the remains were recovered from a safe room in a kibbutz. Therefore, a scenario where the two individuals were tied together (with steel wire) and directly set on fire, as opposed to being trapped in a room in a burning building, seems relatively farfetched.
Operation Al-Aqsa Flood featured many confirmed atrocities. I've seen videos and read corroborating reports. I do not dispute that. What I take issue with are the uncorroborated rumors that seem designed to make people especially upset. The Israeli government, its supporters, and apologists were so quick and eager to run with the false allegations of mass rape and infant beheadings. If there was evidence that unequivocally confirmed that people were tied together and set on fire, a scene that might have come from a Saw sequel, they would absolutely be showcasing it. However, not even The Media Line report can produce a quote from a forensic expert (that isn't an obvious lie) to support the allegation.
You understand what you're saying right.
This was a big media press conference, and the presenter. The presenter, was Dr. Chen Kugel. This was a slide on his own presentation. Do you understand?
Boom:
https://youtu.be/SoTItPHa6mw?si=zPYvRhDoj1D-nwSB
Video of the actual press conference.
Please relent, it's giving me a headache.
He does address all the scans, the metal wire in the photo, right there, direct quotes from him too I should have led with this. Around minute 6 is when the images posted come up.
Please watch the video, please please I feel like I'm going insane. I should have led with it but I didn't know there was video of the whole press conference.
Thank you for finding the video. I wish the articles we have been referencing would have just linked to it. That said, the video does not substantiate the article from The Media Line.
Regarding the charred bodies, Dr. Kugel is clear that they were not directly set on fire. At about 24:24 he states that the bodies were in buildings that burned. Subsequently, he clarifies that carbon monoxide inhalation would have killed them before the fire itself, that they did not burn alive, as a small consolation to the surviving loved ones.
As for the steel wire, it is mentioned twice in the video:
At about 7:41, Dr. Kugel says that one of his colleagues "thinks" that an adult and child shown in one of the CT scans "might" have been bound together with steel wire and then burned. That is speculation, of course. I would speculate differently, but I think that would be an unnecessary digression.
At about 11:12, an unburned, or at least un-charred, body of an adult male is explained as having been "cuffed" with steel wire and then shot to death. Unlike the scan of the adult and child, a photograph of the steel wire from this case is actually presented.
So, from this press conference we have a confirmed case of steel wire being used to restrain a victim and multiple victims of arson. These findings are sad and horrifying, but, based on the facts we have, the allegation that people were ritualistically strapped together and burned alive (with the implication that it was a typical feature of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood), is not true. We need to be careful about fabrications and exaggerations for the reasons I mentioned previously.
At this point, I have also had enough of this discussion. It is an unpleasant topic and you have helped me get a better understanding for the basis and validity of the claim, which is what I originally sought.