Friday, May 23, 2014

CNN footage shows Israeli troops firing rubber bullets, not live fire, in Beitunia

 Elder of Ziyon

This is Israel's Channel 2 analyzing video released by CNN yesterday that appeared to show the Israel border police officer firing the gunshot that felled Nadim Nawarah at the "Nakba Day" protest in Beitunia.



While Nadim and the other youth have had funerals and Palestinian Arab medical reports indicating bullets that tore through their bodies, the CNN footage actually shows without a doubt that the border police bullet that was shot at the time Nawarah fell came from a gun equipped with the extension used to fire rubber bullets. (The bullet that Nawarah's father says he found in the backpack simply could not have killed him, as the expert in the video notes - a bullet that hits a target does not look like that.)

Here is what an M16  looks like.




Here it is with the attachment:

Here's the gun that fired the bullet at the time:

It is clear that this gun has the rubber bullet attachment.


Rubber coated bullets used in Israel are blunt cylinders. They cannot penetrate skin unless fired from very close range, although they could cause serious pain and injury. Even then - they wouldn't exit the body. They certainly could not go through Nadim's backpack the way it was described.

The CNN footage did not show what was happening around the corner from the building where Nawarah fell down, closer to the Israeli position, and from other footage we know that protesters were throwing and sling-shooting stones to the police from there (out of the view of the security camera footage.)  We cannot tell where the police were firing towards.

Is it possible that Nawarah was hit by a misfired rubber bullet, or a ricochet? Did he fall as soon as he heard the shot? I dislike conspiracy theories on either side and the idea that the youths faked their falls to coincide with the shots and were then whisked away to replaced with similar dead bodies, or to be killed themselves as martyrs, seems far fetched. But no image or video released so far shows Israeli police using anything but tear gas and rubber bullet guns, and there is no way that the damage mentioned in the medical report matches what a rubber bullet could do.  Also, there is no blood visible near the supposed wounds in any of the photos of the youths who were apparently killed.

My earlier post on the incident, along with the comments, is perhaps the single biggest repository of photo and video of the incident.

See also here.

(h/t CifWatch for the translation)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Except that if a rubber projectile wasn't in the barrel extender, and a live round was in the breach, it would have fired in the same way as normal. The blank rounds used as a propellant in m4 variants (not m16 as you have pointed out) are the same caliber as the standard (nato) live round used by Israeli soldiers.

Ray Pelland said...

Anonymous, a std NATO 5.56mm round travels at 1000 m/sec. A rubber cylinder the IDF use in their M16s with the extended barrel travels at 150 m/sec. One is well below the speed of sound. The other is well above it.

Anyone in vicinity would have known immediately by the sound if the IDF were firing std rounds. As would the demonstrators.

The sound of the round coming in at well over the speed of sound is also very different.

This is to say nothing if the horrible damage that is cause by a NATO round hitting flesh at 1 km/sec.

You speak as someone who has never experienced war but is looking to blame the side you hope loses.

GS Don Morris, Ph.D./Chana Givon said...

Spot on Ray-thank you for sharing the facts with anonymus!!
Doc