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)