A targeted IDF strike was carried out in Rafah on Sunday, targeting two Hamas leaders, which seemingly led to an explosion that killed 45 civilians.
The leaders – Yassin, head of Hamas in the West Bank, and Khaled, head of the Regional Office and the Ramallah committee in Hamas – both had Israeli blood on their hands after having directed a handful of terror attacks each.
Both Rabia and Nagar were in a compound a mile away from the humanitarian zone that was created to keep Palestinians safe when Israel targeted the terrorists in a precise airstrike.
This was when the All Eyes on Rafah campaign was launched.
Social media trends quick to slam Israel
We have all seen it: Celebrities, so-called influencers, and your average alike posting on various social media platforms, “All Eyes on Rafah,” supposedly signaling that ignorance regarding Israel’s actions is ignorance in the face of genocide.
This conclusion was only too easily reached by those unequivocally opposed to Israel in the first place. From there, the wildfire caught, and soon enough, everyone posted that their eyes were on Rafah.
Certainly, Israel’s operation in the Gaza Strip has not been without its mistakes – far from it. But one thing is clear from even the shortest of closer looks into what happened on Sunday: Israel did not intentionally kill dozens of Palestinian civilians.
The compound where the Hamas leaders were located and ultimately targeted was a couple of hundred meters away from an unsanctioned civilian camp outside of the humanitarian zone. Shortly after Israel launched its attack, a loud boom was heard and then a fire broke out in said camp.
All evidence from the incident demonstrates that there was no targeted airstrike at the civilian compound and that no IDF soldiers were there shooting at civilians. Instead, it seems like Hamas munitions were being held near the camp that detonated following the nearby attack.
According to information that has come out, Israel’s strike alone could not have caused such massive destruction.
To be clear, Israel has some of the best intelligence agencies in the world so it should have known if weapons were being stored nearby. It definitely knew about the civilian camp being so close by. An egregious, calculative mistake was therefore made.
Security officials said the following day that the IDF carried out “several operations” to ensure that there were no Palestinian civilians in the area before the strike, including aerial surveillance, the deployment of precise munitions, and additional intelligence information. Clearly, that was not entirely effective.
According to Palestinian reports – and keeping in mind that the Gaza Health Ministry is operated by Hamas – at least 35 people were killed in the incident.
Nevertheless, this was not a purposeful attack on civilians, and it was nothing like the dozens of terror attacks conducted by Hamas since the start of the war – including October 7, of course – which purposely target Israeli civilians. Intention matters.
Sure enough, the IDF’s General Staff’s Fact-Finding and Assessment Mechanism, an independent body responsible for examining exceptional incidents during combat, began investigating the incident almost immediately after it occurred.
The Military Police Criminal Investigation Division has opened approximately 70 investigations into incidents throughout the war. The IDF – Israel as a whole, in fact – knows to own up to its mistakes and to reach conclusions that would change future actions accordingly.
It is a responsible, independent body. However, the world media and critics of Israel afford it even less credibility than they do a terrorist organization.
The international media, social media users, and more did not wait a single moment before condemning Israel unequivocally and without condition, well before the facts were in.
The Military Advocate General, Maj.-Gen. Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, said, “We take these allegations very seriously and are working to see them through… The IDF’s commitment to the law does not stem from concerns posed by the international arena. First and foremost, it is rooted in the fact that the State of Israel is a state of law. The rule of law and the purity of arms are values woven into the IDF’s code of ethics from the day it was established.”
Tomer-Yerushalmi hit the nail on the head. Those outside of the conflict must not jump the gun.