The Jerusalem Post has reported here that a source has informed them that at least one of the civilian shooting incidents which was reported by Ha’aretz and seriously damaged Israel’s reputation around the world has been proved to be false.

The JP stresses that this is a leaked story as investigations are not complete.

During the conference, one soldier claimed a marksman opened fire on a mother and two of her children, after a squadron commander told them to walk into a no-entry zone.

“All of the soldiers who were involved in the conference were questioned – not as a punishment – but in order to understand whether they had witnessed these things. From all of the testimonies we collected, we can safely conclude that the soldiers who made the claims did not witness the events they describe,” the source said.

“All of it was based on rumors. In the incident of the alleged shooting of the mother and her children, what really happened was that a marksman fired a warning shot to let them know that they were entering a no-entry zone. The shot was not even fired in their general direction,” the source said.

“The marksman’s commander ran up the stairs of a Palestinian home, got up on the roof, and asked the marksman why he shot at the civilians. The marksman said he did not fire on the civilians. But the soldiers on the first floor of that house heard the commander’s question being shouted. And from that point, the rumor began to spread,” the source added.

“We can say with absolute certainty that the marksman did not fire on the woman and her children. Later, the company commander spoke with the marksman and his commander. We know with certainty that this incident never took place,” he said.

Now we all know, don’t we, that everyone will be calling “whitewash”, but that’s because they are predisposed to believing the worst about the IDF. They wrongly and completely misinterpreted the details of the original allegation and the circumstances of their publication. 

The JP report concludes:

 It is unlikely the damage to Israel’s image from the allegations can be repaired, irrespective of the results of the investigation

As ever, rush to judgement, don’t bother checking the facts or waiting for a full investigation. When I heard the original reports I was shocked because it seemed that if the IDF itself was ‘admitting’ atrocities, so maybe they are true. But at the same time I, at least, reserved judgement for a full enquiry. 

We await the full official report including the second incident from the Rabin Pre-military Academy allegations. If we are not to be guilty of the same rush to judgement we need to hear the full official report.

I am sure that innocents died during the conflict. It is not unlikely that there were some incidents where soldiers behaved badly and these should be investigated and any criminals brought to justice. Allegations still remain to be answered. The outcome may or may not be different. But let’s not rush to judgement. Let’s leave that to the hatemongers.

Ha’aretz and the officer who leaked the original story are very much to the left of Israeli politics and both have an interest in pointing fingers to further their own political agenda. To outsiders this seems improbable, but that’s because they don’t know Israeli politics or have an agenda of their own.

Unfortunately, unsubstantiated reports of this nature fly round the world, give fuel to the Jew-haters and anti-Zionists and sully Israel’s reputation needlessly. There are times when Israelis can be their own worst enemies when it comes to the propaganda war. And its worst enemies are winning that hands down. I am absolutely certain that the results of the investigation will be given little coverage and most commentators will be highly suspicious of the findings. I can already hear the “are you seriously suggesting”s and “this is a whitewash, isn’t it, Mr Regev”. That’s if they even bother to report it, let alone declare their original editorial line to have been in error.

But then we knew that all along.