Excerpt:
The team’s interrogation lasted more than two hours, during which all our phones and laptops were examined, and many photos - including personal ones - were deleted. The officer threatened us with worse consequences if we approached the frontier from the Syrian side again, and said that they know everything about us and would track us down if any hidden or un-deleted photo was ever published.
While I have little doubt that the IDF has intentionally targeted journalists in Gaza to cover up war crimes, in this specific case it does seem to be about militant authoritarian sentiment and base security in an age of fpv drone attacks.
Publicly available footage of your base could put you and your friends lives at risk. We see the Ukrainians frequently taking great care to make sure the locations and layouts of their forward operating positions are not able to be geolocated from their media releases.
If this were happening in Gaza or the West Bank, I think your take would be more likely. But happening in Syria makes it less so.
Huh. Maybe the IDF should fuck off back to their side of the border then. Safest that way.
Bizarre take. None of that explains stripping them down to their underwear blindfolding them and zip tying them.
It’s also not some top secret base. It was 200 metres out from a city in a demilitarised zone that Israeel has said it is “taking control of indefinitely” i.e a land grab. The locals were warning the journalists that the Israelis shoot people.
Forward positions are forward positions, it doesn’t need to be top secret for basic no-photography rules to apply.
I agree that all the harassment and intimidation was egregious, though. That part has nothing to do with security in any way I can think of.
How can it possibly be their forward position, though???
I just looked at a map and Quneitra city is right next to Golan heights (where Israeli control is well-established) and has the entire buffer zone (which IDF have occupied all year) between it and Syria.
Holding someone for 7 hours in their underwear with their hands zip tied is not about not wanting photos of your base. It’s pretty obviously about trying to intimidate them into not reporting on an area.
Yes, for the third time, the intimidation was very egregious. I have not been talking about the intimidation, except to say it is extreme and wrong. I have been talking about photo deletion, and how militaries feel about photography, not just in Israel, but lots of places.
Regarding where the actual combat is occuring and where the fronts are, maybe you’re right, I’m not sure on that part. It doesn’t change any procedures around opsec, though. An army guy isn’t going to make a judgement about what he should do based on where his base is, he’s just going to follow whatever doctrine his superiors give him for opsec, which in the IDF is probably very harsh. I have a feeling the IDF does not limit it only to the very frontmost positions, especially when a drone is not limited to only targeting those.
I know you are focusing on one detail and ignoring context. You dom’t have to keep reiterating that.
What you have come up with by doing so is not a convincing argument.
Then it is no longer necessary to keep bringing it up. It’s frustrating when everyone pretends I’m trying to defend Israeli positions or something instead of simply pointing out that in this one particular case, it’s unlikely to be some coverup conspiracy despite everyone’s rabid wishes for it to be one. The IDF commits plenty of war crimes, but that does not make everything they do another one.
I frankly don’t care if I convince you or not. I am not trying to sell something. I am, however, not going to be swayed away from what I think is correct, either. You all are absolutely trying to sell something, and I ain’t buying.
This seems rather unlikely. Ukraine for example takes care to inform journalists and simply asks them not to compromise their locations, checking phones and cameras where necessary.
They don’t hold journalists at gunpoint, delete all images off of each device, then threaten the journalists if they dare come back.
Israel has committed crimes in Syria too, which they seem keen to cover up. Intimidation of the press fits in that pattern. They wouldn’t behave like this if it was jusy opsec.
I’m honestly not so sure. I agree all the intimidation was very egregious, but beyond that I think you’re drawing an odd distinction between Ukraine checking phones and cameras if necessary and the IDF doing it.
Also did they delete all the images? I don’t recall the article specifying that all of them were deleted. That would also be unusual I’d think.
All were examined, many photos were deleted. Not all photos were deleted.
The difference: Israel is in Syria for imperialist aggression. Ukraine is in Ukraine to protect their homeland from imperialist aggresssion. Combine that with Israel’s pathological need to cover up and deny their extensive, seemingly neverending war crimes in Gaza… Yeah, I don’t have any faith until Israel can prove this was opsec rather than covering up. Israel has destroyed their chance for benefit of the doubt.
Even if it is opsec, they have no right being there, so fuck 'em. I hope their opsec isn’t maintained and their soldiers do die in much the same way I’d hope for a Russian base in Donetsk.
I don’t deny the overall sentiment, but we should still try to stay fact-based. It’s not about benefit of any doubt, nobody deserves that in any military conflict. It’s about the evidence we’ve been presented. If there were some war crimes caught by the BBC reporter, he likely would have said so. I doubt Israeli threats would dissuade him from doing his job when he’s brave enough to go reporting there in the first place. The IDF would have a hard time reaching him if he were to move safely back to Britain.
Loyalty to logic and factuality is more important than which side we support in conflict. If we cannot maintain a loyalty to reality, we don’t deserve to overcome our opponents in the first place. We’ve become too much like them.
Running journalists out of town before they can find your war crimes sounds like the actions of someone who commits warcrimes.
None of this is exactly a stretch given the sheer scale of war crimes and cover ups we already know about from that army.
I mean, technically, illegal occupation is in and of itself a warcrime, so there’s that?
So, bombing hospitals and innocent civilians trying to get food aren’t war crimes?
No, those are absolutely war crimes. I am not saying the IDF does not commit war crimes. I am saying this BBC reporter would have told us if he witnessed any, and as such, this specific case probably has a different motive of the many possibilities.
Don’t mistake my attempts at objectivity for support for the IDF. I just don’t automatically assume the worst possibilities.
It could still be to cover up war crimes that the BBC team hadn’t got quite close enough to discover yet, but the IDF were concerned that they might have if not scared away. It could just be for opsec, but them having been competent at stopping the BBC seeing whatever it was they were hiding isn’t proof that the thing being hidden was benign.
Intimidation is probably part of it, for sure. The only thing that fully explains the deletion of the photos is opsec, though. Frankly, we should assume the IDF absolutely is maintaining opsec, and will absolutely forbid any footage of their forward operating positions from going public as much as they possibly can. That should be a standard procedure for any military engaged in combat, and any exceptions to it should be surprising.
I believe whether this was to cover up something or not, Israel is using intimation tactics to keep eyes and cameras away from them. We have a saying in Arabic that goes “hit the one with the leash to scare the loose” basically you attack non-threatening individuals to scare away actual threats.
You guys are also forgetting that the Golan Heights since 1981 and recently southern Syria are illegally occupied by Israel and heavily militarized. Which has caused the locals to move away that of itself may be argued to be a crime. So if you wanna maintain opsec go ahead but not when the operation is about stealing land and harassing locals.
Yeah, that I agree with. The behavior beyond the deletion of the photos alone was very egregious. Blatant intimidation.
“… without any assumptions, regardless of how plausible, bordering on certainty, that the assumption is” I suppose.
I never said I wasn’t making any assumptions. That an army would follow sound opsec principles while they are in a state of conflict is an assumption after all.
This does fully explain the deletion, though, while anything else has to twist around to explain why a journalist isn’t reporting on potential war crimes while still reporting on other bad behavior.
edit: If you can’t see how obvious this is, I’m afraid you’ve probably been indoctrinated with a severe bias. I’m the only one here saying Israel absolutely commits war crimes, this just isn’t a good example of another one. Details are important and all that.
This comment caused a little fire storm, sorry for the time you wasted trying to explain logic arguments to people that have a set believe.
Belief*
Ahhh yes.
Not a waste of time at all. Nothing wrong with people having strong feelings, or helping them see through those feelings. I was young and fiery once too. It also does remain important to push back against propagandistic spin when we encounter it, even if it’s popular.