Friday 8 August 2014

IDF Hamas Human Shield Manual a Sloppy Forgery - The Evidence

07.Aug.2014
The Israeli Defense Force just got caught red handed manufacturing fake evidence to prop up their Gaza narrative

On August 4, 2014 the IDF released what they claimed to be scans of a captured Hamas combat manual which explains the benefits of human shields (Captured Hamas Combat Manual Explains Benefits of Human Shields). This juicy story got quite a few people excited, and within 2 days their blog post had over 81,000 likes on Facebook. It turns out though, that the documents that they uploaded were forgeries, and sloppy forgeries at that. The work was so shoddy that you don't even have to be an expert to see the mistake. Let's take a a look.

Alright, so the IDF uploaded these two tiny, low res images. One of them is 452 pixels wide and 280 pixels tall and the other is 437 pixels wide and 475 pixels tall.
IDF Hamas Human Shield Manual  a Sloppy Forgery 1
IDF Hamas Human Shield Manual  a Sloppy Forgery 3

NOTE: It's much more clear if you download this image yourself and zoom in completely. There you will see that it is no exaggeration when we say that the text lines up to the pixel even across the curve. By the way there's another anomaly in this image which I didn't mention here. See if you can spot it.

And it's not just one line of text that pulls off this magical feat. All of this text here on the top right does this, and all of this text is on the exact same grid. All perfectly parallel to each other. Even this decorative line here is perfectly straight as it passes over the fold. Down to the pixel.
That's impossible.

This isn't a real scan. This is a composite image created in a photo editor, most likely photoshop. It was made by combining an image of a piece of paper which they then overlaid with text and graphics.
The IDF may see this video and scramble to create a better forgery, they may even go to the trouble of getting one printed out, however the first image they uploaded here stands as a fake, an incredibly amateur fake. No need to take my word for it. Go download the image and verify for yourself.
Now why is this important?

So far, the death toll in Gaza is estimated at over 1,800, approximately 80% of those killed in the operation were civilians, and almost 400 of those killed were children (not surprising when schools are being treated as military targets). 2,700 Palestinian children were injured and over 240,000 Palestinian children were displaced. Israel is attempting to use this fake document to prop up their Gaza PR narrative: they're trying to convince the public that this bloodbath was the fault of Palestinians using human shields.

Gaza schools hit by Israel

Since they don't have any real evidence to support their claims, they figured they would just create some.

This shouldn't be surprising considering the fact that the Israeli military has entire units devoted to manipulating public opinion (and target enemies) through social media. It is however surprising that they put out such a low grade fake run on their main website.

This also highlights the abysmal state of modern journalism. This fake document is being blasted out by mainstream publications and echoed through the blogosphere without even a minimal level of scrutiny. No one even bothered to perform a basic image analysis before running the story. A thirteen year old who knows their way around Photoshop could catch this, but they didn't. Maybe that's because they didn't want to.

Don't let them get away with it

Oh and by the way, don't forget why the Gaza bombardment is happening in the first place. 

BONUS MATERIAL (to put this in perspective):

1. An honest Israeli Soldier Speaks: 
2.Miko Peled Son of a high ranking Israeli general tells the real story of the Palestinian occupation:
 


WARNING: To those who are tempted label me anti-Semitic for daring to criticize the state of Israel go watch this video that we made in October of 2013. In that video we harshly attacked racist and antisemitic elements that have been spreading hate through social media. We then followed that up with several confrontations on Facebook where we made it very clear that these idiots are not welcome in our circle. Don't waste your time with the stupid ad hominem attacks.
Source
River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian   
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