Establishing the truth in war is always difficult.
This has been especially so in Gaza because international journalists remain banned from entering by Israel, thereby preventing us from witnessing events for ourselves.
Israel has always claimed the Ministry of Health in Gaza cannot be trusted because it is run by Hamas.
Indeed, there have been times, particularly in the immediate aftermath of large airstrikes, when the initial reported death toll has proven to be exaggerated.
However, many analysts also believe the overall death toll, now over 50,000, could be higher because of the number of undiscovered bodies under rubble.
The IDF has also regularly claimed that it attacked schools and hospitals because they were being used by Hamas as command centres.
Hamas did dig a vast network of tunnels under civilian buildings, I’ve seen them for myself, but the IDF rarely provides evidence to back its claims following airstrikes.
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A large number of Palestinian journalists bravely documenting the war for the outside world have been killed – again, the IDF has accused some of them of being members of Hamas, but again rarely provided evidence to support that.
In the aftermath of this particular incident, when 15 emergency and aid workers were killed and found buried in a mass grave, the IDF spokesman released a statement confidently saying that the IDF “did not randomly attack an ambulance” and claiming the vehicles were moving “without headlights or emergency signals”.
The new footage, obtained by the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) and verified by Sky News, completely undermines that.
This will now call into question the credibility of statements issued by the IDF. There will be serious questions about the rules of engagement Israeli soldiers are operating under and the morality of IDF commanders in Gaza.
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While genuine incidents of misidentification do happen in war, and deaths of innocents are sadly inevitable, the information given by the IDF following this incident suggests a cover-up somewhere along the chain.
Firstly Israeli soldiers opened fire on a convoy of vehicles that were clearly ambulances; secondly the bodies were buried in a mass grave and access denied to the UN for five days, and then the statements issued contradict the facts as we now know them.
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It is only because one of the paramedics was filming on the way to his death that we now know a little more about what happened early that morning in late March. Had the video not come to light, it would have remained the IDF’s word against the Red Crescent’s.
It is a significant slur on the reputation of a military that has often claimed to be the most moral army in the world and it will be cited as proof by many who believe that Israel has committed war crimes in Gaza.
