Thomas Wictor

The Palestinians became experts at producing fake videos that portray the Israeli Defense Forces as murderous thugs who drop bombs and fire artillery indiscriminately. It’s a lie, of course: Five times as many Palestinian males as females were reported killed, and there weren’t enough casualties to indicate a blatant disregard for civilian life. In the Yemen war, Ansar Allah has begun producing Houthiwood propaganda videos that purport to show that the Saudi-led Coalition is bombing everyone and everything for no reason.

This video is fake.

The explosions are computer-generated imagery (CGI).

I guess this is supposed to be an air strike. We see a munition about to hit (red arrow).

However, that munition disappears, and an explosion begins in the background (red arrow).

Then the explosion from the first munition begins.

The explosion in the foreground is rapidly growing in size, but the one behind it hasn’t gotten any taller.

These are two of the most amateurish CGI explosions I’ve ever seen. They look nothing like the real thing.

Now we start getting the starfish-arm smoke and debris towers.

Here’s where it gets all screwed up. Is the explosion in the foreground taking place in front of or behind the half-completed building (red arrow)?

The smoke arm is behind the corner of the building, right?

No, it’s both in front of and behind the corner of the building.

And what’s with the explosion in the background? Why is it brown? High explosives produce dirty-gray smoke. Watch how the brown explosion goes from a spiny tree-shape to a soft blob.

That’s not how explosions evolve. Those spiny arms are supposed to be truckloads of earth. They wouldn’t simply dissolve into thin air. It’s very hard to find genuine videos of explosions, since so many of them are faked. Here are two 1000-lb (453-kg) bombs dropped in Afghanistan.

Does that video bear any resemblance whatsoever to the one from Yemen?

The fake Yemen video above was part of a fake news story.

Yemen conflict: Saudi-led jet strikes kill at least 20 people at wake, tribesmen say

Jets belonging to a Saudi-led coalition have killed at least 20 people at a wake in northern Yemen, local tribesmen say, as warplanes pounded Houthis and other forces behind a missile strike that had killed dozens of Gulf Arab soldiers.

The air strikes targeted troops loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, an ally of the Houthis, across the country and hit a Houthi base in what had been the al-Imam University, a religious school in northern Sana’a, locals said.

But residents said the deadliest strike was in al-Jouf province north of Sana’a, where warplanes hit a wake for a local who had been killed by Houthi gunfire, in what was apparently an accidental strike by the coalition.

Where are the photos? The Yemen war is the only major conflict of the modern era which has produced virtually no images or footage of civilian casualties. That’s because there are virtually no civilian casualties. The UN says there’s no way to determine how many people have died, and in the same breath tells us that 4500 people have died.

The press, aid organizations, NGOs, and “human rights” groups have become as vacuous as social media. All day, every day, people tell me that Israel is guilty of war crimes.

“Give me an example of an Israeli war crime,” I ask.

“It’s well documented,” they say at first. Always.

“You obviously have a reading comprehension problem. I asked for an example of Israeli war crimes.”

“Bombing a school because terrorists are hiding in it.”

For one thing, the IDF never once bombed a school. They returned fire toward the direction from which they were fired on. The liars of UNRWA, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International claim that this return fire struck schools used as shelters and killed civilians, but the forensic evidence shows that the buildings were hit with terrorist weapons.

This hole was made by a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG).

These holes were made by light cannons and an RPG.

These holes were made by grenades from a rifle-mounted launcher.

These holes were made by mortar rounds.

Terrorists unloaded on the school in Jabalia with everything they had, and then all the groups predisposed to hate Jews blamed the IDF. But guess what the Geneva Conventions say about schools that terrorists use as combat posts?

They can be destroyed.

In so far as objects are concerned, military objectives are limited to those objects which by their nature, location, purpose or use make an effective contribution to military action and whose total or partial destruction, capture or neutralization, in the circumstances ruling at the time, offers a definite military advantage.

Attacking a school being used by terrorists is not a war crime. All day long, idiots who have no factual knowledge contact me and share their worthless opinions. For some reason they think I’m required to respect their stupidity. I blame academia, which in western countries has been teaching students for decades that simply opening your yap and blathering is as valid as actually researching a subject before coming to a conclusion.

Every single person who accuses Israel of committing war crimes was going to make that accusation regardless of what happened. Not one human being has ever changed their mind from supporting Israel to opposing her, based on seeing reports that the IDF is a gang of war criminals. The belief came first, followed by halfhearted attempts to justify making the accusation.

If you challenge the accusation, the accusers call you a “Zionist shill,” “brainwashed,” a “professional hasbara troll,” a “ZioNazi,” a liar, a homosexual, a pedophile, old, ugly, crazy, lonely, and stupid.

It’s an attempt to screech you into silence by making it too unpleasant to speak the truth. That tactic works only on those who like people. If you’re a misanthropic hermit like me, no amount amount of ostracizing is going to shut me up.

Currently I’m defending Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Senegal, and Pakistan from lies that they’re indiscriminately killing civilians and using banned weapons in Yemen. When the balloon goes up in Lebanon and then Iran, I’ll debunk the prefabricated lies about Israeli actions.

Then I hope to take a vacation. Here. In the Sea of Clouds.