Thomas Wictor

People still ask me why the Israeli Military Advocate General (MAG) Corps concluded that the IDF accidentally killed Ismail Bakr, Mohammed Bakr, Ahed Bakr, and Zakaria Bakr on the beach in Gaza, July 16, 2014. I can’t tell you why the MAG Corps came to its conclusion, but I can say this without any doubt: Even if the Military Police investigators agreed with me that Hamas murdered the boys in a military deception (MILDEC) operation, the MAG Corps could never have made such an announcement. The theory that Hamas carried out MILDEC is forever tainted, because I’m a liability.

Nobody knows who I am. Everybody who studies the Middle East knows who Max Blumenthal is.

Here’s what Max Blumenthal posted on Twitter yesterday.

A guy who hobnobs with world leaders took the time to discredit my theory even though he knows nothing about it. In case you don’t know, a “truther” is someone who believes an insane conspiracy theory. As I’ve taken to saying, Operation Four Little Martyrs was MILDEC, not a conspiracy.

After Blumenthal posted about me, I was flooded with messages like this.

Favorited by Max Blumenthal himself! His legions of followers told me how depraved, sick, and monstrous I am. This confused lady was very angry at me.

“Are you insinuating that the incident never happened?” she asked.

“No,” I replied. “I’m stating without reservation that Hamas murdered the boys.”

“You’re despicable!”

“Sweetheart, I bought all the raw footage from the Palestinian cameramen on the beach. I’ve seen things neither you nor Max Blumenthal have.”

So she blocked me.

Imagine what would’ve happened if the MAG Corps had concluded that the Bakr boys were murdered by Hamas as part of a MILDEC operation, and then the likes of Max Blumenthal connected that conclusion to my research.

All day today people on Twitter were laughing at me, the crazy old man who sees—sorry, talks to—ghost cats. People must accept that it was never, EVER in the cards for the MAG Corps to publicly agree that Hamas murdered the Bakr boys in order to blame the IDF. But that’s just reality. The IDF doesn’t owe me anything. It’s been confirmed to me that the Military Police read all my posts. Therefore the IDF is now expecting something like this. They won’t be taken by surprise again.

I’ve made some pretty high-ranking contacts in the IDF. Someone told me that he wanted to see if I could be authorized to watch the video of the incident taken by the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV).

No.

That would put the IDF in an impossible situation. The IDF is under no obligation to exonerate me. I’m just a blogger. The MAG Corps conclusion and my own conclusion can coexist. I’m not saying the MAG Corps is wrong. However, I’m saying that in my own opinion, there’s absolutely no question that Hamas murdered the four Bakr boys in a MILDEC operation.

Note the key phrase: in my own opinion.

It took me a full year to answer almost all of the questions about the Hamas MILDEC operation. I now believe that I know exactly what happened—except for the period between these two events:

The faulty IED exploded in the steel rubbish bin behind the Avenue Restaurant and Coffee Shop.

And the bodies of Mohammed, Ahed, and Zakaria Bakr were filmed from the terrace of the Avenue Restaurant and Coffee Shop.

The reason I can’t tell you what happened between those two points in time is that there are no photos or video. Hamas cleared everyone away from the beach and hotel terraces while the bomb expert tried to disarm the IED in the rubbish bin. My guess is that when the IED exploded, it flung the bodies of Ahed and Zakaria Bakr into the sand. You can see in this shot that Zakaria (red arrow) is present, but Mohammed isn’t.

Either Mohammed Bakr’s body remained in the rubbish bin after the explosion, or it had been removed by the bomb expert’s assistant before the IED went off. Maybe it was temporarily put somewhere, such as in the blue tent. At any rate the assistant was injured by the IED. He appears to have been hit in the spine and paralyzed from the waist down.

The bomb expert was dismembered. In the raw footage I purchased, you can see his Kevlar helmet and vest lying in the grass close to Ahed Bakr’s body. The vest has a ballistic collar and a groin plate. This is exactly the model of vest that the bomb expert wore.

It’s a commercial demining vest that has a radio on the back. In the raw footage, the vest is clearly filled with a torso. However, there are no arms or head. The blown-up bomb expert was edited out of all published footage except for one clip on YouTube, but that video is of such poor quality that you can’t see much.

Still, my documentary on Operation Four Little Martyrs is almost finished, so I want to show you that I’m not hallucinating or lying. This is a screen grab from the video on YouTube. The red arrow shows the exploded Hamas bomb expert, exactly where I predicted he’d be.

The torso is lying on its stomach. You can see the right shoulder plate and the radio on the back. In the foreground Hamood Abu Kwaik bends down to lift the corpse of Ahed Bakr, and on the left is the man in the white shirt who prevented people from taking pictures of the dead bomb expert. I think he’s the man that New York Times photographer Tyler Hicks screamed at to get back.

Hicks also screamed for Hamood (he pronounces it HA-md) Abu Kwaik to come help him. The footage I now own doesn’t show anything. Hicks is out of frame on the left, and the person he’s screaming at is out of frame on the right.

NBC News filmed the entire scene from the top of the al-Ghifari Tower.

I’m sure they have footage of both the IED exploding and Tyler Hicks’s confrontation with…someone. In the videos I bought, a Hamas terrorist shouted at American photographer Heidi Levine to get out of the way. When she didn’t, he shoved her and then threatened her. She cringed away from him.

Look at her face. She knew he’s a terrorist. Tyler Hicks also knew that he was surrounded by terrorists. Why else would he scream like that?

Don’t be upset with the Israeli MAG Corps or the Military Police. Look what the utterly deranged, hate-filled, fake Jew Max Blumenthal did to a nobody like me. If the MAG Corps had announced that the Bakr boys had been killed in an elaborate ruse that almost defies belief, the global press would forever tie Israel to the ravings of an old man who sees ghost cats.

Still, I can tell you something: A very senior member of the IDF said this to me.

“Reasonable people can read the MAG Corps report and make up their own minds.”

Don’t interpret that in any way at all. I most certainly and emphatically did not.