The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) has been widely criticised for releasing a video in which footage of killed Palestinian medic Razan al-Najjar has been edited in order to portray her as “not an angel”.
The 21-year-old was shot in the chest by an IDF sniper during protests on the Gaza-Israel border on 1 June as she attended wounded protesters.
On Thursday several Israeli government and army officials tweeted the video – named “Hamas’ use of human shields must stop” – which shows part of an interview Ms Najjar gave with Lebanese al Mayeen TV where she says she was acting as a “human shield”.
In the full clip, however, the young woman goes on to say she was present at the protests to “save the wounded at the front lines”. She does not mention Hamas, the militant group which controls the Gaza Strip.
Her death has become something of a rallying cry for Palestinians, who have named her “the Angel of Mercy”. In footage that has emerged since, she can be seen throwing a tear gas canister away from people lying on the ground.
“Razan al Najjar is not the angel of mercy that Hamas propaganda attempts to portray,” the IDF’s Arabic language spokesperson Avichay Edraee wrote on Twitter.
Let’s say she’s not a medic. WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU SHOOTING AT AN SOMEONE WHO IS BEING FORCED TO BE A HUMAN SHIELD!
rtfa. That was never implied by either side.
The whole concept is I think just completely made up.
I’ve exhausted for the day my digging-up-reports patience, but somewhere there is a UN report where they looked in some detail into the theory that Hamas was rounding up random people and having them just stand around perfectly still right next to Hamas during fighting, so that the poor IDF would be tricked into shooting them which they hated doing but they had no choice. At least in the case they were looking into, they found that no, of course they are not doing anything like that, Israel is just telling outlandish lies about where all these dead civilians came from.
I won’t say it never happens in any form. But to me it comes across like those comedy action movies where the bad guy grabs a hostage and the good guy grabs his own hostage from some random passerby. Like, ha ha! If you shoot at me, you’ll also kill this random Palestinian lady! And we know that’s like kryptonite to the IDF!