Israel/Palestine

Specifically, how do you explain the testimonies that ‘Hamakor’ found to be false?

The cases referred to by ‘Hamakor’ as those with parts which turned out to be “untrue” were incidents in which the findings of investigations (conducted either by police or intra-military) produced additional information, that was sometimes conflicting from the information known to the soldier who testified.
In order to provide the public with as complete a picture of the incident described in the testimony as possible, we added a note below these testimonies on our website describing the details that were discovered after the fact.

One of the testimonies referred to as incorrect by ‘Hamakor’ describes a ‘price-tag’ attack in which some 60 olive trees belonging to Palestinians were uprooted allegedly by settlers in the South Hebron Hills. In it, the testifier said that the IDF tracker dispatched to the area claimed it was impossible to know where the perpetrators came from. A police report written that day confirmed that the tracks spotted in the area led nowhere. We verified and published these details.

Only in the complete investigation file - which was written after the testimony was already verified and published - it turned out that the trackers later succeeded in detecting the tracks of the party that uprooted the trees, moreover, using them to lead the forces to a specific structure in the Havat Maon settlement outpost. Again - these details were only revealed at a later time, and were not known to the testifier.

It should be noted that this case too - like the vast majority of investigation files opened over cases of alleged settler violence – was ultimately closed on grounds of insufficient evidence. No arrests were made; no one was put on trial.
In effect, the description of the events told by the soldier (in accordance to what he experienced, and which we verified and published), is not nearly as bleak as the reality in which a serious crime is left unsolved or unpunished simply due to the ineffectiveness of the police in the handling of such cases.

The second example brought forth by ‘Hamakor’ regarded an incident from the Second Intifada in which a Palestinian child was killed in Nablus as a result of gunfire directed by an IDF officer at stone throwers. The soldier testifies as to the lenient rules of engagement dictated to the forces and the fact that the punishment for the officer for killing a child was a monetary fine of 100 Shekels. These details were known to the soldier who gave the testimony, as well as to other soldiers in the unit, as told by the officer himself who fired the shots and was punished, and who served at that time as a deputy company commander.
In this case as well, reality was later found to be even worse than what was described in the testimony we published. There is no dispute over the fact that a Palestinian child was killed by imprecise gunfire and that the officer was fined as a result of his conduct during the operation. But in retrospect, it turns out that the soldiers were unaware at the time that the officer was not punished for killing the child - but rather for "negligence in carrying out the mission." In response to the killing of the child, the officer was only told that he ought to have pointed his fire at the child’s legs, and avoided killing him.