2. The bullet that the father of the victim said had been removed from the backpack was a 5.56 mm bullet such as is used by the IDF. But it was only slightly deformed. If it had passed through a person’s chest and then was stopped by books in a backpack, it would have been completely crushed. “That bullet looks like it was fired into sand,” the expert said.
3. The surveillance camera video shows the boy falling forward and putting his hands out to break his fall. A person hit by a bullet in the chest is shoved backward by the force of the bullet, his shoulders move forward and his chest is compressed. He falls on his back. The way the boy falls is consistent with someone hit in the leg by a rubber bullet.
Some of these points (particularly the description of the bullet) are also made in an Israeli Channel 2 broadcast (in Hebrew) which can be seen here.
The most likely explanation is that the two Palestinians who died did so in a direct confrontation with the IDF or Border Patrol somewhere else. A firebomb is considered a deadly weapon, and they might have been shot trying to throw them. The teenagers in the video, then, were either injured non-seriously by rubber bullets, or faking for the camera.
The reports said that four Palestinians were shot, two injured and two died. Not much has been said about the ones who were only injured. Perhaps they were the ones in the video?
Update [23 May 0912 PDT]: Here is the Israeli Channel 2 report with English subtitles added:
More on the Nakba Day “Massacre”
More on the nakba-day ‘massacre’
The nakba-day shooting of two Palestinian ‘children’ has grown legs and is galloping around the world.
Both the UN and the US are demanding “transparent” investigations by Israel. The US State department has even tweeted its “condolences” to the families (can you imagine Israel demanding that the US investigate its drone-killings of Pakistani noncombatants, or expressing its condolences to the families of al-Qaeda terrorists it does kill?)
Given the multitude of ‘Pallywood’ productions — fake videos used to impeach the IDF created by the Palestinians and distributed by gullible (often deliberately so) media — it behooves us (and the US State Department as well) to be extremely suspicious of such ‘evidence’ of Israeli atrocities.
It appears to be true that two Palestinians (whether they were ‘teenagers’ is unclear) were shot dead last Thursday. But it is not at all certain that the video that was distributed shows the actual shooting, or the actual individuals who were shot.
The video appears to show two Palestinian youths, apparently far from any action, suddenly falling down. There are many aspects of it that raise questions: the way they fell, the lack of blood, the relationship of the reported wounds to the direction the fire is supposed to have come from, the way bystanders immediately rush in (unafraid of further shooting) and call cameramen over, etc.
Before convicting the IDF of murder, let’s consider the very likely possibility that two young men (one of the accounts puts one’s age at 22, and Hamas has claimed one as a member) were killed in a direct confrontation with the IDF — and the video was faked by actors in order to give the impression that innocent children who posed no threat were shot down in cold blood.