An IDF investigation has produced no verdict and no new evidence of guilt. The online mob is exploiting the tragedy for clicks anyway.

By Andrew Fox

The IDF has opened a criminal investigation into the deaths of Hind Rajab and eight others. That is the entire development. No verdict is implied. The announcement identifies no suspect, nor does it specify an offence. Online carrion crows have turned Hind’s death into clickbait by stripping the news of its qualifications and selling an investigation as a verdict.

describes the alleged shelling of that ambulance and records that the girls and two paramedics were later found dead. It does not establish what happened during the intervening hours.

Mark Zlochin’s close reading exposes the misrepresentation. The formal finding concerns the initial fire at the car. The later events remain reports and allegations. His earlier analysis raised unresolved questions about the route and timeline and tested whether the telephone material and available lines of sight supported The IDF examination states that troops fired at the approaching family car on 29 January 2024. Five passengers were killed; Hind and her cousin Layan survived the encounter. Hours later, a Palestine Red Crescent ambulance, whose movement had been coordinated, went to recover them. The announcement more than one source of fire. Those questions do not resolve the deaths, and today’s announcement provides no new evidence of criminal guilt.

There is one awkward point for Israel’s defenders. The IDF’s first account said no troops were in the area. Its subsequent examination now acknowledges that troops fired at the car. That correction cannot be wished away, and anyone who repeated the first version should amend their view. The acknowledgement revises the official account of the initial encounter. Hind and Layan, it now says, survived the initial fire, while the ambulance strike and their later deaths remain under investigation. Criminal responsibility remains unresolved.

The carrion feeders have ignored that distinction. They demanded an investigation. The moment one was announced, they called it an admission. Their trick relies on readers confusing suspicion with conviction. They use a dead child for emotional force and borrow legal vocabulary to manufacture authority. Nobody has been charged. No court has tested individual liability in the Hind case or in the separate Tel al-Sultan referral. There is no legal conclusion in either case. For these people, the case is not about truth or justice for Hind Rajab: it is about validating their preconceptions about Israel no matter what.

The IDF’s Fact-Finding and Assessment Mechanism compiles operational material for the Military Advocate General. Reasonable suspicion triggers a military police investigation; prosecutors then assess whether the evidence offers a reasonable prospect of conviction. A referral records suspicion but supplies no answer. The suspected offence may involve negligence in following procedure. The announcement does not say.

I have always maintained that where credible evidence supports a war crime charge, it should be prosecuted. That remains my position. The World Central Kitchen case illustrates the distinction. Australia’s review by Air Chief Marshal Mark Binskin found that the strike was not knowingly or deliberately directed against the charity. It recorded mistaken identification and failures to follow procedures. Binskin made no criminal finding. A catastrophic outcome can warrant criminal scrutiny without establishing deliberate murder.

I know of a British soldier in Afghanistan who shot dead a farmer carrying a broom. Having known the soldier well and having previously expressed doubts about his suitability for deployment, I am fairly certain that a murder was committed. His defence was that he genuinely believed the broom was a weapon and that his life was threatened. No charges followed. The incident is relevant here only as an example of how difficult it is to reconstruct a shooter’s state of mind after the event.

War crime allegations in Gaza, and more generally, are difficult to investigate because evidence is disturbed and witnesses can be inaccessible. There are no sterile crime scenes, few witness statements, and evidential chains of custody are extremely hard to maintain or prove. The criminal standard of proof does not bend to outrage.

The delay remains a fair ground for criticism. Peter Lerner accurately describes the timing problem:

Israel’s legal machinery moves at an investigative pace, while the information war moves in minutes or seconds. His call for earlier acknowledgement and carefully bounded updates might have reduced speculation. Seth Frantzman’s demand for accountability is fair, too. However, a bleaker counterpoint remains as an answer to both: Israel will be hammered whatever it does. The same people who treated silence as concealment now present the inquiry as a confession.

Researchers should update their positions and opinions when new facts emerge. That applies to Israel’s initial claim that no troops were present. The acknowledgement of IDF fire at the car must be noted. It provides no new evidence about who killed Hind or what happened around the ambulance, or what Hamas was doing at the time. This was a war zone, remember. The public record still contains no evidence establishing a provable crime.

Nine dead human beings have become raw material for clicks and political self-gratification. They have taken an investigation that establishes no guilt and sold it as a confession, using Hind Rajab’s death as a weapon before investigators have established how she died and at whose hand. Decent analysts change their position when the facts change. The ghouls simply distort the facts until they fit the verdict they wanted from the start. If credible evidence of a crime emerges, I will follow it and demand that it be prosecuted. Until then, the spectacle of people parading a dead child through the information war deserves nothing but utter contempt.

About the writer:

A veteran of three grueling tours of Afghanistan, Major Andrew Fox holds a Batchelor’s degree in Law & Politics, a Master’s in Military History & War Studies, Msc in Psychology and is currently studying for a PhD in History.

While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).