After a weekend incident in which a 14-year-old Jewish minor was shot, the IDF announced on Sunday that the shooting was not intentional.
According to the military, the adolescent, who was masked, was throwing rocks at an IDF vehicle along with others as part of a multifront incident whereby dozens of Jewish extremists were committing violent acts against Palestinians in Kafr Malik, near Ramallah, and soldiers were trying to protect the Palestinians.
It appears that a lieutenant who tried to fire in the air in order to get approximately 20 Jewish extremists to disperse, as his car was forced to pull over after rocks hit it, likely injured the adolescent by accident.
According to the IDF, wounding someone in such an instance is typically permissible under the rules of engagement, given that throwing rocks at a moving vehicle is considered very dangerous.
Furthermore, the IDF stated that the lieutenant may have misfired because he was attempting to quickly jump in and out of the vehicle to fire into the air in an effort to dodge the rocks being thrown in his vicinity.
In addition, the lieutenant said that he could not decipher whether the perpetrators throwing the rocks were violent Jews or Palestinians, given that they were masked and that most rock-throwing incidents are from Palestinians.
At a later stage, the lieutenant was pursuing some of the rock throwers when he heard them curse him out in Hebrew, which was the first moment he realized that they were, in fact, Jews.
IDF rejects suggestions that lieutenant knowingly fired on Jewish suspect
The IDF presented these additional facts to reject a new campaign against the IDF that says that “Jews don’t shoot Jews,” arguing that, besides the rules that grant opening fire in an instance like this one, the lieutenant did not know that he was firing at a Jew, let alone a Jewish minor.
There are still unresolved questions about how the IDF appears to have attempted to cover up the incident.
Nevertheless, the military did try to provide an alternative narrative, saying initially that it was unaware that the 14-year-old was wounded, because the lieutenant immediately jumped back into his car and, once again, had thought all he had done was fire in the air.
Finally, the IDF said that it would give the final word on what happened once the bullet was removed from the teenager’s body and studied by forensic experts.