The IDF's decision to launch airstrikes based on unsound evidence raises very thorny questions of ethics in combat, writes Sky's Alistair Bankar.
This was not an accident. It wasn't an accidental explosion.
IDF cells tracking the vehicles fired lethal precision-guided missiles at each vehicle one after the other.
Through blurry nighttime surveillance footage, they saw what they believed to be a man with a gun and assumed he was a Hamas fighter.
Read more: IDF releases findings on what went wrong in strike that killed aid workers
And they assumed everyone else in the vehicle was also Hamas. There was no evidence for this.
Seeing that the passenger was still alive, they continued firing.
The fundamental failure to communicate details of aid convoys up the chain of command is a fatal stain on a military that considers itself one of the world's best militaries.
The decision to launch airstrikes to kill people based on unsound evidence raises very thorny questions of ethics in combat.
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It is a sad irony that one of the only reasons World Central Kitchen (WCK) was open at night was because of its previous good working relationship with the Israeli military.
British security advisers who have been operating in Gaza in recent months have said that while few other organizations move in after dark, they are helping to stop the looting and that the WCK is safe with IDF support and coordination. He told me he was confident he could act.
What if 6 of the 7 people killed had not died? foreign aid workerwhose death sparked an international outcry, and This survey That would not have happened, and the Israeli military would not have been forced to account for its actions.
So how many Palestinian civilians have been killed in similar, uninvestigated cases of mistaken identity? Perhaps we will never know.
Publication of these findings will no doubt increase calls for Britain to suspend arms sales to Israel, but it is unlikely that the British government will take any decision based on this one incident.
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Britain's arms sales to Israel are small, accounting for only about 0.02% of the country's annual imports. Any suspension would therefore be more symbolic than substantive, and it would be disproportionate to make a decision solely as a result of this incident.
However, if government lawyers decide this is not an isolated incident, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs may be forced to take action.