Israel stands accused of allegedly shooting and killing wheelchair-bound Palestinian Ibrahim Abu Thraya, as he protested by the security fence in Gaza. The IDF denies the allegation, saying it did not shoot live fire toward Abu Thraya.
As Hamas has so far refused to release the relevant medical details (such as autopsy results if they even exist) it is not possible for HonestReporting, or anyone else, to be entirely certain of the cause of death. In any case, the loss of life is tragic.
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Yet at the same time, there are multiple discrepancies in Abu Thraya’s backstory, which the media have a professional obligation to address. (An obligation they have so far neglected.) Specifically, there are several different contradicting stories about how he lost his legs in the first place:
- AP reports that he “lost his legs in an Israeli airstrike during a 2008 war between Israel and Hamas. According to relatives, he was assisting in the evacuation of people after an earlier airstrike when he was struck.”
- “He was injured in 2008 by an Israeli helicopter that targeted him after he brought down the Israeli flag and raised the Palestinian flag along the border,” his brother Samir told AFP.”
- Le Monde (French) states that he was hit by shrapnel east of the Bourej refugee camp.
- He “was struck by an Israeli artillery shell. He lost both his legs and one of his eyes” in 2008 according to an APA Images photo caption.
- He was “bombed in his home” according to CJ Werleman from MiddleEastEye.
- An Irish publication reporting on Irish Friends of Palestine donating an electric wheelchair claims “Ibrahim had been working on a trawler when it was hit by an Israeli missile in 2008. Eight people onboard were killed while Ibrahim lost both his legs below the hips.”
If one carefully reads the above reports, it appears that members of Abu Thraya’s own family (including his father and brother and Thraya himself) have told at least four different and contradictory stories of how he lost his legs.
Where did it happen?
(a) Along the border fence; (b) east of the Bourej refugee camp; (c) in his home; or (d) on a trawler?
It is highly unlikely that Israel would have launched an airstrike that risked damaging its own border fence, not to mention that targeting an individual raising a Palestinian flag would certainly not necessitate the use of a missile.
Is it even possible that Abu Thraya was the sole survivor of an Israeli airstrike on a trawler? Israel uses its naval craft to intercept suspect Gazan boats. To the best of our knowledge there has never been any Israeli airstrike on a Gazan trawler.
How did it happen?
(a) Israeli airstrike i.e missile; or (b) Israeli artillery shell?
Airstrikes are launched, as one would expect, from an aircraft. Artillery shells are usually fired from the ground.
Creating a Palestinian icon
Palestinians and anti-Israel activists (and to some extent the media) are already portraying Abu Thraya as an iconic victim of Israeli malevolence. Symbolism is prioritized at the expense of hard facts.
For example, Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy bemoans that Abu Thraya “rumbled along in an old wheelchair, not an electric one, in the sandy alleys of his camp” (Israel’s fault of course). Yet he did have an electric wheelchair, given to him in 2013 by the Irish Friends of Palestine and photographed below.
More questions than answers
We do not wish to minimize the death of Ibrahim Abu Thraya. However, there are too many unanswered questions concerning both his life and his death.
Why are there multiple versions of how he lost his legs? Why would he and his own family offer differing accounts? The only constant running through all of the stories is that Israel is held responsible.
Given the substantial coverage of his death, why have the media not questioned the conflicting accounts and is there more to Abu Thraya than that of an allegedly innocent wheelchair-bound victim of an IDF bullet?
