Did Israel Drone Strike Unarmed Civilians with a Missile?

This footage originally came from Al Jazeera who claimed that they got it from an Israeli drone that was shot down by HAMAS. The footage showed four to five men being struck by multiple drone-based munitions.

However, there are several problems with the video.

Storing Footage

1. It is very unlikely that a drone would store imagery onboard precisely because it could be shot down and recovered. There is no advantage to storing drone footage on board, except for perhaps a small memory buffer to hold data for transmission if there is a signal problem.

2. If a drone did store this information, it would be encrypted with military grade encryption.

Targeting for Sport

It is also very unlikely that these men were targeted just for sport.

1. ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnoissance) assets that can drop munitions are expensive and rare - and are likely brigade, division or theater level assets. Tracking people for “sport” is a misuse of an asset that could be preforming real missions somewhere else.

2. Dropping munitions that cost the size of high-end cars on people is not something that is done without approval. Striking usually goes through a “Kill Chain” process of:

   Find

   Fix

   Track

   Target

   Engage

   Assess

   So multiple people are involved before a weapon is fired.

3. While there is a non-zero chance that the subjects in the video were mistakenly attacked, it is likely that they were being watched and were struck because that had engaged as combatants earlier or were important high-ranking targets that could be taken on a dirt road with little chance of collateral damage.

The Geneva Convention Rule that defines Combatants.