Here’s my lunatic conspiracy theory: people who have reached a firm conclusion are likely to believe that a specific piece of evidence supports their conclusion, especially if someone else tells them that it supports their conclusion, regardless of whether it actually supports their conclusion. I like to call this lunatic conspiracy theory “confirmation bias.”
So, there are a lot of people that don’t want to believe Palestinian militants accidentally killed a bunch of Palestinian civilians at a hospital. There’s a piece of evidence that looks, at first blush, like it indicates Palestinian militants are to blame. But then a second piece of evidence comes along to contradict that first piece.
People who want to believe that Palestinian militants aren’t to blame are very likely to line up in defense of the second piece of evidence, regardless of whether it’s good evidence. People that want to beleive Palestinian militants are to blame are very likely to line up in defense of the first piece of evidence, regardless of whether it’s good evidence.
If I’m trying to evaluate both pieces of evidence (the recording and the BBC report), I gotta look first at my own bias, and second at the strength of both pieces.
I currently don’t find either piece of evidence very strong. The IDF has certainly engaged in propaganda in the past, and it is utterly plausible that there are enough yahoos in the IDF who think it’d be a good idea to manufacture a recording. But there are also a shit-ton of people who support the militants, and it’s utterly plausible that a couple of journalists have convinced themselves that the accents are off.
I don’t think the investigative journalist is at the top of his game, because this is bad investigative journalism. There’s no good reason for the sources to be anonymous, and there’s no clear attempt to talk with neutral sources like professors of linguistics. Sure, the guy might have a good reputation, but I hope it’s not built on journalistic endeavors like this one.
I need a minute to figure out what is going on here, but please remember, attack the post and not the poster.
Holy crap, that is a lot of attacking the poster I’m seeing. @Walken_After_Midnight, I’m not going to warn you here, but you are now banned from this thread. Don’t cross the line to attacking posters anymore or it will be a warning. I’m alerting the MPSIMS mods to this also. Tempers are running high. Understandably.
@Thing.Fish, I feel you were provoked, so also no warning. But try not to attack posters also. Tempers are running high. Understandably.
@engineer_comp_geek, @Loach, @puzzlegal & @Aspenglow: Making you aware of the thread ban here for attacking the poster (more than once). I believe there have been issues in MPSIMS also where he got a 1 day suspension with another poster. I believe this should be the last modnote and warnings are justified next time.
Thousands of anonyous twitter users. Which adds basically nothing to your case.
Having followed events on Twitter for the last couple of weeks, I can state with certainty that if lots of anonymous users in the replies claiming its a fake means its a fake, then every single piece of evidence posted on Twitter by either side is a fake.
The fact is the tweet in the OP claims the “the tone, syntax, accent and idiom” of the recording are all “absurd”. If that was the case anyone fluent in Palestinian Arabic could have debunked it, but no one has not produced a single source (like an actual source with a name, not an unnamed expert on the internet) who has gone on record to say exactly what is so absurd about the recording. Given that fact (and given millions of words put on record analyzing every last details of the evidence produced by Israel and Hamas over the last couple of weeks), I am quite confident in saying that statement in the OP is not correct.