IDF Hamas Manual
Hamas 'Human Shield' Manual Exposed as IDF Forgery
On August 4, 2014 the IDF released what they claimed to be scans of a captured Hamas combat manual which explains the benefits of human shields (Captured Hamas Combat Manual Explains Benefits of Human Shields). This juicy
story got quite a few people excited, and within 2 days their blog post had over 81,000 likes on Facebook. It turns out though, that the documents that they uploaded were forgeries, and sloppy forgeries at that. The work was so shoddy that you don't even have to be
an expert to see the mistake. Let's take a look.
Alright, so the IDF uploaded these two tiny, low res images. One of them is 452 pixels wide and 280 pixels tall and the other is 437 pixels wide and 475 pixels tall.
[UPDATE August 8th] After reading some of the comments I realized that I shouldn't have taken for granted that people would understand how to properly assess the alignment of a font. To clarify, I have uploaded the PSD file that I used to measure the position of the fonts. It is important to make sure that you are measuring from the BASELINE of the font (see image below), and that you distinguish between the font baseline and aliasing (partially faded pixelation) that occurs on the curves. Now it's important to note that if one mistakenly assesses the baseline by including the aliasing you may end up with a pixel of difference between the two sides, (someone who knows nothing about fonts may include a descender or a loop, but this would be an extreme error), however even a one or two pixel difference from a poor measurement would NOT account for the amount of distortion that would occur if this text was really siting on a curved page.
Also, Sometime after I uploaded this video the IDF uploaded a new version of the file. I don't know what time this happened, but when I checked on August 8th the cover image was darker and no longer matches the hash of the original image. I'm not sure why this
alteration was made, but since I cannot predict what alterations they will make in the future I am linking to the original here on a backup server. You can reference the modified version they uploaded here (uploading this for reference in case they change it back).
(You can download these images directly from the IDF website directly by clicking the images above.) Just in case the IDF decides to take these images down or alter them we've uploaded backup copies to several locations, and if the IDF decides to take down or alter
the post, you can find a cached version of the page locked in here.
Now if a conspiracy theorist uploaded two tiny low res images like this and called them evidence, they would be mocked, but this is Israel, so we'll have to do a proper debunking.
First I want you to look at this image of the supposed cover and take note of something important. This is supposed to be a scan of a real piece of paper, and this paper has been folded, has staples in it, and is slightly bent on the right hand side. Also note that
the fold in on the right hand side is significant enough to cause a coloration change which indicates a difference in height.
What does this all mean?
The paper in this image was NOT flat when it was scanned. That's important, you'll see why in a moment.
Now if you had real text that was printed onto a piece of paper and you introduce a slight curve to that paper, then the text will have a slight curve as well. But in this image, the text not doesn't curve. It's 100% straight even as it passes over the fold. In fact
the lines are straight on all of the text here, all the way down to the single pixel level. To demonstrate this I have overlaid a set of vector based lines that are perfectly straight, intersected by a perpendicular line at a perfect 90 degree angle. Here we can
zoom in and see that they line up precisely down to the pixel, all the way across the page, from left to right.
NOTE: It's much more clear if you download this image yourself and zoom in completely. There you will see that it is no exaggeration when we say that the text lines up to the pixel even across the curve. By the way there's another anomaly in this image which I
didn't mention here. See if you can spot it.
And it's not just one line of text that pulls off this magical feat. All of this text here on the top right does this, and all of this text is on the exact same grid. All perfectly parallel to each other. Even this decorative line here is perfectly straight as it
passes over the fold. Down to the pixel.
That's impossible.
This isn't a real scan. This is a composite image created in a photo editor, most likely photoshop. It was made by combining an image of a piece of paper which they then overlaid with text and graphics.
The IDF may see this video and scramble to create a better forgery, they may even go to the trouble of getting one printed out, however the first image they uploaded here stands as a fake, an incredibly amateur fake. No need to take my word for it. Go download the
image and verify for yourself.
Now why is this important?
So far, the death toll in Gaza is estimated at over 1,800, approximately 80% of those killed in the operation were civilians, and almost 400 of those killed were children (not surprising when schools are being treated as military targets). 2,700 Palestinian children
were injured and over 240,000 Palestinian children were displaced. Israel is attempting to use this fake document to prop up their Gaza PR narrative: they're trying to convince the public that this bloodbath was the fault of Palestinians using human shields.
Since they don't have any real evidence to support their claims, they figured they would just create some.
This shouldn't be surprising considering the fact that the Israeli military has entire units devoted to manipulating public opinion (and target enemies) through social media. It is however surprising that they put out such a low grade fake run on their main
website.
This also highlights the abysmal state of modern journalism. This fake document is being blasted out by mainstream publications and echoed through the blogosphere without even a minimal level of scrutiny. No one even bothered
to perform a basic image analysis before running the story. A thirteen year old who knows their way around Photoshop could catch this, but they didn't. Maybe that's because they didn't want to.
Don't let them get away with it.
The original report by Signs of the Times can be found here
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