Current contributor Zouheir Alnajjar lives in Gaza, and he produced this video segment about a group of young men identified as "Palestinian militants who make – and set off – homemade rockets headed for Israel." The video includes details on how chemical compounds in these homemade weapons are purportedly isolated from readily available, free materials, such as animal waste. This was filmed before the recent attacks that lead to the current combat. Also, the rocket fails in the end, so whoever these would-be killers are, it looks like they're n00bs.
Snip from video description:
For years Palestinian militant groups such as Hamas have fired these homemade rockets into Israeli towns and settlements as a means of resistance against the IDF and Israeli occupation or embargoes. Thousands of rockets have fallen on Israel and over a dozen have been killed. Collective Journalism, Current's citizen journalism program, works by combining perspectives from around the world to create a picture of the world we live in.
Gaza Rockets (Current.com, thanks Brent Marcus)
Update: I should add that I wondered while I was watching this how one might go about factchecking this video's contents. Some BB commenters weighing in on the thread here questioned whether the video might have been staged, or the science involved might be inaccurate. I'm not saying I believe this to be the case, just noting the questions asked. Any weapons experts or pyro/explosive/chem hobbyists care to weigh in? Can you really make deadly weapons that travel long-distance (15 miles or more) out of horseshit and sugar? I also welcome comments from folks at Current, or the filmmaker, who'd like to address the sources and HOWTO involved. And speaking as a video producer, I have to say — the video is fascinating and upsetting, but I felt like the use of background music in this piece distracted. I would have edited differently. Trip-hop and violins were a little much in this context, when the footage was so compelling on its own.
Update 2: Andrew from Current weighs in. I didn't doubt the sincerity of the video producer here, but I think it's good to see people asking appropriately skeptical questions about science and sources with news coverage like this, and coming up with answers.
