This time on journalists.
The air strike was one of several in Gaza on Saturday nightAn Israeli air strike on a car in Gaza City during a security operation has injured a Reuters news agency cameraman and a local journalist.
At least one rocket hit the car as the cameraman was filming, knocking him unconscious, while the second man received serious leg wounds.
The Reuters car was clearly marked all over as a media vehicle.
The Power Line blog (of Dan Rather fame) raises a question or two. In the interests of balance, Hot Air considers a missile attack possible.
Ambulance Update – as Melanie Phillips reports, the Lebanese Red Cross, whose high resolution photo of the ambulance has been used as evidence against the missile attack claim, have removed the image from their website. (I don’t agree with her btw that the affair demonstrates “unprecedented proportions” of hatred. It demonstrates a journalistic mindset, part bias, part laziness, that takes as gospel every story it’s fed by one side, without ever asking of its sources the famous Paxman question.)
Reuters Update – the Confederate Yankee blog had the bright idea of asking some armoured van manufacturers for their views. In their opinion, probably not a missile.
The imposter encourages us to look at this SMH page
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/white-flags-fail-to-protect-families-obeying-order-to-flee-thesouth/2006/07/23/1153593216876.html
as evidence that a missle doesn’t do more damage than seen on the ambulance. However, read the article:
“At least one of the missiles struck on or near the back of the car, blowing the bumper off and starting a fire,…”
So rather than supply us with evidence of what happens when a missled hits a car, he shows us what happens when the missile misses.
OT:
what really bothers the left and anti-semites, including MSM:
Back in the 1930s, most Europeans remained deaf to warnings that Hitler was after them, preferring to delude themselves he was “merely” after the Jews. When Europe understood, well after Kristallnacht, that the Jews were merely Fascism’s warm-up act, it was too late. Today a very clever Islamism is also telling Europe it merely wants the Jews, and, unfortunately, many Europeans still respond with the same moral understanding and political appeasement that only a few decades ago set their continent ablaze.
But the Jews – that stiff-necked lot – are no longer prepared to play their part in the script: They fight.
Unfortunately it is not the jews that are fighting back, just the Israelis. The average American and European jew is just as apathetic and convinced that that Israel my be a root cause as the rest of the WASP population. However, I had a very interesting conversation with a jewish friend on Friday and he is as angry as I am. I wonder what proportion of American and British jews are ready and willing to take some sort of action in their own countries when it becomes necessary…
summary of distortions/lies
1. Photo Fraud in Lebanon
http://www.aish.com/movies/PhotoFraud.asp
2. and more:
Reuters Missile Attack: Manufacturers Weigh In
http://powerlineblog.com/archives/015146.php
for the record of bias, which ones were reported by the BBC?
Anon,
I personnaly wouldn’t trust UK Jews to do something ( I live in the UK). However, going to Israel during the war,(just came back), allowed me to regain mental strength ( a break from the daily assaults on Israel by the MSM ( as described by Melanie Phillips), and I have full confidence in Israel as I saw the amazing public at work during war-time. Furthermore, despite overall left-leaning Israeli media, reporting was refreshingly balanced and factual. And aboveall the peoples united MORAL CLARITY was the major relief. Appeasers, confused, THE LEFT, were silent (apart from the fifth column Arab residents of the north). So, buy a ticket and visit, it might help.
Anon….Unfortunately here in the US most Jews are leftist. I was talking with a family of Jews who regularly walk through my neighborhood a few weeks ago. I asked them why so many Jews are democrats when American democrats always take any side against Israel. Believe it or not their response was “we are democrats because we believe abortion must be kept legal at all cost.” When I explained conservatives have no intentions of making abortion illegal they just don’t want 12 year old girls being able to get an abortion without their parents knowing or having an abortion in the final months. They acted as if I had no idea what is really going on. Strange but true.
UN denounces Israel cluster bombs
UN clearance experts had so far found 100,000 unexploded cluster bomblets at 359 separate sites, Jan Egeland said.
Busy, busy, busy.
Nicely critical of Israel/US so the BBC do not need to stick their own boot in. Somewhere in an alternate universe the BBC will be adding a paragraph on the lines of –
“But critics say that the UN clearance experts have missed a golden opportunity to gather up Hezbollah rockets. So far not one has been found.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/5299938.stm
I have only just seen the picture of the Reuters vehicle supposedly hit by a missile, a thought struck me, it looks exactly like the Peugot that the asian fellow makes in the advert.
Could anyone link it?
Advert showing how to make a Lebanese Reuters vehicle and a Hezb’Allah ambulance.
http://www.visit4info.com/details.cfm?adid=5221
What is the Beeb doing? This article is shocking!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5300380.stm
The reporter puts words in people’s mouths and then:
Back at the border, a six-year-old Jewish girl from Haifa walks by, licking an ice cream and anxiously asking her parents if any Katyusha rockets will be fired today.
“No, you don’t need to worry,” her father tells her, “we’re safe now.”
“Inshallah,” I say.
WTF??
Pounce/Foxgoose/Joe
If you had read my last comment more carefully (the quotation marks were plain to see)) you would have realized that the points on the Hellfire AGM-114M and on the propensity of vehicles to rust were not my own opinions but quotations from someone at Hotair (to which I linked) who is described as an ‘intel expert who’s done some work on battle-damage assessment.’
He could, of course, be no such thing. However, he does seem to know a few things that you lot don’t.
On the rust point • he points out that the Reuters van DID rust in only 24-36 hours. There was no rust visible in the earlier video footage. There was visible rust in the stills shots taken next day. Now, unless someone is claiming there were two Reuters vehicles that were mysteriously swapped, then such rusting CAN and DOES happen in Gaza. Maybe in S Lebanon too?
The same Hotair report also links to this global-security page which points out that the AGM—114M isn’t just there to sink the Scharnhorst as pounce encourages us to believe but is a missile:
“with the forward warhead removed, a blast fragmentation main warhead installed in place of the shaped charged warhead”
and that it is designed for use against:
deck mounted weapon systems, light armored vehicles and light bunkers by a combination of fragmentation and blast effects.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/agm-114m.htm
Another similar page says it’s
“used against soft, light armored targets, small boats, brick and concrete structures and bunkers.”
http://www.defense-update.com/products/h/hellfire.htm
Nevertheless, on balance this ‘intel-expert’ comes down against the Hellfire being the likely cause of the damage and plumps for a 70mm rocket.
Michael Taylor asks what I think most likely.
At the moment • with more doubtless to come out • I’d have thought that the damage was consistent with some kind of airburst munition that caused scarring to the ambulance paintwork, blew the red ventilator off • thereby exposing a hole that was later misrepresented as the entry point of a missile; caused a big bang and a flash that those around took to be a missile exploding. I seriously doubt whether the whole thing was fabricated using old ambulances from a scrapyard.
Dood,
I don’t have the time right now to pick that article apart, but Sykes really deserves a thorough Fisking.
The entire article is a subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle put down of Jewish Israelis, whereas the Arab family gets neutral treatment. As just one example, he uses the word “babble” to describe the talk among the Israeli tourists. Sykes, or any other BBC hack, would never in a million years apply that word to Arabs. It just would not happen.
Sykes’ aloof air of superiority to Jews is typical of the BBC.
Kofi Anan at a press conference with Ehud Olmert yesterday:
One of the first things I did when I arrived was to meet with the families of the three soldiers – the two who were picked up in southern Lebanon – northern Israel – and Shalit.
I was gapng at the screen. Anan is insufferable.
When he met with the terrorists, he didn’t bother to find out if the soldiers were alive. Either that, or they insisted on withholding the information. Or probably a bit of both.
Olmert used the word “abducted” to refer to the soldiers.
Dood’s link
In Kyriat Shmona, 8km (five miles) to the south, maths teacher and deputy-head of Danziger secondary school, Ofer Zafrani, shows me the damage inflicted on the school by three Katyusha rockets launched by Hezbollah.
I say it’s strange that the school was hit three times, and ask whether there is a military target nearby.
“No, no,” Ofer replied.
And then he went on: “But – but the army were in Kyriat Shmona, and near the school was a lot of army. Maybe it’s connected. All Kyriat Shmona was like a military base. It wasn’t only a place that citizens live in.”
Ah so the BBC spin is that Hezbollah rockets were not unguided after all. They were all aimed at military targets.
The BBC is a total disgrace.
Ambulance tracking Zionist Invisible Rust Missiles identified.
http://peterwright.blogspot.com/2005/12/pc-controlled-nerf-missile-launcher.html
😉
“Inshallah,” I say.
WTF??
Dood | 31.08.06 – 11:17 am
“Inshallah,” I say.
“Inshallah,” they chorus.
I ask them how to say “God willing” in Hebrew.
“Bezrat Ashem.”
They walk away repeating it: “Bezrat Ashem, Bezrat Ashem, Bezrat Ashem.”
So, this correspondent knows how to say “God willing” in Arabic but not in Hebrew. That says a lot about BBC balance.
John Reith –
You say: At the moment • with more doubtless to come out • I’d have thought that the damage was consistent with some kind of airburst munition that caused scarring to the ambulance paintwork, blew the red ventilator off • thereby exposing a hole that was later misrepresented as the entry point of a missile; caused a big bang and a flash that those around took to be a missile exploding. I seriously doubt whether the whole thing was fabricated using old ambulances from a scrapyard.
Heh! Look, there’s this bridge I have for sale …..
“the army were in Kyriat Shmona, and near the school was a lot of army. Maybe it’s connected. All Kyriat Shmona was like a military base. It wasn’t only a place that citizens live in”
Israel using civilians as human shields?
The damage is more consistent with a rusty scrapped Ambulance being stored in a scrap heap with a car on top, then being brought out of the scrap heap for propoganda purposes by the HAW-HAW media.
Israel using civilians as human shields?
Anonymous | 31.08.06 – 3:04 pm
The Arabs consider all Israelis to be combatants.
See the video here, Hezbollah terrorists dressed as IDF soldiers with IDF kit right down to their helmet covers:
http://ontheface.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2006/8/29/2276029.html
Doesn’t the Geneva Convention say something about dressing up in the opposing side’s uniform?
Pete-in-London
I’m afraid it’s you lot who’ve been trying flog a well-dodgy London Bridge of a conspiracy theory.
Well it’s all up for you now chum. Game, set and match.
It turns out that there was an Australian Journalist in Tyre on the night the ambulances were hit (that’s Rupert Murdoch’s ‘Australian’) who was first on the scene and whose photographer got the first pics of the ambulances. He’s gone back, re-interviewed the witnesses, been to Lebanese Red Cross HQ in Beirut • and interviewed the (non-Hezbollah, non-Muslim) duty officer AND he’s examined the duty logs of both the LRC and the Geneva-based ICRC for the hours in question.
Here’s what Martin Chulov (for it is he) says:
“I was in Tyre on the night of the attack and investigated the incident closely the next day. On July 24, with photographer Stewart Innes, we spoke to Qassem Shalin, who was recovering from a minor wound to his chin that nurses had bandaged to stop it from turning septic. We also visited Ahmed Mohammed Fawaz, whose lower left leg had been amputated and whose severe burns ironically had saved his life by sealing blood vessels and arteries. His son writhed in pain nearby, his stomach riddled with shrapnel and the rear of his scalp opened up. ”
…so that answers the question about the bloke who lost his leg……but what about all that RUST?
“We inspected both ambulances, whose mangled roofs were not rusting at the time. By the time the photos used on the blog site were taken, rust had appeared. But this is entirely normal in Lebanon’s sultry summer climate, where humidity on the coast does not drop below 70per cent. ”
What about the supposed “missile” then……..even Australian Foreign Ministry spin-doctor Tony Parkinson has cast doubts on that?
“He is wrong. The damage done was consistent with ruined cars and vans that I saw elsewhere in Lebanon and earlier in Gaza, which had been hit by a missile fired from a drone. The Israeli-made drones have many types of missiles, but the most regularly used has a small warhead designed for use in urban areas. It aims not to kill anyone outside a small zone and rarely leaves a calling card outside its target. ”
And yet the driver was virtually unscathed…how do you explain that….?
“The small warhead partly explains the driver’s lack of serious wounds. But more telling is the fact that Shalin was lifting the rear ramp of the ambulance when the missile hit. His colleague was stepping into the side door. The concussion wave from the missile easily dispersed through the open spaces. Shalin was protected as he fell under the ramp. The other driver was blown out the side door. ”
Still……what about the paper-trail……..does that stand-up the ambulancemen’s story?
“The run sheets that night of the Lebanese Red Cross in Beirut and the International Committee for the Red Cross, who were working closely with them, show the two ambulances waited at the intersection just north of Qana for another ambulance carrying wounded from the village of Tibnin…….Working in the Lebanese Red Cross operations room in Beirut the night the ambulances were hit was field manager George Kettaneh. “Every ambulance that moved in Lebanon I had to know about,” he said. “I received phone calls from the ambulance drivers and it took us one hour to negotiate a ceasefire through the ICRC.”
The man doing their bidding for them was Antoine Bieler, the field co-ordinator for the ICRC who yesterday confirmed …that he had negotiated a ceasefire with the Israeli Defence Force. “Yes absolutely, that happened,” he said from Beirut. The ICRC in Geneva later said there was nothing to support Downer’s claim that the events of that night were an anti-Israeli hoax. ”
Anything else you’d like to add?
“I returned to Tyre on Saturday to speak again to Qassem Shalin and inspect the damaged ambulances. “Everything I said happened that night did happen,” he said. “There was not a sound in the sky before the explosions. And after that there was a battle for the next hour. We hid in a building nearby convinced we were going to die. It was only when George (Kettaneh) called me that we could leave safely.”
The events of July 23 and the reporting that followed was newsworthy and important. The ICRC has documented two other occasions when Lebanese ambulances were hit during the war and to report the incidents does not reflect anti-Israeli bias. The {ZOMBITIME}blog site’s attempts to create a smokescreen around a shameful truth fail on tests of scrutiny ”
Who’s going to be first to apologize? Form an orderly queue.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20307128-7582,00.html
John Reith
Martin Chulov has a bit of previous when it comes to trying to pin atrocities on Israel:
Shrapnel ‘proves shell was Israeli’
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19484564-2703,00.html
You really should chuck a name into google before throwing them out in support of your biases.
For an in depth report which relies not on ‘eyewitnesses’ but on actual, physical evidence, try here:
http://www.zombietime.com/fraud/ambulance/
After you’ve been there, seen the evidence and arrived at your own conclusions, feel free to come back and announce: “oops”
John Reith –
Geoffrey Zygier of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry isn’t too impressed with Chulov either:
http://www.ecaj.org.au/downloads/Australian_letter_11_04_06.pdf#search=%22martin%20Chulov%22
Which unbiased punter are you wielding out next? Robert Fisk?
Nice work, Pete. The reservoir from which JR draws his support is polluted beyond description.
So an anti-Israeli reporter interviews anti-Israeli civilians and that proves the case!
Thats the sort of ‘proof’ we have come to expect from the BBC.
Its quite extraordinary that the John Reiths of this world are still in denial over this.
a) the hole in the ambulance’s roof is quite clearly the hole that once accommodated the red domed ventilator seen on other unscathed ambulances of the same model. You can even see the small screw holes and the unpainted edge.
b) The man who allegedly lost his leg was shown as burnt, as was the stretcher, and one report claims this burning was ‘fortunate’ in that it cauterized the wound. However, all photos of the interior of the ambulance show a clear lack of any evidence of burning of any kind.
A post at Harry’s Place on the issue of cluster bombs sums up the attitude quite well:
http://hurryupharry.bloghouse.net/archives/2006/08/31/cluster_bombs.php
Update: Last year I wrote in a different context:
As with many issues involving Israel, there are at least two ways to look at it:
One is to leap gleefully on every failure– real, imagined or exaggerated– as evidence of the country’s inherent and unique wickedness.
Another is to look at the facts, recognize genuine cases of injustice, and call for changes that will make Israel a better, fairer country– without compromising its right to exist as the one place in the world which Jews can count on as a homeland and, if need be, a refuge.
I think we have a pretty good idea of which people will choose the first option.
Pete-in-London/JG /BioD
Sorry you are stuffed on this one. No amount of weaselly fraud by Pete can brand Martin Chulov as an anti-Israel, Hezbollah lover who’d be prepared to take part in a fraud.
Chulov made his name in journalism EXPOSING ISLAMIST TERRORISTS in Australia.
He was instrumental in breaking the Jack Roche and Willie Brigitte stories. In fact Chulov was the guy who tipped off the Australian police about the Jemaat Islamia cell run by Abu Baku Bashir and involving the Ayub brothers. Chulov’s source later became the main prosecution witness in the Roche case.
Besides…..are you going to claim that his photographer Stewart Innes did NOT take pics which show the ambulance without rust?
Are you also claiming that George Kettaneh and Antoine Bieler ( not Hezbollah, not even Muslim…) are part of the conspiracy or are lying?
The main planks of the conspiracy theory were:
1. The ambulances weren’t real operational ambulances, but taken from a scrapyard.
PROVED WRONG.
2. Rust was there all along (supporting 1 above).
PROVED WRONG
3. Damage not consistent with other vehicles hit by Israeli munitions in same theatre.
INDEPENDENT WITNESS CHALLENGES THIS.
4. Man was alleged to have lost his leg…..but mysteriously, no further details were available.
MAN NOW INTERVIEWED, STORY VERIFIED.
Face it….the FAKING story has collapsed.
(By the bye – the story Pete links to re Gaza beach is a model of even-handedness in daily reporting of a moving story. All angles represented, all sides put.)
Nice to see that even John Reith doesn’t rely on the BBC for information on controversial topics.
JohnofBorg
Catch up. We established weeks ago that the BBC didn’t have anyone in the area on the night the ambulances were hit.
John Reith, you mention that Martin Chulov was in Tyre on the night of the alleged attack (which, of course, occurred elswhere out of his sight) and “investigated the incident closely the next day”.
Here’s his first report (from July 26th when his experience was fresh):
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19915049-2703,00.html
Please compare the second report you linked to with this first and then see if your excitement isn’t damped slightly. Take careful note of the profound factual differences. Ask yourself why a mainstream-media journalist should change his story in a way which specifically undermines the case put in doubting blogs.
While I’m a bit concerned at B-BBC blog leaping aboard the fake ambulance (I’m not convinced it’s all fake, though I am convinced it’s massively distorted and exaggerated by mischievous Red Cross personel), watching you clutch so desperately at Chulov’s fraying straw is worrying indeed – if you work in BBC news services.
.
Mr Reith;
This will be my last post to on this story as it appears you haven’t a Scooby do what you are talking about;
The same Hotair report also links to this global-security page which points out that the AGM—114M isn’t just there to sink the Scharnhorst as pounce encourages us to believe but is a missile:
You mean this link;
Fortunately, a reader claiming to be an intel expert who’s done some work on battle-damage assessment shot me an e-mail about it soon afterward. Here’s what he had to say (all emphases mine):
***
The van was hit with either the “M” variant of the Hellfire missile or a 70mm unguided rocket.
Ok Mr Reith lets say it was hit by an AGM-114M. The missile is 5 foot long, it’s travelling at the speed of sound. It hits the plastic airvent of an ambulance and only removes that.
The questions I have to ask then. Where did 106 pounds of fire breathing supersonic missile go? Please don’t say out of the door/window. As the trajectory taken in which to take out the vent and leave an almost circular hole. (straight down) would have meant that the missile existed through the floor.
As for this tosh;
” but quotations from someone at Hotair (to which I linked) who is described as an ‘intel expert who’s done some work on battle-damage assessment.’ He could, of course, be no such thing. However, he does seem to know a few things that you lot don’t. “
Look up combat engineer, then bridge demolitions, then Hayrick,Beehive and PE4 . I was also the smallest guy in my section. As a reward I was given the Charlie G to carry. Which I’ve fired on a number of occasions at Hythe. As I did the 64.
I know how to crimp a det from the safety fuse end. I have also used a Rapid catering kit as I have a bar mine, an off-route mine and the old stalwart the mark 7 mine. I know about double impulse fuses and single impulse fuses. I know about Elsie’s and I know about Ranger. Do you wish me to continue. I may not be as knowable as the man you quote as “Knowing a few things that I don’t” But at least I know that Ambulance wasn’t hit by an AGM-114M. And do you want to know why I know?
Because there isn’t an exit hole in the ambulance.
http://www.zombietime.com/fraud/ambulance/red_cross_full.jpg
Even the inside of the door doesn’t have a dent in it.
On that note tab your so called expert if he knows that the AGM-114M isn’t a top attack weapon.
“The way the Hellfire works is that it’s a top-attack weapon “
Now if he had said Bill I would have accepted his story of a top attack .
Now using the link you provided;
“The AGM-114M will be basically an AGM-114K missile with the forward warhead removed, a blast fragmentation main warhead installed in place of the shaped charged warhead, and a modified ESAF.”
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/agm-114m.htm
In order for a top attack missile to work you require a shaped charge in which to penetrate the armour. Removing it means it isn’t a top attack missile anymore.
Here let the foremost antiwar website tell you all about it.;
“The warhead arrangement, with its vertically striking shaped charges,”
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/missile/row/rbs56-bill.htm
Now for me that is the end of the ambulance saga. If you wish to continue to shout foul play. Please find somebody who actually knows what he is talking about and not some armchair expert who has never worn a noddy suit,lugged his kit halfway around the world and eaten Biscuits AB with pate.
Correction;
“As I did the 64.”
Sorry I meant the 66
I posted this in the wrong thread so,
here’s a picture all the trolls can use…..
Picture taken just before the six people in the ambulance were severely injured.
http://www.solpics.com/ambulance.htm
I’ve seen worse vandalised ambulances in my neck of the woods, they should all be given ASBOS.
I’ve been following the blogalogue concerning the Red Cross and Reuters van incidents and have come to the conclusion that there is enough valid doubt on both sides to deliver a ‘not proven’ verdict.
Unless new, definite forensic evidence comes to light the full truth will never be known.
It would be nice if the media would recognise this and update the stories to reflect their dubious AND UNVERIFIABLE nature • purely in the interests of accuracy of course.
No legal system I have encountered determines guilt purely on the basis of •
1. Eyewitness testimony (generally regarded as being one of the most un-reliable forms of evidence).
2. Or 1st and 2nd party hearsay (generally completely inadmissible).
Without concrete supporting forensic evidence, which needs to be gathered, as close to the time an incident or act occurs as possible. This evidence needs to be gathered by competent, independent professionals, not photo-journalists and tv-cameramen of dubious reputation and allegiance.
Also the case being tried in the court of TV and photo-journalism where the MSM, who is solely driven by profit, is investigator, prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner has to raise serious questions about the competence of any verdict delivered (sorry I meant story).
It is probably this last point that makes my antenna twitch and my nose wrinkle the most concerning these two particular stories.
What we now have is a group of people (the MSM)who are unelected, self-appointed, driven by greed and a lust for notoriety accountable to no one and who are now standing in judgement over us all.
It doesn’t bode well methinks.
I think there is a danger that people really are going off the deep-end on this ambulance story.
B-BBC used to be pretty reasoned in its approach to criticising the MSM and particularly the BBC.
But now the atmosphere here is getting weird. I introduced a friend to this blog thinking he’d be interested in some of the comments on the beeb’s coverage of politics and economics.
He just e-mailed me saying B-BBC looks to him like the mirror-image of one of those sites that blame 9/11 on Israeli intelligence.
With all this loony stuff about fakery that just isn’t either likely or proven – I can see his point.
Do we honestly believe that Hizbollah has persuaded the christians that run the Red Cross plus an australian reporter and no doubt countless others to collaborate in a giant deception?
I’m sorry but I don’t.
Dave, if an israeli missile had hit that ambulance, there would be no ambulance remaining: it is as clear-cut as that.
Update re: the ambulance story and Mr Chulov being put forward as an authoritative view on the veracity of what actually happened and was reported –
The following is an extract courtesy of the Ian Blair Blog –
______________________________________
A righteous tip o’ the hat to Bonjour Triteness, who suggests a complete picture of the Red Cross ambulance attack may only be achieved by combining Martin Chulov’s two reports:
* The “first ambulance”, no. 782, was speeding in a convoy AND stationary;
* The six people on board the convoy were all severely injured except Shalin the driver AND only two were severely injured;
* Shalin was protected by the driver’s canopy AND by the vehicle’s rear ramp;
* The ambulance/convoy was struck by a rocket/s AND missile/s fired by an Apache helicopter that was also a drone;
* The missile pierced the centre of the red cross on ambulance 782 AND “an explosion thundered” into the ambulance;
* Shalin “remembers nothing” after the flash-bang-crunch of the crash AND he remembers that “then there was a battle for the next hour” and “we hid in a building convinced we were going to die”.
______________________________________
There, that should clear things up once and for all. Haven’t we all been silly-billys to get so het up about all of this
daveP writes:
”
He just e-mailed me saying B-BBC looks to him like the mirror-image of one of those sites that blame 9/11 on Israeli intelligence.”
With respect, I think both you and your friend are missing the point.
The ambulance story may, or may not, be wrong.
What matters is that sufficient doubt has been raised, sufficient times, for trust in the BBC (and other elements of the MSM) to have broken down.
The boy has cried wolf too often. This time he might be right. But no one trusts the little twerp anymore.
DennistheMenace writes:
“I’ve been following the blogalogue concerning the Red Cross and Reuters van incidents and have come to the conclusion that there is enough valid doubt on both sides to deliver a ‘not proven’ verdict.”
Mmmm.. “blogalogue” I like that!
The thing that bothers me about this story isn’t even whether it is true or not. It’s the way in which it was reported initially.
We’ve had Reith strolling around in his hand-me-down John Simpson crumpled (I could have been Graham Green, me!) suit, telling everyone they are nut cases for daring to question the veracity of sources which no journalist in his right mind shouldn’t question and yet blithely ignoring the context in which this story (and others – from bomb on the beach to Qana) was presented as gospel from day one.
Morever, it was siezed on (and only a fool wouldn’t have known it would be) by every anti-semite and Israel-hater on the planet.
A properly unbiased brodcaster would have admitted doubt from the outset and, certainly, would have reported subsequent uncertainties as they appeared.
And yet, this very same BBC voice has repeatedly told us how other stories could not be covered because they were unconfirmed, uncertain, and generally about as close to the truth as a press release from a ZaNu-Labour spin doctor.
So which is it? Can only anti-Israel stories be run on a shoestring of evidence, but everything else has to be stood up by two JPs and a trusted lollypop man?
Those with questioning minds have started to wonder if there aren’t two standards at work here.
In other words. It stinks.
* The ambulance/convoy was struck by a rocket/s AND missile/s fired by an Apache helicopter that was also a drone;
…
DennistheMenace | 01.09.06 – 12:02 am
The Apache helicopter that was also a drone was also “Israeli jets”.
http://www.forbes.com/business/businesstech/feeds/ap/2006/07/24/ap2900674.html
[…] the Lebanese Red Cross suspended operations outside Tyre after Israeli jets blasted two ambulances with rockets, said Ali Deebe, a Red Cross spokesman in Tyre.
In the incident Sunday, one Red Cross ambulance went south of Tyre to meet an ambulance and transfer the wounded to the hospital.
“When we have wounded outside the city, we always used two ambulances,” Deebe said.
The rocket attack on the two vehicles wounded six ambulance workers and three civilians – an 11-year-old boy, an elderly woman and a man, Deebe said.
“One of the rockets hit right in the middle of the big red cross that was painted on top of the ambulance,” he said. “This is a clear violation of humanitarian law, of international law. We are neutral and we should not be targeted.”
Kassem Shalan, one of the ambulance workers, told AP Television News that nine people were injured. “We were transferring the wounded into our vehicle and something fell and I dropped to the floor,” he said.
Amateur video provided by an ambulance worker confirmed Deebe’s account of damage to the vehicles, showing one large hole and several smaller ones in the roof of one ambulance and a large hole in the roof of the second. Both were destroyed.
Now I’m confused again…
BioD
I don’t know why you are so confused.
The people on the receiving end of ordnance – especially when it’s 11.30 at night – often don’t have a clue what hit ’em. Nor can they be sure what fired it – whatever ‘it’ may have been.
The re-interview of the ambulance driver yielded this (hitherto unreported):
“There was not a sound in the sky before the explosions. And after that there was a battle for the next hour. We hid in a building nearby convinced we were going to die. ”
Sounds to me more like artillery than aerial attack….but who knows?
Well, there is one group of people who can clear matters up. Antoine Bieler of the ICRC claims to have spent an hour negotiating with the IDF.
The IDF will presumably have logged his calls.
Bieler, by the way, seems to crop up in a number of countries doing ICRC work so is possibly not a Lebanese national – Swiss? French? If so, unlikely he’d knowingly take part in a scam, don’t you think?
John Reith,
You seem to be saying that are so many versions that we should take them all seriously, just as long as they back up the story in some way. Reason would make me arrive at the opposite conclusion – there are so many versions I don’t see why we should believe any of them.
Swiss? French? If so, unlikely he’d knowingly take part in a scam, don’t you think?
Not at all. Some of Israeli’s worst enemies are Swiss and French. Recently a trollish poster asked somebody if they were Jewish because he “wanted to know how objective they were”. Simply being French or Swiss does not make one neutral anymore than being Jewish automatically makes one into a biased Zionist.
BioD
Oh come off it. You usually are a resonable man.
Since neither of us can know much about Antoine Bieler….let’s consider the balance of probabilities.
Bieler is the regional director of the ICRC. We all know the type – a bloke with semi-diplomatic status whose usual social milieu would involve ambassadors, the health and defence ministers of the various countries he deals with. Googing him comes up with one instance of Bieler rubbing shoulders with the Queen of Jordan. In short, he’s a bloke in a Mercedes.
Is it LIKELY that such a person would eneter into a conspiracy with a couple of provincial ambulance drivers from peasant villages in South Leb?
John Reith
Mr Bieler is a straw man that you have introduced into this debate to distract. Let’s accept he “spent an hour on the phone with the IDF” and negotiated a ceasefire. He wasn’t on the scene, he’s not an eye witness, he’s pretty irrelevant realy unless I’ve missed something. He adds nothing to the debate about what, if anything, hit that ambulance and when.
I repeat the two points that convince me:
a) the hole in the ambulance’s roof is quite clearly the hole that once accommodated the red domed ventilator seen on other unscathed ambulances of the same model. You can even see the small screw holes and the unpainted edge. A MISSILE DID NOT MAKE THAT HOLE.
b) The man who allegedly lost his leg was shown as burnt, as was the stretcher, and one report claims this burning was ‘fortunate’ in that it cauterized the wound. However, all photos of the interior of the ambulance show a clear lack of any evidence of burning of any kind. Nor was there any other damage on the floor or fittings inside the ambulance consistent with a missile coming through the roof.
John Reith,
You appear to venerate the Red Cross and regard them as above reproach. That’s typical of the cosy relationship the BBC has with the Red Cross – and the Red Crescent.
A few years ago the BBC’s Alan Little had a series called ‘Inside the Red Cross’, checking the organisation out in Gaza, Afghanistan. Darfur and Sierra Leone:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/specials/152_inside_red_cross/page2.shtml
The Gaza bit proved Little to be your typical anti-Israel BBC hack. I Fisked part of his Gaza propaganda at the time. If you can’t see the bias here, you are going to have to get new reading glasses:
In this series, the BBC World Service accompanies Red Cross and Red Crescent staff working to help the victims of war, famine and national disaster.
There will be no mention in the programme of Israel’s Magen David Adom, MADA, and the extraordinary work it does assisting victims of terror. There will also be no mention of the fact that MADA has been refused recognition by the ICRC and therefore cannot work in conjunction with this distinguished body. The Star is spurned by the Cross and the Crescent (and, of course, by the BBC.)
I’ll be finding out why the Red Cross, after a hundred and forty years of following its aim to help the helpless is itself facing crisis in a world of insurgency and terrorism.
The BBC mentioning terrorism?!
The ICRC delegation was blown up last year in Iraq because Islamic militants….
….and here I was getting excited….
….believed the symbol of the Red Cross represented Western domination.
That’s how the BBC views terror. A kind of noble guerrilla struggle, all the fault of the West, naturally. Little is also being devious here with his half-truth. Is he trying to tell us that the terrorists don’t perceive the Red Cross as a religious symbol, Western domination aside – even though it isn’t?
And here, the local organization in Gaza, the Palestinian Red Crescent, has also been treated with distrust.
By whom? Little doesn’t say, at first, but he’s leading up to a despicable comparison between terrorists in Iraq and the IDF:
An ambulance driver was shot by the IDF on suspicion that he was smuggling weapons.
Shot on suspicion?? Perhaps they stopped him, walked up to him and shot him through the head because they thought he might be smuggling weapons?? Or he was the one who didn’t stop at a checkpoint after the IDF had become aware that ambulance drivers were in fact smuggling weapons. And was he killed or just injured? And were they shooting at him, or trying to immobilize the ambulance?
Right after the ‘shot on suspicion’ accusation, presented as fact, a Red Cross worker explains that as long as they identify themselves clearly, they encounter no problems from the Israeli side. But what about the Red Crescent? We are left to assume that the driver was killed or wounded simply because he worked for the Red Crescent. Very devious, and very effective.
At the end of the programme, we are taken down to the ocean:
There is an eerie beauty to the coast of Gaza. But despite this long stretch of golden Mediterranean beach, there’s no holiday making here. There’s the occasional swimmer and people washing clothes. Otherwise just a promise of what peace might bring. (Sound of waves breaking close to shore).
Wipe away a tear for the Gazans, John Reith, and access these links to a right wing site – shock, horror – providing a comprehensive look at the Palestinians’ strange relationship with ambulances:
http://www.haloscan.com/comments/patrickcrozier/115677097870232727/#305831
No doubt the Lebanese have taken a leaf out of the Palestinians’ book.
Bryan
You are really shifting your ground here.
For weeks the argument has been strongly put in these comments that the IDF DON’T deliberately shoot-up ambulances and that those who accuse them of doing so are anti-Israel liars or foolish dupes.
Now you seem to be saying the IDF SHOULD shoot-up ambulances.
Which is it?
John Reith, the “re-interview” with the driver is interesting. According to Chulov’s first account he remembered nothing of the incident after his vehicle supposedly veered off the road with him at the wheel. In Chulov’s second account he appears to have recovered his memories, including that the vehicle was stationary and he was outside when whatever happened happened!
Yet even his recovered memory offers no evidence that the Israelis attacked his ambulance.
Both the driver and the journalist have profoundly changed their stories. If this issue was being examined in a court of law, both witnesses would be dismissed as unreliable.
There is still nothing but gossip and hearsay to suggest that that ambulance was attacked by Israeli forces. That’s good enough for you at the BBC though.
.
An ambulance Used to carry a bomb.
Palestinians using UN ambulance
and finally, IDF abusing Palestinian children
There is still nothing but gossip and hearsay to suggest that that ambulance was attacked by Israeli forces. That’s good enough for you at the BBC though.
PJF | 01.09.06 – 2:26 pm
Wrong. There is the evidence of Antoine Bieler of the ICRC that he negotiated with the IDF a ceasefire arrangement to allow the crews and their patients to reach hospital.
If such negotiations took place – there must have been a reason for them.
There is the evidence of Antoine Bieler of the ICRC that he negotiated with the IDF a ceasefire arrangement to allow the crews and their patients to reach hospital.
Fine, but that in no way proves that an IDF missile hit the centre of the red cross on that ambulance!
If such negotiations took place – there must have been a reason for them.
Hezbollah activity? IDF activity? Not neccesarily a hole in the roof of an ambulance FFS!