You can’t accuse the Israelis of being subtle. The Nazis at least tried to disguise their evil. The Israelis have always boasted to the world of it. Yet nothing changes.

Clearly, raising public awareness is not the answer.

According to the IDF’s first report, the teenagers were “gunmen” trying to plant a bomb who fired on IDF soldiers. When one of them was killed, the others “escaped” into Gaza.

According to the IDF spokesperson’s later description, the Palestinians were not armed, did not fire at the IDF soldiers and there was no mention of a bomb. The Israeli soldiers fired at the Palestinians in line with the IDF’s “rules of engagement” which allow for shooting any Palestinian who is within 300 meters of the border with Gaza. The IDF soldiers crossed the border into Gaza when they approached the mortally wounded Palestinian. All of these admissions by the IDF spokesperson are completely at odds with their earlier version of events, and instead coincide with the PCHR’s version of events. Are you really paying attention? Its the IDF’s credibility that is in tatters. This is just another example of their lies.

Note that it mentions “gunmen” and an “exchange of fire”. However, if you click on Julian’s link today, 8/26, as I just did, you’ll notice that the story has been updated today, and this is the new version of events, per the IDF spokeswoman:

During Monday’s clash, which took place on the boundary between northern Gaza and Israel near the Mediterranean coast, an IDF patrol identified a number of suspicious figures approaching the border fence.

“The soldiers told the suspects to leave, but were ignored. They fired in the air, but the figures continued to approach the fence,” an army spokeswoman said.

“In compliance with the rules of engagement, soldiers opened fire at the suspects, striking two of them,” she added. One wounded man remained on the ground while the others escaped.

The soldiers crossed the fence to evacuate the man to Ashkelon’s Barzilai Medical Center, but he died of his wounds minutes later.

Notice that there is now no mention that the Palestinians had guns or were “exchanging gunfire”, as in the earlier IDF version. Likewise, in referring to the IDF’s “rules of engagement”, the spokeswoman is acknowledging that the IDF patrol fired on the Palestinians merely because they were within 300 meters of the border fence on the Gaza side of the border. There is now no mention of anyone “escaping back into Gaza”, as also mentioned in the IDF’s first version, because the Palestinians were never in Israel but were merely in the killing zone that the IDF has created in Gaza along the border. Therefore, as admitted in the new IDF version, the IDF patrol had to cross the fence into Gaza in order to approach the mortally wounded Palestinian.

Thanks, Julian, you just gave us yet another example of how the IDF consistently lies. I seriously doubt that the IDF’s story is the honest truth in this second version either, but it clearly proves that the first IDF story was a pack of lies.

Richard, isn’t this new IDF version a subtle corroboration of the PCHR version that you claimed you were looking for? Personally, when it comes to the veracity of the PCHR versus the veracity of the IDF, experience has taught me to generally believe the PCHR, and to disbelief anything the IDF says, most particularly to disbelieve their first version of events. This incident merely adds to that body of experience.

Netanyahu is being received with warmth and applause everywhere he goes on his latest trip to drum up support for stealing more Palestinian land. Only a few protesters off to the side.

Federal officials create opening over border fence public access
San Diego Union-Tribune
by Leslie Berestein, Union-Tribune Staff Writer
June 1, 2009

SOUTH COUNTY — Less than five months after federal officials pulled the plug on public access through a new border fence to a historic monument at Border Field State Park, the possibility is back on the table.

Speaking at a luncheon in downtown San Diego last week, Homeland Security border czar Alan Bersin told the audience that immigrant-rights groups have been discussing prospects for public access with department officials.

“It is a dialogue under way,” said Bersin, who was recently named the department’s assistant secretary for international affairs.

In January, two weeks before the Obama administration took office, U.S. Border Patrol officials announced a decision to permanently close access to a popular cross-border meeting spot within the state park, where a marble obelisk dating to 1851 marks the U.S.-Mexico border.

Until late last year, the area surrounding the monument – accommodated within a cutout in the steel mesh fence separating the two countries – was easily accessible. On weekends, it was common for U.S. visitors with family in Baja California to bring picnics and chairs to the area, known as Friendship Park, and spend the day chatting with relatives through the fence.

The area was declared off-limits in December, shortly before construction began on a secondary fence through Border Field State Park. That barrier, which is mostly completed, is north of and runs parallel to the main border fence. State and federal officials discussed public access to the monument, and until January there were tentative plans to allow visitors to use a gate in the secondary fence to get to a 40-foot-wide space that flanks the obelisk.

This changed after local Border Patrol officials concluded it would be too difficult for agents to monitor a public gathering place between the two fences. At the time, an agency official in Washington, D.C., said that while visitors frequently pass innocuous items such as food back and forth through small openings in the fence, they could also pass fraudulent documents or drugs.

Bersin said last week that while security would not be compromised, the idea is to rethink the access issue in hopes of being able to have both security and controlled interaction.

Since the decision was made to bar public access, a coalition of local community, immigrant-rights, environmental and religious groups have lobbied federal officials and policy makers to reconsider.

John Fanestil, a United Methodist minister and one of several local proponents of maintaining public access to Friendship Park, promoted the issue in Washington, D.C., last month. He and other Southwest border activists traveled there to show support of legislation that would require the government to adhere to environmental laws when considering border security.

However, access to the monument and the fence could be compromised by the state budget crisis. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed cutting more $213 million from state parks over the next two fiscal years, resulting in the possible shutdown of more than 200 state parks, among them Border Field.
jholslin.blogspot(dot)com/2009/06/federal-officials-create-opening-over.html

California’s Governor seems to think the primary business of government is to promote business. The emphasis on the need for border fences now is drug interdiction.

Bush scared the h*ll out of me and I do sometimes feel like I’ve just woken up. Palestine is urgent; Afghanistan became urgent. Internal issues are urgent, also, but the problems aren’t highlighted by massive deaths as they are with war – it’s more often a matter of steady degradation – as V., Citizen and others point out.

I have been lied to by Zionists; I think in particular of the lie that Palestine was empty when the Zionists arrived.