Israel’s coverup of the killing of the four little boys playing soccer, a whitewash aided and abetted by The New York Times, continues to fall apart.
The Israeli report gave the impression that the military made an effort to contact all witnesses to the killings on a Gaza beach during the Israeli invasion last July, and that Palestinians had declined to cooperate.
But the slaughter took place right in front of a hotel where many western journalists were staying. And as Dan Cohen writes, “no effort was made to contact journalists who witnessed the incident.” Peter Beaumont of the Guardian was one of the eyewitnesses. Beaumont writes today that the Israeli military made no effort to reach him or other witnesses who could have provided firsthand information.
The Israeli claims appear at odds in several details with what journalists were able to see at the time, Beaumont says, beginning with this Israeli assertion:
“From the factual findings collected by the investigators, it revealed that the incident took place in an area that had long been known as a compound belonging to Hamas’s Naval Police and Naval Force (including naval commandos), and which was utilized exclusively by militants.”
Beaumont disputes this:
The hut, however, was in plain sight of nearby hotels housing international journalists, none of whom described seeing militants in the area at the time of the attack…
The Israeli military also claimed that the alleged Navy “compound in question spans the length of the breakwater of the Gaza City seashore, closed off by a fence and clearly separated from the beach serving the civilian population.”
That wasn’t the case, Beaumont says.
The breakwater is both easily accessible from a side lane and also is located on one of the busiest parts of the public beach in Gaza port and accessible not only to the fishermen who use it, but to local Palestinians who come to sunbathe and swim within feet of it.
He cites an Israeli claim that a container inside the alleged compound “was used to store military supplies.” Beaumont says:
The container described in the Israeli finding also appeared to contain no military equipment.
As of now, the New York Times has not yet issued a follow-up report to yesterday’s stenographic article by Jodi Rudoren simply repeating what Israel military said as gospel without making any effort to get the other side. The Times has also never reported on the Breaking the Silence report on the Gaza invasion that documented attacks on civilians who happened to be in the vicinity of targets.
We await with interest the Times‘s followup on this tragedy.
We also note that 500 other children were killed during last summer’s attack, along with 1700 adults.
Thanks James North.
It’s crucial that this postmortem of the truth continue until the obvious conclusion.
Israel murders innocent people, including children. Then they lie about it~ over and over and over again. This was witnessed by independent journalists and MSM journalists, many of the massacred were witnessed by family/neighbors/other victims, They use human shields and target civilians and then turn around and accuse the Palestinians of the crimes that they themselves are guilty of!
The US, the UN, the EU, and the other regional states are either complicit or silent. Neither is acceptable. Perhaps this is the proverbial ‘tipping point’ that is needed. Maybe there will be a groundswell of protest by the witnesses shouting ‘ENOUGH’! Seriously, didn’t everybody with a tv or computer or any other device see what happened?
‘not in my name’. I’ve written again to the PTB. Still waiting for some action… I’m sick and tired of listening to these words wrt Israel: ‘ally’, ‘rights’, ‘security’, ‘democracy’, etc.. ad nauseam.
I cannot think about those dead children without the image of Stephane Richard’s bootlicking performance swimming before my eyes.
Beaumont has another article up:
“Gaza beach killings: no justice in Israeli exoneration, says victim’s father
The father of one of four Palestinian children killed on a Gaza City beach during last summer’s war between Hamas and Israel has said he is outraged that an Israeli investigation into the killings has been closed without finding anyone culpable for their deaths.
The comments by Mohammed Bakr came as new questions emerged over both the scope and the accuracy of the findings of the Israeli military police inquiry.
“There is no justice in the internal investigation,” Bakr said on Friday. “We are counting on the ICC [international criminal court] and human rights. We are not afraid and we are confident we will win because the world is with us.”…
…But among troubling issues to have emerged since the Israeli military closed its investigation is the fact that not all witnesses to the incident were interviewed by Israeli investigators, despite comments by Efroni’s office suggesting it would do so.
The incident came to global prominence because it took place in front of a number of international media organisations, including the Guardian and the New York Times.
The New York Times’s Pulitzer prize-winning photographer Tyler Hicks, who witnessed the incident, though from a different angle to the Guardian, wrote in a blog at the time: “A small metal shack with no electricity or running water on a jetty in the blazing seaside sun does not seem like the kind of place frequented by Hamas militants, the Israel Defence Forces’ intended targets.
“Children, maybe four feet tall, dressed in summer clothes, running from an explosion, doesn’t fit the description of Hamas fighters, either.”
Although pro-Israel social media activists at first made strenuous efforts to claim the deaths were the result of one of Hamas’s own rockets falling short, the IDF later admitted its own munitions were responsible.
Several weeks after the attack – announcing it was launching investigations into a number of controversial incidents in which civilians died – the military advocate general’s office briefed more than a dozen journalists. The senior Israeli officer was asked by reporters then if investigators would seek to contact all witnesses. The officer replied in the affirmative.
In reality, however, it appears no effort was made to contact a number of the journalists who witnessed the incident – including this correspondent. A handful of Palestinian witnesses supplied information by affadavit. …
…Several foreign journalists present at the time of the incident disputed that claim to the Guardian on Friday, echoing the Guardian’s own observations.
Indeed, far from being used “exclusively” by Hamas, the site of the initial attack – an area of several makeshift structures on the breakwater itself and where the first boy died – is regularly used by fishermen, and is immediately adjacent to, and accessible from, the public beach in Gaza port. …
…Usually reliable sources told the Guardian on Friday that they believed the container had been “incriminated” by Israeli intelligence, making it a potential target because it belonged to the equivalent of Hamas’s coastguard, even if it was empty. Its incrimination, in effect, meant anyone approaching it could be engaged.
Pictures posted on Facebook on Friday by the Daily Telegraph correspondent Robert Tait, who photographed the scene of the strike in its immediate aftermath, show twisted metal and scattered rubble but no sign of any military material.
Another question – unanswered by the IDF – relates to aerial oversight of the scene before the attack. According to the IDF, “civilian presence in the area had been ruled out”, including by the deployment of “real-time visual surveillance”.
According to multiple media and other witnesses, children had been playing football in the vicinity immediately before the attack.
One Israeli military expert at the time expressed his surprise that those conducting the surveillance were unable to distinguish between children and Hamas militants, when the children were clearly identifiable as they fled from several hundred metres away before the second strike.
An Israeli military spokesman had not replied to questions put to it by the Guardian at the time of publication.”
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/12/gaza-beach-killings-no-justice-in-israeli-exoneration-says-victims-father
(comments not open) Wonder how long it’ll take Rudoren to retract her trash.
“Wonder how long it’ll take Rudoren to retract her trash”
She knows exactly what she’s doing Just. She’s published the bare faced hasbara lies and that will now be the *truth*
Anything else will not be noticed. Even if there is a minor retraction (unlikely) it will be a couple of lines that will have no real effect
Mission complete.
Isn’t one of the prerequisites for ICC prosecution an inability to pursue these cases domestically?
I wonder whether this IDF internal “investigation” satisfies/supports the requirements to initiate prosecution, or the requirements to avoid it.