HRW – The ‘Hoax’ That Wasn’t: The July 23 Qana Ambulance Attack
During the Israel-Hezbollah war, Israel was accused by Human Rights Watch and numerous local and international media outlets of attacking two Lebanese Red Cross ambulances in Qana on July 23, 2006. Following these accusations, some websites claimed that the attack on the ambulances ‘never happened’ and was a Hezbollah-orchestrated ‘hoax,’ a charge picked up by conservative commentators such as Oliver North. These claims attracted renewed attention when the Australian foreign minister stated that ‘it is beyond serious dispute that this episode has all the makings of a hoax.’
In response, Human Rights Watch researchers carried out a more in-depth investigation of the Qana ambulance attacks. Our investigation involved detailed interviews with four of the six ambulance staff and the three wounded people in the ambulance, on-site visits to the Tibnine and Tyre Red Cross offices from which the ambulances originated to review their records and meet with supervisors, an examination of the ambulances that were struck, an on-site visit to the Qana site where the attack took place, and interviews with others such as international officials with the International Committee of the Red Cross who were involved in responding to the attack on the night it happened.
On the basis of this investigation, we conclude that the attack on the ambulances was not a hoax: Israeli forces attacked two Lebanese Red Cross ambulances that night in Qana, almost certainly with missiles fired from an Israeli drone flying overhead. The physical and testimonial evidence collected by Human Rights Watch disproves the allegations of a ‘hoax,’ made by persons who never visited Lebanon and had no opportunity to assess the evidence first-hand. Those claiming a hoax relied on faulty conjectures based on a limited number of photographs of one of the ambulances.
Posted on December 21st, 2006 at 9:52am under Chicken Nuggets, Miscellaneous misanthropy, T.W.A.T.
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• 4 Comments |
I have a test that I apply when stuff like this happens in the middle east.
It goes like this – “Did the alleged perpetrators admit it?”.
If the answer is “Yes”, I tend not to dig any deeper.
Trouble is, a lie can be half way around the world before the truth has got its running shoes on, to (badly) paraphrase Terry Pratchett…
In other news, man asphyxiates after holding breath awaiting Richard North’s apology.
Interestingly China Mieville has a piece in Socialist Review(Nov.06)re-’The Lies That Aren’t Mean’t To Deceive Us’.
He argues that political elites put out stories like the absurd Israeli justification for civilian loss of life on Gaza beach last June which are not meant to be believed.Rather the intention is to channel political outrage at such atrocities into exercises in fact-checking which are in themselves laudible but actually allow the Israelis to set the agenda.Instead of the question being how do we prevent it becomes of did they do it?
There comes a point when those who give credibility to the patent lies of political elites become complicit in the surrender to powerful interests who mean to bludgeon us into submission to their imperialist agendas.
The piece is worth a read not least because Aaronovich is cited as an example of one who willingly suspended his disbelief re-WMD but still refuses to recant.A more pliant chrus-leader for powerful elites it would be hard to find!