Today's
Stories
June 20, 2006
Jonathan Cook
Israel Engineers Another Cover-Up
June 19, 2006
Bill Quigley
HUD's Bulldozers and the Poor of
New Orleans
John Walsh
Tears of a Clown: Al Franken's War
Mike Whitney
The Zoom Lens War: Bush's Baghdad
Photo Op
Alexander Cockburn
The Left and the Blathersphere
June 16 / 18, 2006
Weekend Edition
Kathy / Bill
Christision
The
Power of the Israel Lobby
Joseph Nevins
On the Migrant Trail: No More Walls, No More Deaths
Farrah Hassen
An Interview with Syria's Ambassador to the US, Dr. Imad Moustapha
Greg Moses
The Real Mission of the Uniformed Ghost at the Border
Nicole Colson
"There's No Hope at Gitmo"
John Scagliotti
How MoveOn Wastes Its Donors' Money
Mokhiber / Weissmann
Corporate Democrats
June 15, 2006
Kathy Kelly
Look
Them in the Eye: Honest Abe and the Residents of Ramadi
Norman Solomon
Premature Triangulation: Hillary's Big Problem
Ron Jacobs
Publicity
Stunts as Public Policy
Sam Bahour
Cover Up on Gaza Beach
Ramzy Baroud
Palestine on the Brink
CounterPunch Wire
Death Squads at Colombia's Universities
Gabriel Kolko
Why
a Global Economic Deluge Looms
Website of the Day
Antje Duvekot: Music You've Been Waiting Years to Hear
June 14, 2006
Nicole Colson
"They
Want the Fear Level at a High Pitch": An Interview with
Lawyer Lynne Stewart
Jonathan Cook
Israeli
Law and Order
Joseph Schechla
Bulldozing Palestine: an Open Letter to Caterpillar, Inc.
Michael Carmichael
Bolton at Oxford: Jeered and Taunted
Evelyn Pringle
Karl and George, the Teflon Partnership
Ward Churchill
My Trial By Media: Turning Quibbles Over Footnotes into Felonies
Rev. William E. Alberts
Decoding the Coders of Christ: Jesus the Political Insurgent?
Website of the
Day
Marines Iraq Snuff Film
June 13, 2006
Medea Benjamin
Take
Back America Suppresses Anti-War Dissenters at HRC Speech
Anthony Alessandrini
The
Evil of Banality: the General, the New York Times and the Gitmo
Suicides
Paul D'Amato
The
Meaning of Haditha
Dave Lindorff
The Strange Death of Zarqawi: Was He Killed So He Wouldn't Talk?
John Ross
Elections and the World Cup: If Team Mexico Advances, Will Anyone
Show Up to Vote for Lopez Obrador?
Gabriel Garcia
Venezuela and Drug Trafficking: Bush Bashes Chavez Despite Positive
Results
Hilton Obenzinger
DIvestment is a Stand for Equality in Israel
Yitzhak Laor
The Secret of Authority
Juan Antonio
Ocasio Rivera
Puerto Rico at the UN
Jennifer Van
Bergen
The
Story Behind Zarqawi's Death: What's the Legality of the Assassination?
Website of the
Day
Paul Wright: a Real American Freedom Fighter
June 12, 2006
Paul Craig Roberts
Bush's
Armageddon Wish: a Final End to History?
Patrick Cockburn
The
US Already Misses Zarqawi
Mike Marqusee
Rebranding
a Team: English Nationalism and the World Cup
Lee Sustar
"I
Never Had the American Dream:" Left with No Future by GM
and Delphi
Robert Fisk
Has
Racism Invaded Canada?
Michael J. Smith
Enter Sandman; Exit Kosland
Felice Pace
NPR's Warped Covereage of the MIddle East
Jennifer Loewenstein
Setting
the Record Straight on Hamas
Website of the Day
Our Way Home
June 10 / 11,
2006
Weekend Edition
Robert Fisk
Zarqawi's
End is not a Famous Victory
Diane Christian
Zarqawi's Face
Joe Allen
The American Way of Atrocities: Marine Corps' Killer Virtues
Ralph Nader
Let Us All Praise the Dixie Chicks
Fred Gardner
Tylenol Toxicity Terror
Dave Lindorff
Nothing New About Haditha
Dave Zirin /
John Cox
Will Racism Spoil the World Cup?
Dennis Perrin
Death is Patriotic: Necro-Porn, Live on CNN
Greg Moses
Militarizing the Border: Why Operation Jump Start Worries Me
John Chuckman
Terror in Toronto or Tempest in a Teapot?
Michael J. Smith
Babes in Kosland: Dem Blogfest, Day Two
Roger Burbach
Bachelet in DC: Chilean President Refuses to Back Down to Bush
Ira Moskowitz
Israeli Court Finds Mad-Dog US Prof Libeled CounterPuncher Neve
Gordon
Sam Bahour
The Gaza Air Strikes: Begging for a Response
Seth Sandronsky
Grocery Chains and Bush's Ownership Society: Profits Fall, Stores
Close
Michael Berg
A Father's Day Message: Both Parties Have Betrayed America
Kirsten Roberts
Desmond Dekker and the Music of the Shantytowns
Ron Jacobs
Who's Fooling Who?
Jeffrey St. Clair
Playlist: What I'm Listening to This Week
Poets' Basement
Jones, Davies, Engel and Louise
Website of the
Weekend
Miles and Trane, So What?
| June
20, 2006
Israel Engineers Another Cover-Up
Leaving the Truth
Buried in Gaza's Sands
By JONATHAN
COOK
If
you keep lying long enough and with enough conviction, people start
to believe you -- or at least doubt the evidence in front of their
own eyes. And so it has been with the Israeli army’s account
of how seven members of a Palestinian family were killed, and dozens
of other Palestinians injured, during shelling close by a beach
in Gaza.
This week, according to reports in the Israeli media, even Marc
Garlasco, a Pentagon expert on the effects of battlefield weapons
hired by Human Rights Watch to investigate the deaths, "conceded"
that he could not contradict the findings of the Israeli army’s
own inquiry.
Presumably that is because Israel is not letting him or anyone else
near their evidence. But Garlasco’s slight change of tune
-- even if it is not exactly a ringing endorsement -- leaves the
door ajar just wide enough that the Israeli army will doubtless
slip through it to escape being held accountable yet again.
The army has been claiming for more than a week, based on its own
evidence, that the lethal explosion was not caused by a stray shell
landing on the Gaza beach but most probably by a mine placed there
by Palestinian militants to prevent an Israeli naval landing.
The army’s case could be dismissed outright were it not for
the racist assumptions that now prevail as Western "thought"
about Arabs and Muslims.
To be plausible the army account requires two preposterous assumptions:
first, that Palestinian militants are so fanatical that they consider
it acceptable to lay a mine secretly in an area frequented by local
families; and second, that they are so primitive that their best
military minds could not work out the futility of placing a single
mine along miles of coastline that could be used for a landing (or
are we to assume that there are many more of these mines waiting
to explode?).
To support its case, the army has produced two pieces of evidence
that apparently make its denials of responsibility "airtight".
First, it claims that a piece of shrapnel removed by doctors from
an injured Palestinian transferred to an Israeli hospital was not
from one its shells but more likely from a Palestinian explosive
device.
Given that, unlike Israel, the Palestinians do not have any factories
manufacturing mines or rockets and are forced instead to make them
out of any spare metal parts they can get their hands on -- doors,
pipes, wrecked cars, fridges -- this evidence is meaningless. Palestinian
witnesses have already said the beach victims were standing close
to taxis when the shell exploded. So if the shrapnel was not from
an Israeli shell, it suggests only that the missile also damaged
other metal objects -- possibly the cars -- sending a shard into
at least one of the victims.
The army will have a lot of explaining to do if reports on Israeli
TV, not usually noted for its independent approach, confirm that
another piece of shrapnel found in a victim is from an Israeli shell.
So far, of course, the army is denying the report.
The second piece of evidence is supplied by the army, which says
one of its many drones that circle overhead spying on Gaza round
the clock shows the families calmly still on the beach, and later
an ambulance arriving, tens of minutes after the army had finished
shelling the area.
The problem with the Israeli evidence is that we have to take the
army’s word for it: that the families shown are the ones who
were about to be shelled, and that the timings given are accurate.
It also means we have to discount a lot of counter-evidence supplied
by Garlasco, journalists, doctors and Palestinian witnesses -- and
even the Israeli army. The army, for example, has admitted that
one of the shells it fired in the area is unaccounted for, a striking
admission in itself. The drones apparently were no help in locating
this "missing" explosion, even though they were spying
on the area.
Garlasco has already determined that the injuries sustained by the
beach victims accord with a blast above ground -- an Israeli shell
-- rather than one underground -- a Palestinian mine.
The many Palestinian witnesses have all put the time of the blast
close to when the shelling occurred, and report that the reason
they were queuing for taxis was because of panic sown by the shells
they were hearing landing nearby.
Independent journalists have shown that, according to the clocks
on the hospital computers that admitted the dead and injured, the
timing of the first blood tests were taken soon after the Israeli
army shelling -- and certainly too soon to accord with the army’s
account of when the Palestinian mine supposedly exploded. Doctors
have also confirmed that they were called to the nearest hospitals
well before 5pm -- at about the time, or even before, the army claims
the mine went off.
The outrage expressed in some quarters at the failure simply to
believe the army’s version might sound more convincing were
Israel welcoming an international investigation to adjudicate on
the matter. But of course it is not. Just as in spring 2002, following
the deaths of many civilians in the Palestinian town of Jenin and
the destruction of the heart of the local refugee camp during a
prolonged attack by the Israeli army and air force, Israel is rejecting
all suggestions of an independent inquiry.
So why not just take Israel’s word for it? Its army is the
most moral in the world, after all, and a state of law like Israel
would gain nothing from lying in such a bare-faced manner.
The only problem is that Israel and its security forces have been
caught out lying repeatedly during this intifada and before it,
not just to people on the other side of the world who cannot verify
the facts but also to its own courts and public.
Ths week, for example, the Supreme Court ordered the army and Ministry
of Defence to pull down several kilometres of the steel and concrete
barrier they have erected on Palestinian land in the West Bank after
it was proved that the security considerations behind the choice
of the wall’s route were entirely bogus. Official documents
reveal that the wall was located there to allow for the future expansion
of nearly illegal Jewish settlements on yet more Palestinian land.
The army and government concocted the fib and then stuck to it for
more than two years. Chief Justice Aharaon Barak called their systematic
lying “a grave phenomenon”.
And at the start of the intifada, back in October 2000, the government
and police covered up the fact that live ammunition and sniper units
trained to deal with terror attacks had been used against unarmed
Arab demonstrators inside Israel. For more than six months the government
and security services denied that a single live round had been fired,
despite mounting evidence to the contrary that lawyers and journalists
like myself had unearthed.
They might have got away with their brazen lies too, had it not
been for an unusual series of events that led to the appointment
of a state inquiry headed by a Supreme Court judge, Theodor Or,
who quickly exposed the truth.
That happened not because of any urge by official bodies to come
clean or the inevitable triumph of Israeli justice. It happened
for one reason alone: the prime minister of the day, Ehud Barak,
feared losing the impending general election to his rival Ariel
Sharon and thought he could buy back Arab votes by setting up an
inquiry.
The inhabitants of Gaza have no such leverage inside the Israeli
legal and political system. They have no friends inside Israel.
And now it looks like they have no friends in the international
community either.
Jonathan Cook, a writer and journalist living in
Nazareth, Israel, is the author of “Blood and Religion: The
Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State”, published by
Pluto Press. His website is www.jkcook.net
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