Anatomy of a War Crime

[Ralph Furely]

http://israelblog.com/anatomy-of-a-war-crime/

Despite all the evidence out there that the Israeli army consistently resorts to lies and disinformation to justify its actions (cf. the Shehada story), many US media outlets continue to quote Israeli army spokespeople as if they are Moses conveying God's own truth. However, for anyone with the slightest bit of objectivity, the Israeli army MO is repeated so often, that it doesn't take much effort to spot it.


The spokespeople follow a five step process. Step 1: Make the following set of claims: {Israel makes every effort to avoid civilian casualties, Israeli forces use highly accurate equipment and intelligence in choosing its targets, the enemy makes every effort to hide amongst civilians}. Step 2: repeat Step 1 ad nauseum.  Step 3: When some event happens where there are massive civilian casualites, refer to Step 1 and claim that terrorists fired at Israeli forces from right smack in the middle of the civilians. Provide very specific details to show that the intelligence was accurate, along with trumped up evidence for the claim. Point out how the incident is proof the enemy cynically uses civilians as  shields. If there is no contrary evidence, claim the enemy is exaggerating the casualties for propaganda purposes. Step 4: When the army claims are revealed to be false, revise the original claim and provide an excuse. Choose from: {the soldiers involved in the incident had limited or wrong information about civilians in the area, the equipment malfunctioned and went off target, human error, all of the above}. Step 5: Go to Step 1.

The recent story about Israel's bombing of the school in Gaza that killed dozens of innocent civilians is a perfect illustration of this process. Step 1 and 2 need not be documented. Just pick up any random article about the war in the US press and you will see those steps in action as Israeli army spokespeople, politicians and "experts" are quoted. So let's go straight to Step 3, when the story breaks the news. Here is a typical article from CNN:

    The Israel Defense Forces said a mortar-firing operation and a pair of prominent Hamas operatives — Imad Abu Askhar and Hassan Abu Askhar — were at the occupied school hit Tuesday. The two were among the Hamas militants killed in the strike, an IDF statement said.

    "This is not the first time that Hamas terrorists have used Palestinian civilians as human shields and has exploited their deaths for the benefit of the international media," an Israeli statement read. "Israel will continue to treat as valuable the lives of all Palestinian civilians and refuses to devalue the lives of Gaza residents in the manner of Hamas."

To further reinforce their claims, the Israeli army released a video showing militants firing a rocket from within the school. Of course, much to Israel's chagrin, the UN challenged Israel's version of the story, pointing out that video footage was from 2007, when the building had been temporarily abandoned by the UN. So Step 4 kicked in. Despite the very specific and unequivocal claims made in Step 3, all of a sudden an "army investigation" suddenly discovered a slightly different version of the story:

    The probe, which was conducted by the Paratrooper Brigade whose troops were responsible for the area, found that the army's location system to pinpoint launch sites indicated that militants had launched a Qassam rocket into Israel from within a yard adjacent to the courtyard of the UN building.

    The troops had intended to launch a smart missile to take out the Palestinian launch team but a technical malfunction made this impossible, according to the probe. The commanders of the force instead decided to fire on the Qassam team with mortar shells equipped with a Global Positioning System for accurate fire.

    However, the GPS element has an error margin of 30 meters and one of the three rounds fired by the paratrooper force slammed into the building owned by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, or UNRWA.

    Two of the rounds hit the yard used to launch rockets into Israel, killing two members of Hamas' military wing who probably belonged to the squad that fired the rockets.

No mention of course that just two days earlier, the army had provided equally specific details and claims that now, by its own admission, were utterly false. Incredible!