Israel changes tack on beach deaths

[Scurrilous]

<snip>

"Israel has conceded that it may have been responsible for the Gaza beach deaths after all, having ruled out any hint of blame hours earlier.

The military said on Wednesday that old Israeli ordnance could have killed the eight Palestinians last Friday, after its previous denial of responsibility was received with scepticism by the United Nations and elsewhere.

General Meir Klifi, who is leading the Israeli military investigation, said an examination of shrapnel removed from one of the casualties proved that it did not come from a 155mm shell - the type his army was firing at the Gaza Strip last Friday.

But he told Israeli radio: "It could be from another kind of munition that we have used in the past."

<snip>

"This was a retreat from his position on Tuesday night when he appeared at a news conference with General Dan Halutz, the chief of staff, who said "we do not bear responsibility" for the deaths."

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/E3F3B143-E2C9-46BD-A757-EFBA5B3D6075.htm

[Poll_Blind]

1. Israel caught in _another_ falsehood in the killing of innocents?

I'm shocked!

PB

[Behind the Aegis]

3. We shall see.

[Igel]

2. But that would be a kind of

attenuated responsibility. People tend to strip things down to absolute "yes/no" in some cases, and confuse things with context and situation in others, largely based on which side they're on. This skews perceptions and moral judgments.

Part of the railing against Israel was that they targeted a civilian family and hurled an artillery shell at them. Intent mattered, and 'targeting civilians' (something that's perfectly fine in other contexts) was part of the reason for the indignation. It was an act of commission.

The responsibility for killing a family that runs across an unexploded artillery shell (something that either pelsar or eyl pointed out was a possibility, IIRC, but which, in any event, is something that isn't hard to come up with as possible) turns into an act of omission. The target for the shell may have been acceptable, but Israel's to blame because it didn't make ordnance in a way such that they all explode, or there was neglect because Israel didn't send somebody in to pick up unexploded munitions. This borders on the ludicrous since it would make IDF folk either invaders or simply targets, but I guess in some people's moral calculus it's possible.

Perhaps the ethical thing to do have done would be to inform the PA that shelling had occurred in the area, munitions are imperfect, and perhaps somebody should police the area for unexploded ordnance or signage should be put up warning people. We must infer that the PA was obviously unaware of these facts and needs to be told such things.

[Poll_Blind]

4. Continued recklessly-negligent behavior is tantamount to intent. n/t

PB

[Igel]

9. Possibly so.

But if trying to reclaim the unexploded ordnance gets you killed, or triggers some sort of protest from the controlling governmental authority, at what point does prudent start being reckless? The standard holds, but how to apply it is suddenly complicated.

I agree, if IDF had a track record of having shells fall off the back of their trucks as they drove around, or left them unsecured and simply couldn't be bothered making sure they were safe. As it is, if it's simply unexploded ordnance, they were probably trying to kill people trying to kill Israelis.

If Israeli kids were killed by an unexploded Qassam, I'd have a similar attitude, in some respects. But only some. It wouldn't rise to the level of firing the rocket directly at the kids; and I'd expect some Israeli government to have an obligation to look for it if they suspected it might be there. (But in this case there are two other factors: There probably wasn't a reasonable military target, so there's less justification for the qassam to be there in the first place, and so that would be far more reckless; and it's unlikely the PA would notify the Israeli authorities about unexploded ordnance, if only because of plausible deniability.)

In other words, Israel's not entirely off the hook, but certainly much less on the hook. The PA is also not entirely off the hook.

[Scurrilous]

5. Gaza Physician, British Journalist Refute Israeli Investigation

Full Title: Gaza Physician, British Journalist Refute Reported Israeli Military Investigation that Clears IDF, Blames Hamas for Deadly Beach Attack.

For more on the latest we go to Gaza to speak with two guests:

Chris McGreal, reporter for the London Guardian. He joins us on the line from Gaza.

<snip>

AMY GOODMAN: Chris McGreal -- what is your understanding of what happened on the beach on Friday?

CHRIS MCGREAL: Well, that's becoming a highly politically contentious point. The -- as you said, the Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert initially apologized, said he regretted it. But he's in Europe at the moment, in Britain yesterday and today, going to France later today, and then on to the European Parliament. And those pictures that you were describing, the scene from the family being killed, have proved a severe embarrassment to him in Europe. He's been asked about it a lot. It seems that this panel has been quickly convened to absolve the army and to raise sufficient doubt for Ehud Olmert and his foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, who's also in Europe at the moment, to be able to say, “well, we're still investigating, we're looking into this, we can't say for certain.”

This has happened with previous extremely high-profile killings, perhaps the most memorable of which was Mohammed al-Dura, where the military set about trying to raise doubts. But the report that they’ve come up with, it has to be said -- it's full of holes. It's based on the idea that, in fact, they were blown up by a Hamas landmine planted under the sand to try and deter Israeli commanders from landing. and that is, it would probably be very difficult for Hamas to know where Israeli commanders might land, and the idea would be that they would have several of them, and yet there are no other mines. Perhaps more interesting is that at the time this family was hit by shells -- a shell, which it undoubtedly was -- the Israeli army admits to having fired six shells. Three of them, you can see, landed on the beach, very close by. Probably no more than the closest -- 100 yards away. And essentially the army is then asking people to believe that the -- a sixth shell didn’t land on the family. That by pure coincidence, even though the beach was being shelled at the time, a Hamas mine happened to go off as well in the same area and at the same time.

Compounding this is the fact that the army admits it cannot account for the last of those six shells -- where it landed. And there is a military expert, an ex-Pentagon official from Human Rights Watch, New York-based human rights group here at the moment. He's been looking into this. And he's come to his own conclusion: that it's almost undoubtedly an Israeli shell, based on, firstly the shrapnel, which he – he found a piece of shrapnel that says 155 millimeter on it, which is precisely the size of shrapnel shell that the Israelis use in their Howitzers, and also if you look at the size and the nature of the crater, it’s identical to those on the beach that -- from the other shells, including being lined with a white powder. So I think all of -- on the whole, the evidence points much more to Israeli responsibility.







http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/06/13/140204

[Poll_Blind]

6. Typical of a conservative government: They can't even bring themselves...

...to admit it when they cock up. What kind of man is that?

PB

[cali]

7. Surely you're not so naive

as to believe that only conservative governments deny responsibility?

[Poll_Blind]

8. No, but as I said it's typical of a conservative one. n/t

PB

[Igel]

10. The reporter doesn't relate

what Garlasco said as I would have.

I think I distinctly remember reading Garlasco's claim that the shrapnel he found was a rather large piece (at least for shrapnel) at some distance (presumably not large) from where the family was killed and injured; that the shrapnel had 'mm' on it, but, in his experience was clearly 155 mm, and that was consistent with a model of Howitzer that Israel used. In other words, Garlasco, as reported in the US MSM, was far more circumspect than the reporter.

What's important is paraphrased from Garlasco and others.

On edit: When I read what Garlasco said, I couldn't help but wonder how far that piece of shrapnel would have travelled, where he found it wrt to the Palestinians were killed. In the back of my mind there was, and is, a nagging question: could the shrapnel have been from one of shells accounted for? Garlasco's reported comments didn't give a hint.

Rather than rush to assume somebody's lying in order to support one particular conclusion, if there's a plausible explanation that accounts for all the reported data, I'd like to find it.

[eyl]

11. There's another point in that article

At least, if you accept the IDF account of the firing order.

As McGreal pointed out, the IDF can't account for the first of the six shells fired. However, it seems, according to accounts I've read, that the father, because of the start of the shelling, started to get his family out of there and was hit before they could get far enough. However, since the first shell is the one that's missing, he would not have had any warning to try get them out. So this actually supports the IDF version, rather then lending weight to contradict it as McGreal says.

In addition, the OP somewhat overstates the Israeli conclusion. The report concluded that the incident was not caused by the shelling at that time. It did not determine conclusively what did cause the explosion. While the part that was stressed in the media was the posibility of a mine, the report's conclusion also allow for the scenario of a dud going off. It's also worth mentioning that the "smoking gun" of a fragment with "55mm" on it doesn't actually mean much, given that Israel admits it was shelling the beach earlier in the day.