Gordon - How “Evil Israeli Soldiers” Saved an Anti-Israel Filmmaker’s Life

Evelyn Gordon..
Commentary/Contentions..
31 January '12..

“Five Broken Cameras” didn’t win the World Documentary competition at last week’s Sundance Film Festival, losing out to another anti-Israel film. But it has garnered plenty of international attention, including two awards at Amsterdam’s International Documentary Film Festival and a glowing write-up in the New York Times. The film, according to the Sundance synopsis, documents what happened after the West Bank village of Bil’in “famously chose nonviolent resistance” against Israel’s security fence: “an escalating struggle as olive trees are bulldozed, lives are lost, and a wall is built to segregate burgeoning Israeli settlements,” in which a child’s “loss of innocence and the destruction of each camera are potent metaphors.” In short, another tale of good Palestinians versus evil Israelis.

You have to persevere to the end of the Times piece to find another angle to Palestinian filmmaker Emad Burnat’s story:

In late 2008, he accidently drove a truck into the separation barrier and was badly injured. A Palestinian ambulance arrived at the same time as Israeli soldiers, who saw what bad shape he was in and took him to an Israeli hospital.

“If I had been taken to a Palestinian hospital,” Mr. Burnat said, “I probably wouldn’t have survived.” He was unconscious for 20 days. Three months later he was back filming.

In short, Burnat is alive today to win prizes for a film about evil Israeli soldiers suppressing “nonviolent resistance” in Bil’in because those same evil Israeli soldiers saved his life four years earlier. And this is not an irrelevancy; it epitomizes the flaw in the “good Palestinians versus evil Israelis” trope: As anyone who makes any effort to discover the facts quickly learns, Israelis all too often refuse to play the part assigned to them.

Facts and logic do not work on the ideologues

Elder of Ziyon
09 January '11

Ha'aretz this morning (09 January) has another article that twists the facts of the Abu Rahma case. This one, by Gideon Levy, blames the IDF for what he thinks is clear evidence that Jawaher Abu Rahma's death, and he calls the IDF spokespeople liars.

Now there is no doubt that the IDF has not handled this as well as they should have. But what is even more clear is that there is no way that a healthy person with no other medical condition will be killed by a weak concentration of tear gas that hovered for a few seconds from between 150 and 500 meters away, depending on the version of the story.

So I commented on the story:

Never in history has anyone been documented of dying from CS tear gas inhalation outdoors - let alone from 150 meters away from the gas source. Never. It is essentially impossible to breathe in a lethal concentration of CS gas for the amount of time necessary for a healthy person to die in a ventilated area. Levy and Haaretz, by insisting otherwise, are the liars.

I received two responses. The first one was from Darwish:

Thank you for clearing that up. Now can you please list your credentials to lend support to your stated "facts."

So Ha'aretz has scientific credentials that I lack. I didn't know that.

The second one was:

How do you know all this? Researched intensively on tear gas use over the past 50 years have you? Doctorate in the subject? Even if this poor girl did have an underlying condition, it was evidently the gas which led to her death. Whether 99.9% of the population would not have died under the same circumstances is really not the issue. THe IDF should step up and take responsibility. Their constant evasion of responsibility is totally counterproductive.

So I answered:

Sources? Sure!
Physicians for Human Rights 1989 paper on tear gas
Archives of Toxicology vol 77 number 10 (misquoted by Haaretz on Friday)
BMJ June 2009
And, finally, Prof. Dr. Uwe Heinrich in his paper on CS at Waco said "There are no reports on human death related to CS exposure" in 2000.

Haaretz apparently doesn't let me put in URLs, but the reports are out there - IF you care about the truth and not simply finding fault with Israel.

(I had first tried putting in URLs to the blog, which Ha'aretz rejected.)

(Read full "Facts and logic do not work on the ideologues")

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Sky News Raises a Stink in Bilin

Honest Reporting/Backspin
09 January '11

UPDATE Jan. 9, 1:05 pm: Here's an IDF video of the incident. Doesn't look symbolic to me, and Waghorn's description of people throwing stones strikes me as under-stated, to say the least.



= = = = =

Friday marked the first Bilin fence protest since the day Jawaher Abu Rahma died. Sky News crew was on hand, and Dominic Waghorn's account stinks worse than his film crew, who were doused with The Skunk, one of the IDF's non-lethal forms of crowd control (more on that in a minute).

I don't agree with Waghorn's take on the nature of the protest, or his assessment of the IDF's non-lethal crowd-control measures. These four snippets highlight why:

Snippet 1.

Every week alongwith Israeli and international supporters, villagers symbolically march to the fence to try and reach their land beyond.

Symbolic? These protestors show up to exploit the news services, provoke the army, and -- if the opportunity presents itself -- damage the fence. For that matter, why not suggest that the Israeli crowd control measures are also symbolic?

Snippet 2.

I have interviewed the man who created Skunk, but never seen it used in anger before. He has succeeded in making yeast generate proteins producing a stench smelling somewhere between dead bodies and excrement.

Is Waghorn insinuating that the soldiers using The Skunk are controlled more by their emotions than by rules of engagement?

(Read full "Sky News Raises a Stink in Bilin")

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The demonstrators at Bil'in, "Completely Peaceful"

elderofziyon2
07 January '11

The weekly demonstrators at Bil'in in Israel always describe their activities as "peaceful" and "non-violent." But their own videos of the riots seem to show another story...



(Click here to visit Elder of Ziyon Video)


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Lying about tear gas deaths: Lisa Goldman and Joseph Dana

Elder of Ziyon
06 January '11

I stumbled across a tweet from self-described journalist Lisa Goldman, where she says "Amnesty Int'l documented 40 deaths in one year from the tear gas that killed Jawaher Abu Rahmah."

Her source? The rabidly anti-Israel lobby group, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. In 1992 they wrote:

Amnesty International has reported 40 deaths from CS tear gas inhalation alone from December 1987 to June 1988.

Notice this: Lisa did not try to look for the original Amnesty International report that supposedly says this. She linked to WRMEA; uncritically believing that they were quoting Amnesty. This is not how a journalist is supposed to act.

This piece of information of the supposed 40 deaths in a single year has now been rocketing around the Twittersphere and blogosphere and even some left wing websites. But no one has tried to find the actual report. Except for one person: Joseph Dana, of the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee - who may have started this rumor - says that Amnesty wrote it in their report "Israel and the Occupied Territories: Amnesty International’s concerns in 1988."

Amnesty's 1988 report is not online. But their response to Israel's criticisms regarding that report is. And here is how they defend their methodology:

(Read full "Lying about tear gas deaths: Lisa Goldman and Joseph Dana")

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NGOs lack credibility on the death of Jawaher Abu-Rahmeh

NGO Monitor
04 January '11

A number of NGO and media sources alleged that Jawaher Abu-Rahmeh died on January 1, 2011, as a result of inhaling tear gas fired by the IDF during an anti-security barrier demonstration. Senior Palestinian official Saeb Erekat labeled the death a “war crime,” and others claimed that Israeli soldiers were using “tear gas chemicals mixed with phosphorus.” Initial findings by the IDF, as well as other investigations, point to significant inconsistencies regarding the factual claims.

This incident recalls the September 2000 Al Dura case based on unverifiable claims that the IDF “targeted” and “murdered” a Palestinian child. The questions in these and other cases highlight the lack of credibility in many NGO reports alleging Palestinian deaths and injuries caused by the IDF.

(Read full "NGOs lack credibility on the death of Jawaher Abu-Rahmeh")

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The Abu Rahma Hoax (ElderToons)

Elder of Ziyon

03 January '11

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IDF Press Conference on Death of Abu Rahma

Jameel
The Muqata
03 January '11

10 PM - Exclusive Update:

Senior IDF military sources briefed an exclusive group of bloggers this evening on the events surrounding this past Friday's Bilin demonstration and the "alleged tear gassing to death" of a Palestinian woman, Jawaher Abu Rahma.

IDF: We have reason to believe that the death 2 days ago was because of another reason than what the Palestinians are claiming (tear gas inhalation).

Facts: Abu Rahma's documented lab work is dated on Friday at 2:45 PM.
Her admission time to the ER in the same Ramallah hospital was 3:20 PM.

Hospital Lab work is usually done after you arrive at the hospital, not before you arrive.

There is no hospital ER admission report, no ER summary report, and no hospital records of this woman.

The official PA Ramallah Hospital's death certificate for Abu Rahma states as the cause of death as follows (this is word for word):

Cause of death “Inhaling gas of an Israeli solider according to the family”

That is the entire medical basis for the family's allegations.

We know this woman visited the same hospital 10 days ago and many other times in the past month. When we looked at the medication she was taking – it was for cancer.

(Read full "IDF Press Conference on Death of Abu Rahma")

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Bi'lin, Pallywood at it's best

Yosef
22 August '10

This is really Pallywood at it's best. I know some of you may hurt yourselves from excessive laughter, but please try to show some self-control.There are two Youtubes here covering the same event, the 1st one being the ripped out of context version, the 2nd with enough footage to get the big picture. As these might get pulled, anyone who wants to download the pair for future comparison, now's the time. Enjoy!

#1


and
#2


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