Israel Hiding Evidence of Its Own Innocence is Really Not Helpful - by Evelyn Gordon

...Israel has many valid answers to that question, including the fact that its civilian-to-military casualty ratio is actually lower than that of other Western armies. But these answers are useless if it doesn’t take the trouble to publicize them. Sitting on exculpatory information about a high-profile case for eight years is hardly the way to assuage its supporters’ concerns.

Evelyn Gordon..
Analysis from Israel..
15 March '17..
Link: http://evelyncgordon.com/hiding-evidence-of-its-own-innocence/

I’m not naïve enough to think that better PR would solve all of Israel’s international relations problems. But there’s no question that incompetent PR makes its situation much worse. As one example, consider Tuesday’s shocking revelation: Within about 24 hours of the most high-profile civilian casualty incident of the 2009 Gaza war, Israel had obtained evidence casting doubt on its responsibility for that death. But it sat on this evidence for more than eight years, finally releasing it only as part of a defense brief in a civil suit by the victims’ father.

The incident in question took place on January 16, 2009, when Israeli troops fighting in Gaza came under sniper fire. The troops fired two shells at an observation post that seemed to be directing the snipers. The observation post was located on the third floor of a building which, unbeknownst to the soldiers, was also the home of a well-known doctor, Izzeldin Abuelaish. Three of Abuelaish’s daughters were killed, along with one of his nieces; several other family members were wounded. Abuelaish, who worked in Israel, maintained good relations with Israelis and advocated for Israeli-Palestinian peace, later became famous worldwide when he published a book about this incident and his response to it, called I Shall Not Hate.

Israel was blamed worldwide for the Abuelaish casualties and never publicly challenged the assumption of its guilt. Yet it now turns out that within a day after the incident, it had evidence indicating that its shells may not have caused the carnage.

The evidence came in the form of laboratory tests conducted on six pieces of shrapnel extracted from the two casualties treated in Israel (the other wounded weren’t brought to Israel, nor were any of the dead, so no shrapnel from the other victims was available). The tests showed that alongside traces of various explosives used by both the Israel Defense Forces and Hamas, at least one fragment contained an explosive called R-Salt, which isn’t used by the IDF but is commonly used in improvised explosive devices in Gaza. Moreover, all six fragments contained potassium nitrate, another substance not used in IDF weaponry that is used in Hamas’s homemade Qassam rockets.

A follow-up report a month later, which compared the shrapnel to the specific type of Israeli shells fired, concluded that four of the six fragments could not possibly have come from those shells; a fifth “may have come” from an IDF shell, and apparently, no conclusions were possible about the sixth.

All of the above indicates that Hamas or a smaller Palestinian organization was using the house as a weapons cache. According to the IDF, there is no other way to account for the presence of non-IDF explosives in the shrapnel.

The "ceasefire" - Time for media to reflect on double standards

Richard Kemp..
thejc.com..
22 November '12..

The mobilisation of Israeli forces around Gaza this week was strikingly reminiscent of the British and American build-up of troops along the Kuwait and Iraq borders before Operation Desert Storm, the massive armoured counter-attack that hurled Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait in 1991.

Talking to some of the men and women heading to the front - reservists and full-time soldiers alike - was just like talking to British soldiers. The same humour, the same stoicism, the same unspoken apprehension of the fighting man about to put his life on the line.

While I know many British Jews serve with the Israeli military, I was nevertheless taken aback to hear the dulcet, north-London tones of a couple of English lads in IDF khaki at a service station south of Ashkelon. After 30 years in the infantry, I am a good judge of soldiers. Like every one of their Israeli brothers-in-arms that I met, these men were absolutely not the bloodthirsty killers so often portrayed in the international media.

Yet much of the media, and many politicians, diplomats and human-rights activists believe there is an equivalence between the military actions of a Western democratic nation seeking to lawfully defend its people and a jihadist terrorist group indiscriminately attacking civilians and using its population as human shields. I recall no such equivalence being drawn between Allied forces attacking under international law, and the rape, plunder and callous violence of Saddam's forces on the rampage in Kuwait.

Predictably enough, the media has been full of shrill accusations of indiscriminate Israeli air strikes and deliberate targeting of civilians. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Where is Goldstone now?

Why is world silent in wake of killing of innocent civilians in Afghanistan?


Eitan Haber
Israel Opinion/Ynet
24 February '10

Here are the dry numbers (after all the tears have dried up): Earlier this week, NATO forces hit several vehicles in Afghanistan and killed 27 innocent Afghanis, including four women and a child.

And a reminder to those who forgot: A short while ago, 13 other innocent Afghanis were killed after a missile mistakenly targeted a residential home instead of a Taliban position.

Let there be no misunderstandings about it: Even though I am writing this thousands of kilometers away from the scene of these incidents, and even though we are talking about anonymous families in a foreign and hostile country, one is pained by the loss of life and by the sudden death of people who wanted to live, love, build a home and plant a tree. In this respect, our tears are real; tears are similar in every corner of the world.

But now, after all of the above had been said, we a have a small question; a tiny question, a minor one, something wholly insignificant: Where are you, Goldstone?

Here is an unintelligent guess: The world that cries out and weeps for every scratch suffered by a Palestinian child (and we are opposed to even such scratch,) the same world that portrays the State of Israel every morning (in newspapers) and every night (on TV) as the killer and butcher of children and as a state that fires into homes only to find bleeding bodies later on, that world will be silent, or at most offer some lip service in respect to the incident described above.

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