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Human Rights Watch Accepts Israeli Findings Kenneth R. Timmerman, NewsMax Jerusalem, Israel – A left-wing human rights organization that has accused Israel of killing a Palestinian family during a beach outing 10 days ago in Gaza, has accepted the findings of an Israeli Army investigation that Israeli artillery fire was not responsible for the civilian casualties.
A self-styled "military expert" for Human Rights Watch, Marc Garlasco, had alleged that an errant Israeli artillery shell, fired in retaliation for Palestinian rocket attacks into Jewish towns inside Israel, had strayed onto the beach and killed the Palestinian family on June 9. Garlasco, who has no artillery experience or forensics training, has been unable to explain how a 155 millimeter artillery shell could explode amid sand dunes without leaving a huge crater. He emerged from a three-hour meeting in Tel Aviv yesterday praising the competence of Maj. Gen. Meir Klifi and his military forensics team in investigating the Gaza beach explosion. "We came to an agreement with Gen. Klifi that the most likely cause [of the blast] was unexploded Israeli ordnance," Garlasco told the Jerusalem Post after the meeting. But an Israeli official present at the meeting told NewsMax that that is not the case. "We agreed that no Israeli shell was fired at the beach that day, and that we could not yet determine what caused the explosion," an official present at the three-hour meeting said. "It might have been an old Israeli mine, or an unexploded shell. Or it could have been a makeshift explosive device."
The Israeli government has said that Hamas operated an explosives factory not far from the site of the beachfront accident. Israeli military forensic experts examined artillery logs that showed conclusively that no shells were fired anywhere in the vicinity of the Gaza beach within 10 minutes of the explosion.
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They also have examined a single piece of shrapnel, taken from one of the wounded victims who was transported to an Israeli hospital, and determined that it was composed of metal "unlike anything in the Israeli arsenal," an Israeli government spokesman told NewsMax. Palestinian doctors who examined the bodies on the beach removed most of the shrapnel before the wounded could be transported to Israel for treatment. "The shrapnel remaining in their bodies cannot be removed without endangering their lives," the Israeli spokesman said. Garlasco came to yesterday's meeting with an additional piece of shrapnel he claimed had been found at the scene of the explosion. "If this were a crime scene, you'd have to say that it has been compromised," the Israeli spokesman said. "There is no chain of evidence, no way to know where that shrapnel came from, or that it is in any way connected with the explosion." The Guardian and the Independent newspapers in Britain have been particularly virulent in claiming that Israel deliberately targeted Palestinian civilians in artillery attacks, and have seized upon the earlier allegations by Garlasco and Human Rights Watch as proof of Israeli misdeeds. Fearing that Garlasco might twist the contents of the meeting, the Israeli military taped the entire three-hour session. Dr. Gerald Steinberg of Bar Ilan University has been tracking non-governmental organizations operating in Israel for several years. "Human Rights Watch has a political agenda, based on Israel bashing, and Garlasco is not what he purports to be," he told NewsMax in Jerusalem.
An earlier Human Rights Watch report that used Garlasco as a military forensics expert made "unverified and unsubstantiated claims" that Israel had razed Palestinian neighborhoods in Rafah, on the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, he said. News organizations plastered the photograph of a terror-stricken 6-year old girl, grieving the loss of her family on the Gaza beach, on front pages around the world. But the photograph was staged by Hamas fighters who rushed to the scene after the explosion, new video footage of the immediate aftermath of the attack shows. Israeli military officials identified a Palestinian photographer with known ties to Hamas from video footage shot in the aftermath of the beachfront tragedy. The photographer arrived with Hamas fighters after emergency aid workers had covered the bodies and taken them to ambulances, and could be seen giving direction to aid workers to "set up the scene for the photoshoot," an Israeli official who viewed the footage told NewsMax. He also coached the girl whose photograph hit the front pages around the world. "This is very similar to the Mohammad al Dura case," an Israeli government spokesman said, "where Palestinian stage-managers have created fictional facts that many in the media bought into uncritically." The alleged killing of a 6-year old Palestinian boy by Israeli soldiers in September 2000 led to "six years of fighting," he added. An Israeli army investigation, which examined all footage taken by Palestinian camera crews on scene, concluded that it was physically impossible for Israel soldiers to have shot the boy, since they were positioned around a corner. Mohammad al Dura and his father could be seen looking fearfully at Palestinian gunmen positioned directly across from them just before they were shot, in video footage that was aired on French television. The Palestinians were now trying to export their "stage-managed massacres" to Iraq, the Israeli official said. A Palestinian photographer, Mazen Dana, was killed by U.S. forces in Fallujah in 2004 when American soldiers saw him encouraging Fallujah residents to stage a riot for a camera crew.
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