Fwd: [JohnDeweyPolitics] Was the Qana massacre a hoax?

Is this side of the story being aired or is the media going to let it
die because they may have put their foot in their mouth? I seems to
me that the rage of the attrocity of Qana has faded very quickly.
Hezbollah has gotten it's PR score from it and now let's let it fade
fast before the media outlets have to admit again how unreliable they
are.

According to what I am seeing concerning the Qana Massacre. It has
so far had it's numbers drop from 65 to 56 to less than 30 to the
fact that it may be a ghoulish hoax altogether. I have read some AP
stories defending the front line reporters version. The defense
looks weak to me and I am certain that they will not and cannot give
alot of play to this side of the story for a couple of reasons. The
two main reasons are many of the front line reporters are only there
in the first place because many of them are already Hezbollah
sympathizers. That is their key to have access to the Hezbollah
controlled front line. So much for an independent press, this is
Hezbollah land we are talking about. Another major problem is the
murderous, lawless nature of who Hezbollah is, if a fair and balanced
story is run, and it is not to the liking of Hezzbollah, the writer
will be murdered.

There was horror and rage over the Israeli wonton blood letting at
Qana. At worst this was an error in time of war, human sheilds,
huamn error, etc. Will there be at least a subdued rage for the
cynical and ghoulish parading and shifting of bodies? Why don't we
see such a horror and rage at the Park Hotel massacre that left
dozens dead? The number 2 bus bombing that left over twenty dead,
including a grandmother and her grandson? The Dolphinairium that
left around fifty teenagers dead. Only we do not parade our dead
for the cameras. So we don't get the shocking, emotional coverage
they do.

Nachum

http://web.israelinsider.com/home.htm

Hezbollywood?
Evidence mounts that Qana collapse and deaths were staged
By Reuven Koret July 31, 2006

It was to be a perfect Hollywood ending for Hezbollah. Just as the
Israeli bombing of the village of Qana in 1996 brought a premature
end to Israel's Operation "Grapes of Wrath," so too a sequel of Qana
II could change, once and for all, the direction of Israel's current
summer blockbuster, "Change of Direction." Ten years ago, world
condemnation of an errant Israeli shell that hit a civilian compound
forced then-PM Shimon Peres to curtail the offensive against terror
bases.

The setting was also perfect: Kana was again being used as a primary
site for launching rockets against Israeli cities. The IDF reported
that more than 150 rockets had been launched from Qana and its
vicinity at Israeli civilians, wreaking destruction in Kiryat Shmona,
Maalot, Nahariya and Haifa. It was only a matter of time before the
Israeli Air Force would come for a visit, using pinpoint targeting of
the sites used to launch rockets, Hezbollah logistical centers and
weapon storage facilities.

On the morning of July 30, according to the IDF, the air force came
in three waves. In the first, between midnight and one in the
morning, there was a strike at or near the building that eventually
collapsed.

Brent Sadler of CNN reports that the Israeli ordnance did not even
hit the building but landed "20 or 30 meters" from the structure.

There was a second strike at other targets far from the collapse
building several hours later, and a third strike at around 7:30 in
the morning. There too the nearest hit was some 460 meters away,
according to the IDF. But first reports of a building collapse came
only around 8 am.

Thus there was an unexplained 7 to 8 hour gap between the time of the
helicopter strike and the building collapse. Brigadier General Amir
Eshel, Head of the Air Force Headquarters, in a press briefing, told
journalists that "the attack on the structure in the Qana village
took place between midnight and one in the morning. The gap between
the timing of the collapse of the building and the time of the strike
on it is unclear."

Gen. Eshel appeared genuinely mystified by the gap in time. He "I'm
saying this very carefully, because at this time I don't have a clue
as to what the explanation could be for this gap," he added.

The army's only explanation was that somehow there was unexploded
Hezbollah ordnance in the building that only detonated much later.

"It could be that inside the building, things that could eventually
cause an explosion were being housed, things that we could not blow
up in the attack, and maybe remained there, Brigadier General Eshel
said.

Eshel reported that as recently as two days ago, military
intelligence reported the building area had been used by the
terrorists for storage or firing of weapons. It was a bad place to
cram dozens of women and children.

There are other mysteries. The roof of the building was intact.
Journalist Ben Wedeman of CNN noted that there was a larger crater
next to the building, but observed that the building appeared not to
have collapsed as a result of the Israeli strike.

Why would the civilians who had supposedly taken shelter in the
basement of the building not leave after the post-midnight attack?
They just went back to sleep and had the bad luck to wait for the
building to collapse in the morning?

National Public Radio's correspondent reported that residents of that
building had left and the victims were non-residents who chose to
shelter in the building that night. They were "too poor" to leave the
down, one resident told CNN's Wedeman. Who were these people?

What we do know is that sometime after dawn a call went hour to
journalists and rescue workers to come to the scene. And come they
did, in droves.

While Hezbollah and its apologists have been claiming that civilians
could not freely flee the scene due to Israeli destruction of bridges
and roads, the journalists and rescue teams from nearby Tyre had no
problem getting there.

Lebanese rescue teams did not start evacuating the building until the
morning and only after the camera crews came. The absence of a real
rescue effort was explained by saying that equipment was lacking.
There were no scenes of live or injured people being extracted.

There was little blood, CNN's Wedeman noted: all the victims, he
concluded, appeared to have died while as they were sleeping --
sleeping, apparently, through thunderous Israeli air attacks. Rescue
workers equipped with cameras were removing the bodies from the same
opening in the collapsed structure. Journalists were not allowed near
the collapsed building.

Rescue workers filmed as they went carried the victims on the
stretchers, occasionally flipping up the blankets so that cameras
could show the faces and bodies of the dead.

But Israelis steeled to scenes of carnage from Palestinian suicide
bombings and Hezbollah rocket attack could not help but notice that
these victims did not look like our victims. Their faces were ashen
gray. While medical examination clearly is called for to arrive at a
definitive dating and cause of their deaths, they do not appear to
have died hours before. The bodies looked like they had been dead for
days.

Viewers can judge for themselves. But the accumulating evidence
suggests another explanation for what happened at Kana. The scenario
would be a setup in which the time between the initial Israeli
bombing near the building and morning reports of its collapse would
have been used to "plant" bodies killed in previous fighting --
reports in previous days indicated that nearby Tyre was used as a
temporary morgue -- place them in the basement, and then engineer
a "controlled demolition" to fake another Israeli attack.

The well-documented use by Palestinians of this kind of faked
footage -- from the alleged shooting of Mohammed Dura in Gaza, scenes
from Jenin of "dead" victims falling off gurneys and then climbing
back on -- have merited the creation of a new film genre
called "Palliwood."

There is increasing evidence that the Kana sequel is another episode
in this genre, a variety which might be called Hezbollywood. The
Hezbollah have evidently learned their craft well.

The current suspension of Israeli military air activity is supposedly
intended, among other things, to be used for the investigation of
what really happened at Qana. It is to be hoped that there are real
journalists on the scene, and unbiased medical examiners, who will
have the courage and intelligence to sort out the anomalies and
contradictions, and get to the buried truth of what happened.

There is no shortage of victims in Lebanon and Israel these days.
From this vantage point, at this time, it looks like in the case of
Qana, the world's media was duped in a cruel and colossal hoax by a
terror organization that knows no moral bounds in its exploitation of
suffering and anti-Israel hatred. But, as usual, the only party
expected to pay the full price will be Israelis.

Yes, it would be a Hollywood ending for it all to end in Qana,
exactly as it did a decade ago. But perfect endings, and perfect
crimes, are rarely pulled off in real life.

Israelis will not be able to investigate this claim directly. The
question remains whether honest men and women of other nationalities
will let this likely lie stand or press for the revelation of the
improbable and inconvenient truth.

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