Did they fix it? No, they didn't

When I posted about Mark Garlasco and Human Rights Watch's admission that the Israeli army investigation about the Gaza beach killings could not be contradicted, I wondered whether the British press and the BBC would now correct the fevered accounts they have been running nailing Israel as guilty of shelling innocent families.

Well, no. They haven't. I've been through today's online editions of the Times, the Independent, the Guardian, and the BBC News web site. So far I have been unable to find a single reference to this story, although it was fully covered by the Jerusalem Post last night.

And it seems the New York Times is also silent on the change in the Garlasco/HRW line.

Astonishingly, that Jerusalem Post report tonight carries an update stating that one of the Palestinian victims from the Gaza beach being treated in Israel's Ichilov Hospital was received in a coma from the Gazan Shifa Hospital with cuts all over her body where the Gaza medics had removed all the medically reachable shrapnel:

Ichilov hospital did not accuse Shifa Hospital in Gaza of directly of removing shrapnel for no medical reason, but it said that it had never received a patient who was in an explosion with all the shrapnel removed (except for one unreachable piece).

"This is surprising and raises questions" about the care she received in Shifa, the Ichilov spokeswoman said. Asked whether Ichilov surgeons had contacted Shifa doctors who treated the patient to ask the reason for the incisions to remove shrapnel, the spokeswoman said: "We are not in such close contact with Shifa. We received the medical report on the patient, and that's all."

Israeli authorities say the chances are "one-in-a-billion" that she was hurt by an Israeli missile.

In most cases, some shrapnel remains in the victim's body and stays there for the rest of his life, the hospital said.

By contrast, the HRW volte-face has had widespread coverage in the blogosphere.

My hit counter hit the roof as I got an instalanche thanks to Glen Reynolds, and my post was picked up by high-volume bloggers in the US, the UK, Europe and Israel.

And of course, the readership reach of the Jerusalem Post story will have been very much higher.

It is an absolute disgrace that, having been so ready to trumpet Garlasco's initial assertions that the deaths must have been caused by shells dropping from the sky as proof of Israel's guilt, these bastions of MSM pride have ignored what is really a sensational double-whammy story. Not just Garlasco's volte-face and praise of the Israeli army's efforts to avoid harming civilians, and its conduct of the enquiry into the Gaza deaths. But also, the revelation of Gazan medics' medically unnecessary removal of what must be key further evidence about whose ordnance caused the shellings.

Comments

[Dude]

The Jpost article wasn't correct.

Here's the HRW and Garlasco's position after the meeting with Kalifi:

http://hrw.org/english/docs/2006/06/20/israb13595.htm

It hasn't changed.

You should correct your statements on this.

[Judy]

Dude, I've carefully read HRW's latest press release, and recommend all readers to do so.
It does not contradict any of the statements I quoted Garlasco and his boss making to the Jerusalem Post, which acknowledge that the findings of the IDF report, that the deaths were not caused by aerial shelling, cannot be contradicted, and that the investigation was conducted meticulously. What it tries to do is to pick out anything it can to cast doubt on the IDF version, whilst concealing the admissions they made to the Jerusalem Post reporter. It actually covers over the fact that they sent their own data to the IDF and discussed it with them, as I heard Garlasco acknowledge on BBC Radio 4. In the light of their admissions to the JP, that makes this press release yet more proof of their loaded and dishonest political agenda. If they had been misquoted or misrepresented by the JP, you can be sure they would have issued a furious press release to that effect.

[Dude]

The HRW report states that it was an 155mm artillery shell fired that day. This is contrary to the earlier reports of Kalifi/IDF. Jpost fails to mention this so as to appear that the IDF was right and Garlasco was wrong.

Yet the conclusion was that the IDF was wrong and it was an artillery shell that killed the victims.

[Judy]

Dude, The HRW report is based on Garlasco's claims to have retrieved a 155 mm shell from the Gaza beach in the vicinity of the deaths. That doesn't mean it was fired that day or that it was part of the explosion that killed the family. It also does not establish that it wasn't planted there by Hamas operatives who were seen to be on the beach at the time of the explosion.