Human Rights Watch switches stories on the Gaza beach killings

It was Mark Garlasco of Human Rights Watch who was more than anyone else responsible for casting doubt on the official Israeli enquiries findings, that the tragic June 9th deaths of a Palestinian family on the Gaza beach were not caused by shelling they had done earlier.

Garlasco's account was enthusiastically promoted by the British press, notably by Chris McGreal of The Guardian. He uncritically reported Garlasco's assertions as recently as Saturday 17th June in an article subheaded Guardian investigation casts doubt on Israeli claim that army was not to blame:

..the army's account quickly came in for criticism, led by a former Pentagon battlefield analyst, Marc Garlasco, investigating for Human Rights Watch. "You have the crater size, the shrapnel, the types of injuries, their location on the bodies. That all points to a shell dropping from the sky, not explosives under the sand," he said. "I've been to hospital and seen the injuries. The doctors say they are primarily to the head and torso. That is consistent with a shell exploding above the ground, not a mine under it."

Mr Garlasco also produced shrapnel from the site apparently marked as a 155mm shell used by the army that day.

In my most recent post on the contradictory IDF and Garlasco explanations, I reproduced the Human Rights Watch report of Garlasco's findings verbatim. It actually relied heavily on Palestinian witness and bomb disposal staff statements about the timing and location of what they claimed was the shelling they witnessed.

Now Human Rights Watch and Garlasco have admitted that the IDF account "cannot be contradicted". Without directly saying so, they have conceded that despite Garlasco's previous assertions, the deaths were not directly caused by artillery shelling as they had claimed.

Garlasco has met with the Israeli investigatory authorities, and now states that the deaths "most likely" resulted from unexploded Israeli ordnance on the beach, despite having previously claimed that he saw craters which were only consistent with shells dropping out of the sky. He also praised the professional quality of the IDF investigations:

On Monday, Maj.-Gen. Meir Klifi - head of the IDF inquiry commission that cleared the IDF of responsibility for the blast - met with Marc Garlasco, a military expert from the HRW who had last week claimed that the blast was caused by an IDF artillery shell. Following the three-hour meeting, described by both sides as cordial and pleasant, Garlasco praised the IDF's professional investigation into the blast, which he said was most likely caused by unexploded Israeli ordnance left laying on the beach, a possibility also raised by Klifi and his team.

"We came to an agreement with General Klifi that the most likely cause [of the blast] was unexploded Israeli ordinance," Garlasco told The Jerusalem Post following the meeting. While Klifi's team did a "competent job" to rule out the possibility that the blast was caused by artillery fire, there were still, Garlasco said, a number of pieces of evidence that the IDF commission did not take into consideration. .....

Garlasco told Klifi during the meeting that he was impressed with the IDF's system of checks and balances concerning its artillery fire in the Gaza Strip and unlike Hamas which specifically targeted civilians in its rocket attacks, the Israelis, he said, invested a great amount of resources and efforts not to harm innocent civilians.

"We do not believe the Israelis were targeting civilians." Garlasco said. "We just want to know if it was an Israeli shell that killed the Palestinians."

Lucy Mair - head of the HRW's Jerusalem office - said Klifi's team had conducted a thorough and professional investigation of the incident and made "a good assessment" when ruling out the possibility that an errant IDF shell had killed the seven Palestinians on the Gaza beach.

As I commented previously, Mr Garlasco seems to have a remarkable tendency to radically recast his accounts of his actions to match emerging evidence. His entire previous case was about active Israeli shelling dropping out of the sky, which he had said was almost beyond doubt responsible.

And I wonder if Chris McGreal of the Guardian, Donald McIntyre of the Independent, and the BBC News web site will now report in full Garlasco and Human Rights Watch's latest statements that the Israeli forces invest such effort not to harm innocent civilians and were correct in stating that an errant shell did not cause the killings.

And will they raise questions about the Palestinian witness evidence they so graphically reported, which had barrages of shells landing in the midst of the family on the beach?

Or will they raise questions about why the Palestinian authorities permit families to use a beach which they must know is likely to have unexploded ordnance lying on it?

Comments

[Fabián]

"Or will they raise questions about why the Palestinian authorities permit families to use a beach which they must know is likely to have unexploded ordnance lying on it?"

First of all, they don't care.
But also, Palestinians and Beduins, both inside Israel and in the territories collect scrap metal. It wouldn't be strange that one in that family touched a dud and it exploded.

Every year, at least a dozen people die in Israel because of this. (I remember two recent cases)

[The Daughter]

For all that the Palestinian Authorities may not care, they very much DO care! This has been wonderful propaganda for their cause, Abbas himself coming out and saying that it was a deliberate terror attack carried out by the Israelis taking advantage of the diversion created while Olmert was out of the country. The PA news channel itself broadcast a faked tape with footage from the aftermath of the deaths interspersed with archive footage of Israeli gunboats firing shells. The little girl Huda has been ruthlessly exploited and paraded in front of the media. She has become a living marytr to the Palestinian cause, because she has been directed to channel her grief and anguish into hate of Israel instead of being allowed to properly mourn the loss of her family.

They care about the Palestinian cause. The same care does not always extend to the Palestinian people.

[David in DC]

The Palestinians put on the full court press here. Unfortunately for them, the IDF broke the press and got a slam dunk at the other end.

I think it is in part because Hamas' popularity is dropping, and the revelation that they murdered this group of beachgoers would not have helped matters at all. We generally see that these eye-witness accounts are less than reliable, but Hamas went further here and apparently fabricated evidence.

Another point - the HRW smears the IDF in their initial press release:

However, such internal investigations by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have generally fallen short of international standards for thorough and impartial investigations and have rarely uncovered the truth or held to account the perpetrators of violations, as documented in a 2005 Human Rights Watch report, Promoting Impunity: The Israeli Military’s Failure to Investigate Wrongdoing.

At the same time they rely on a group that is even "less thorough and impartial" (read: has been busted fabricating evidence and lying through their teeth).

Now that the group has, once again, been busted lying through their teeth, hiding evidence and in all probability fabricating it as well, will HRW note this in their revised report? Will they note that this happens regularly? Most importantly, will they document it in a 2006 Human Rights Watch report perhaps titled, Libelous Deception: The Palestinians' Penchant for Deflecting Blame and Fabricating Victimhood.

[Lynne]

Per an earlier post, just how much credibility do we give to an organization like HRW, that admitted after Saddam's fall that it knew of such outrages as the special childrens' "holding facility" at Abu Graib, but kept silent for fear of being kicked out of the country and thus be unable to do anything to help.

[richard Landes]

In a book on the accusation of poisoning schoolgrils in Jenin in 1983 (Poison), Rafi Israeli described the Israeli (and more broadly the Jewish) condition. When the accusations came out, everyone was on it. When the refutation came, the Israeli media reported it, the Arab media denied it and the Western media fell silent. Israel is caught between libel and silence.

[Schnitzel]

"A lie can travel halfway round the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." - Twain (attributed)

[Family Cohen Yerushalayim I"H]

The BBC still carries the initial assertions by HRW in a highly emotive piece about picnicing on Gaza Beaches. It is so biased as to be funny.
In addition it is running a selection of pictures on UN Refugee Day and you guessed all the so called "refugees" (if you see well nourished look of these "refugees" you will understand what I mean) come from "Palestine" - not a single picture of the Darfur Refugees the Rwanda Refugees etc etc. It is becoming so that the BBC is now the official mouthpiece of the PLO - but of course we must not accuse them of bias.

[Yankev]

Now that the IDF has coninced Human Rights Watch, is normblog going to retract his endorsement of the calls for an "impartial" investigation?

[jeffrey Mushens]

HRW change their story when they get better evidence. I wish more people did the same.

[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. 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.