ShortLink http://wp.me/pDB7k-1bM
An analysis of some of the information available relating to the deaths of Nadim Nuwara and Mohammad Abu Thaher in Beitunia on May 15th 2014 in the occupied State of Palestine
“He fell forward. A bullet would have knocked him away from the fire, he should have fallen back…” Bullsh*t! A rabbit isn’t even knocked away from the fire of a .22 bullet
The Palestinians ask for their legal rights under the Laws and UN Charter Israel agreed to uphold.
Meanwhile, “Israel, the Occupying Power” makes demands that have no legal basis what so ever. Read UNSC res 476, one of EIGHT reminders to Israel of its legal obligations and giving Israel the OPPORTUNITY to adhere to the law. Unfortunately the Jewish state has failed to live up to the promises it made when it was proclaimed and when it became a UN Member state.
First, find out what isn't true... 
thanks for this.
Comment by Free Palestine — May 30, 2014 @ 11:43 pm
No problem. Use anything on the site.
Cheers
t
Comment by talknic — May 31, 2014 @ 12:44 am
Yes, thank you Talknic: I value everything you write/post on here and on Mondo.
Comment by Susan A — May 31, 2014 @ 1:58 am
I haven’t been following the debate closely but it seems to me that the hasbara has been very successful in diverting attention from the demonstrated reckless or murderous behavior of the idf. Suppose (contrary to all proof to the opposite) that the hasbara claim that the Palestinians were shot with rubber bullets were true. The behavior of the idf would STILL be murderous or reckless: the Rules of Engagement for the idf prohibit to shoot the body even with rubber bullets. As a soldier explained to Haaretz:
http://www.haaretz.com/misc/article-print-page/1.596208?trailingPath=2.169%2C2.216%2C2.217%2C
“The explicit orders are not to shoot to the center of the body or higher, only to the legs”
This holds true even in cases the Palestinian victim is about to throw a stone. The amount of force that one is allowed to use is the minimum that can stop the presumed imminent threat, and a rubber bullet at the legs clearly can prevent the stone-throw.
But in our case the Palestinians were not even presenting a threat, they were not about to throw a stone, they shouldn’t have been shot at all, even with rubber bullets. The fact that they were shot is clearly against any morally sane conception of the Rules of Engagement.
So the soldier(s) who shot them were either murderous or reckless (depending on whether they wanted to kill, or only to injure so as to get their adrenalin fix). Amos Harel, a military analyst of Haaretz, said with regards to this quest for adrenalin:
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.596113
“A fact that is not widely discussed is that for quite a few soldiers who participate in dispersing demonstrations it’s a chance to take part in the “action” – firing shots, albeit it with non-lethal ammunition, in the midst of the chaos, and the adrenaline rush of a confrontation. We can reasonably assume that the soldier was seeking an exciting experience, or an escape from boredom, and that the Border Police acceded to his request to allow him to fire rubber bullets at the demonstration.”
This is so monstrous, one doesn’t even feel like making a joke with the resemblance of this idf soldier with the adrenalin-junkie in the Oscar-winner film “The Hurt Locker”.
And why do the soldiers feel so free to discharge (literally and metaphorically?) at the Palestinians? Because impunity is guaranteed statistically:
http://www.yesh-din.org/infoitem.asp?infocatid=435
Since 2000 until 2013 just one soldier has done serious time in prison for manslaughter – hey, he didn’t kill a Palestinian , he killed a British, that’s why he was unlucky and had to do some time.
PS: I have notice the hasbarats usually attempt to discredit Haaretz as a “leftie” newspaper -as if this is an indictment for a newspaper. Anyway, they can’t do so in the case of Amos Harel, even the most hardcore right-wingers admit Harel is credible. I am not posting the link from a right-wing blog that proves my claim, i can email it privately to anyone who wants it.
Comment by Dionissis Mitropoulos — May 30, 2014 @ 10:36 pm
Hi Dionissis, yes, ‘Since 2000 until 2013 just one soldier has done serious time in prison for manslaughter – hey, he didn’t kill a Palestinian,he killed a British, that’s why he was unlucky and had to do some time.’ The guy who was jailed for killing Tom Hurndal was also unlucky in that he wasn’t Jewish; he was an Arab (probably Druze). I remember he said he was being scapegoated, and this is of course is true because hundreds of others have got away with murder, and continue to do so. I can’t access the Haaretz article because I’ve reached my ‘6 articles in a month’, though it used to be 10. Anyway, I think I’ve read it or something similar. For how much longer do we all have to keep saying that this has got to stop? We just have to keep on pushing,I suppose……thanks again Talknic for your always valuable contribution.
Comment by Susan A — May 31, 2014 @ 2:09 am
Hi Susan, thank you for the info. You said: “For how much longer do we all have to keep saying that this [idf transgressions and soldiers impunity] has got to stop? We just have to keep on pushing,I suppose”. I am someone who had been swallowing hasbara hook, line, and sinker (it’s only recently that i saw the light) and i think that the pushing will have to keep on for long, because the hasbara is very successful in diverting the discussion from the real issues by exploiting every insignificant detail they can. Haaretz is the most trustworthy newspaper on the I/P (as i found out now that i have subscribed), yet the hasbara machine had managed to trick me into thinking that it is was not credible(by exploiting a random minor and insignificant mistake of Haaretz, mistakes that every single paper on the planet might have made, and make it look like it is the norm).Hasbara is full of half-truths, or mistaken literal interpretations. To give an example, when Amnesty issued its recent report about the IDF being trigger-happy, the hasbarats wheeled out this British Colonel that they usually use as a military expert during times of heightened armed conflict in Gaza to inform us that the IDF is the most moral army on the world etc., Richard Kemp. Now, this Kemp character claimed that Amnesty’s report was not credible, and offered as proof the following:
http://www.thejc.com/comment-and-debate/analysis/115956/amnesty-has-produced-anti-israel-propaganda
” the glib dismissal [by Amnesty]of petrol bombs as posing “little or no threat” to the lives of Israeli soldiers. I have seen first-hand how horrifically a petrol bomb can wound a soldier.”
So what did our Mr Kemp say again? That Amnesty dismissed the petrol bombs as dangerous. But Amnesty had not denied the seriousness of the injuries that a petrol bomb can cause. Amnesty was denying that the THROWING of the bombs from a LONG DISTANCE can cause serious harm (and Amnesty is obviously on the right, because if a petrol bomb is thrown from such a long distance that it cannot reach its target, then it can’t possibly represent a threat). Here is the exact sentence from the Amnesty Report(page 8):
Click to access mde150022014en.pdf
“On occasions, the army [IDF]has claimed that protesters used petrol bombs but if such cases did occur they were departures from the norm, and even then may have posed little risk to Israeli soldiers due to the distance from which they were thrown.”
So Kemp-the-Colononel- Fraud was trying to make Amnesty look like not being credible, on account of purportedly being so partisan as to dismiss the obvious truth that generally petrol bombs can cause serious burning, whereas Amnesty was only drawing attention to the fact that protesters might have NOT thrown petrol bombs from a CLOSE distance, and hence THESE incidents were not posing any threat. This is standard hasbara, trying to make human-rights orgs look completely insane. I regret that i had bought into this hasbara (i have to give it to the hasbarats, they are good into tricking people).
He also lied (by taking a sentence out of its context) that Amnesty admitted having no military expertise (same link):
“Salil Shetty, Amnesty’s Secretary General, said in an interview only a few days ago: “Amnesty International is not an organisation with expertise on military situations”. This report shows just how true that is. For example, the glib dismissal of petrol bombs…”
He was betting on the fact that no one would take the trouble to watch the actual video and see what Amnesty’s Secretary really meant:
http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/talktojazeera/2014/02/salil-shetty-speaking-truth-power-201427102725815233.html
At minute 10:40 the interviewer asks the Amnesty Secretary whether military interventions can be justified if they are supposed to save lives. Now that’s a hugely polarizing topic within the progressive community, and obviously Amnesty wants to steer clear from taking a stand either for or against it, and the Secretary responds at minute 11:03 that “Amnesty is not an organization with expertise on military situations”. This answer comes as a response to the question whether military interventions are advisable, so the answer obviously means that Amnesty cannot judge whether the overall utility calculus of lives saved versus lives lost due to a hypothetical intervention justifies the intervention, because presumably such VERY LARGE SCALE interventions have military ramifications that you need professional Army officers to make such calculations concerning the possible number of CIVILIAN DEATHS. He continues by giving the example of a hypothetical intervention in Syria and says that Amnesty thinks that due to the density of the population the intervention might not be such a good idea because many civilians might die and at 11:28 he repeats that these answers (possible number of civilian deaths) require military expertise, and that Amnesty doesn’t want to pontificate on such issues (to intervene or not to intervene). So it is clear that Amnesty referred to lack of military expertise in VERY LARGE SCALE military interventions (with a clear tilt to NOT INTERVENING due to the density of the population, which might result in lots of civilian casualties). So the military expertise talked about concerns the EXPERTISE TO ESTIMATE POSSIBLE CIVILIAN DEATHS vs LIVES SAVED. Never did Amnesty say that it does not have enough military expertise to judge the day-to-day SMALL SCALE clashes of the IDF with the Palestinians, as Kemp implied.
In fact, the Secretary took pride since minute 15:03 until min.16:00 that Amnesty is VERY credible because they have dedicated partners on the ground, also LOCAL partners, from BOTH SIDES of each conflict, and at minute 15:43 he says that Amnesty’s people have DEEP EXPERTISE with regards to the area they are concentrating on. Does this sound like what Kemp insinuated, i.e. that Amnesty sort of owned up to not having enough expertise to judge whether the IDF is trigger happy, as the Amnesty Report took pains to document? Of course not, Kemp just took a sentence out of context and slandered Amnesty – but then, as i said, the hasbara is successful because its readers have been conditioned to believe any slur for human rights orgs. (i admit i was one of those gullible readers).
I have been collecting such half-truths and out-of-context hasbara attempts from all the right-wing hasbara blogosphere, there are too many of them, the guys really turn black into white. Somehow the IDF conduct is NEVER questioned, it’s a taboo subject.
So,Susan, i think you will have to keep on pushing for long, because the right-wing hasbarats are real experts at distorting truth.
Comment by Dionissis Mitropoulos — May 31, 2014 @ 2:07 pm