Friday, June 23, 2006

The Gaza Shell Hoax

I wrote last week a column for the National Post of Canada questioning Palestinian claims that an errant Israeli shell had killed a family of seven on a Gaza beach earlier in June. The claims were credulously reported by international media before they could be checked - despite abundant past evidence that such claims by Palestinian authorities were usually unreliable and often deliberately falsified.

Well the evidence has been accumulating over the past week - and it now seems proven almost to the point of certainty: It was not Israeli fire that killed the Ghali family. Most likely the cause of death was a Palestinian landmine. Whatever the cause, the tapes broadcast to the world were manipulated and deceptive.

1) Palestinian Television broadcast doctored scenes showing file footage of Israeli naval vessels shelling Gaza, interspersed with video of the beach victims, despite the fact that the Israeli Navy was not responsible for any shelling at the time. ...

2) Suspicions were initially raised by the Palestinian refusal to cooperate with Israeli investigators and the remarkably swift cleansing of evidence from the blast scene by Hamas gunmen who arrived shortly after the incident. Palestinian spokespeople usually display parts of Israeli shells to the international media - but not this time.

3) Israeli intelligence suggests that Hamas had mined the beach area in order to prevent Israeli naval commandos from landing there as part of anti-terror operations to prevent Qassam missile launches.

Read the whole miserable story of Palestinian duplicity and Western media credulity here . Tom Gross as always has more .

06/23 12:42 PM