Deaths in Lebanon Staged?
It now looks like Hezbollah has over played their hand. Everyone knew Hezbollah launches rocket attacks from civilian areas in an attempt to create ‘victims’ when the Israelis respond. Everyone knows the IDF drops leaflets warning residents to leave ensuring they have enough time to escape. But when 54 civilians died in an IDF bombing campaign, world opinion turned against Israel; at least at first. It turns out there are several inconsistencies with all of the deaths. First is the fact that the building did not collapse for seven hours after the attack, and then the fact that several of the ‘victims’ did not have the usual look of those who died in a building collapse: concrete dust, blood, etc. So were all the deaths at Qana staged? Hmmm.
The IDF is looking into allegations raised over the past few days by several pro-Israel, Jewish and conservative Weblogs that Hizbullah may have staged aspects of the Kana tragedy on Sunday, in which some 60 Lebanese bodies were removed from a building that collapsed seven hours after being hit in an Israel Air Force strike. (snip)
Israel has acknowledged hitting the building, and said 150 Katyushas had been fired from the village in the previous 20 days, with Hizbullah hiding rocket launchers in civilian buildings there. Israel said it did not know civilians were inside the building and expressed sorrow over the tragedy. (snip)
Look at the differences between the two combatants: Hezbollah is intentionally targeting civilians while Israel expresses sorrow of civilian deaths. It seems as if the terrorists want civilian deaths in Lebanon. Otherwise why would they deliberately launch their attacks within civilian areas knowing the IDF would respond? They WANT a high death count. They are desperate for a reprieve from the fighting in order to regroup, ie, Hezbollah is losing.
All acknowledge the IDF attacked the building that collapsed, but there are inconsistencies aplenty.
At a press conference on Sunday night, Air Force Chief of Staff Brig.-Gen. Amir Eshel said the building was struck by IAF missiles a little after midnight, but only collapsed seven hours later, at about 7 a.m.
Eshel said he could not explain what caused the structure to collapse so many hours after it was hit, and speculated, while stressing that he had no conclusive evidence, about whether Hizbullah had played a role in what had transpired, perhaps by firing on the building itself.
Another possibility that has been raised is that the building sustained damage from the original strike, but collapsed only later from structural damage or the impact of further IAF strikes nearby. Alternatively, the building may have contained Hizbullah weaponry that detonated after the strike.
MK Benny Elon (National Union) suggested Tuesday that Hizbullah may have played a role in the building’s collapse in an attempt to prevent an international force from entering Lebanon and to place blame on Israel.
“In general, Hizbullah prevents citizens from moving from places that the IDF is attacking. This time it was more,” said Elon. “It wasn’t just prohibiting citizens from leaving this time, it was bringing refugees that aren’t residents of Kafr Kana to areas that they know are going to be attacked. And to be sure it’s attacked, Hizbullah fires from the building next door in order to create the crisis and in order to create the pictures.”
One test to see if this could be true is to ask, ‘is it possible Hezbollah would place civilians in a weakened building and then detonate it for the publicity?’ And the answer is a resounding, ‘YES!’ If staged deaths would help in their struggle against Israel, they would definitely place even more civilians in harms way.
There is another possibility mentioned, that the dead were carried in after the attacks. Remember that after every other attack in which there were a significant number of civilian deaths, a Hezbollah spokesman would be more than eager to bring in western news crews to photograph the scene. Not so this time.
According to one of the Web sites raising questions about the affair, Israel Insider, “the accumulating evidence suggests another explanation for what happened at Kana. The scenario would be a setup in which the time between the initial bombing near the building and morning reports of its collapse would have been used to ‘plant’ bodies killed in previous fighting… place them in the basement, and then engineer a ‘controlled demolition’ to fake another Israeli attack.” (snip)
According to the blogs, perhaps the most suspicious element in the Kana affair was the fact that the dead children whose photographs appeared in the media displayed virtually no signs of blood, bruises or broken bones and, with one exception, were not caked with debris or pulverized cement.
For example, according to the antiliberal Conservative Yankee blog, “The child in the photo shows no signs of injuries - no blood, no disfigurement or crushing wounds consistent with a building collapse. The two men [carrying the child] show no signs of having been digging in rubble. Their clothes are unbelievably clean, especially the black fatigues that would so easily shown concrete dust.”
Israel Insider cited a CNN report that, it said, noted the victims had died in their sleep. It seemed highly improbable, the piece asserted, that people could have slept “through thunderous Israeli air attacks. Rescue workers equipped with cameras,” it went on, “were removing the bodies from the same opening in the collapsed structure.
Journalists were not allowed near the collapsed building… Israelis steeled to scenes of carnage from Palestinian suicide bombings and Hizbullah rocket attacks could not help but notice that these victims did not look like our victims. Their faces were ashen gray. While medical examination is clearly 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.”
Israel pulled out of Lebanon in 1983 because of a similar incident. Whether these allegations turn out to be true only time will tell, but you can be sure Hezbollah remembers what caused the IDF to withdraw last time. This can only mean one thing, Hezbollah is not fairing as well as they would like the rest of the world believe and are trying to stage another macabre scene which would lead to the world condemnation of Israel.
At the same time the world is a much smaller place with instant communication around the globe. Pictures are transmitted to every corner even during times of war. With this seemingly staged event, bloggers are on the scene examining every detail with their individual abilities. Just like when the bloggers brought down Dan Rather at CBS News for the obviously faked National Guard memos concerning President Bush, they have now turning their attention to Qana and looking for inconsistencies. And they have found plenty. If there is a group of people who know what dead people should look like, particularly those killed in bombing attacks and collapsed buildings; it would be the Israeli people. When they say the bodies do not look like they were dug out of a collapsed building, I would tend to yield to their expertise. Of course we all know what the people looked like coming out of the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings. The bodies I saw in pictures did not look anything like that. Hezbollah’s reluctance to allow western photographers in to see the devastation for themselves only reinforces the bloggers perception that they have something to hide.
What does Hezbollah have to hide; a staged event, a desperate attempt at influencing world opinion. Who know? But with all these inconsistencies, Hezbollah may have overplayed their hand. They may find world opinion a fickle thing.
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