On the morning of July 30, 2006, in the Lebanese town of Qana, a three-story building collapsed, burying the Lebanese civilians who were sleeping in the basement. Immediately the news media and the pro-Arab "pipples of the world" went into high gear denouncing this latest example of Israeli callousness.
 

Surprisingly, the IDF did not immediately issue a craven apology. They had when Mohammed el-Durah was shot. It later turned out that the dramatic picture of the 12-year old crouching behind his father was a hoax, faked by the Arab cameraman and snipers on the scene, a hoax in which France 2, a French TV station, colluded.[1]

And then there was the death of Rachel Corrie, who thanks to how her handlers handled her death, is widely known as the IHOP Queen or St. Rachel of the pancakes. Rachel Corrie was not run over by the Israeli-driven tractor, as the ISM "eyewitnesses" immediately claimed. If that were true, she would have been flattened beyond recognition. Yet afterwards -- in the ISM's own "after" photo -- she is very much alive. There is even a cell phone right next to her. She was 3-dimensional when they put her into the ambulance.[2] I'm still not sure whether she survived the trip and died in the Arab hospital -- after all, if the Arabs are good at anything, it's recognizing a good story while they create it. And they excel in snuff movies.

Ehud Olmert immediately and cravenly apologized when a family picnicking on a Gaza beach was blown up -- the PA had thoughtfully strewn the area with explosives should the Jews come back. Then it was discovered the father had poked at one of the explosives. An email from Irit Hyman (august 2, 2006) reminded me that "Hammas took away from the area every piece of metal, including the tiniest scraps, so that there could not be any scientific investigation of the tragedy to see what ordinance killed the family members. However, two of those injured were taken to an Israeli hospital (where they recovered), and the shrapnel recovered from these casualties were found not to match the metal composition of Israeli artillery shells."

And while I'm reminiscing -- my favorite is when an Israeli drone plane spotted a corpse, who fell off the stretcher, and jumped back on. Not just once, but surpassing any Biblical resurrection story, the second time he fell off, he walked away. But enough reminiscing about some of my favorite Arab flics.

This is what the IDF spokesperson said:

This morning, July 30th 2006, the IAF attacked missile launch sites in the area of the village of Qana, an area from which hundreds of missiles were launched towards the city of Nahariya and the communities in the western Galilee.

The IDF will defend the citizens of Israel from attacks by the Hezbollah and the responsibility for any civilian casualties rests with the Hezbollah who have turned the suburbs of Lebanon to a war front by firing missiles from within civilian areas.

Residents in this region and specifically the residents of Qana were warned several days in advance to leave the village. 18 Israeli civilians have been killed and over 400 have been wounded from these rocket attacks which have disrupted the lives of thousands in Israel.

1. There was a timing discrepancy between the bombing and the building collapse.

   "The attack on the structure in the Qana village took place between midnight and one in the morning. The gap between the timing of the collapse of the building and the time of the strike on it is unclear," Brigadier General Amir Eshel, Head of the Air Force Headquarters, told journalists at the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv, following the incidents at Qana.[3] Eshel and the head of the IDF's Operational Branch, Major General Gadi Eisnkot, said the structure was not being attacked when it collapsed, at around 8:00 in the morning."

2. It wasn't clear what caused the collapse.

   "The IDF believes that Hizbullah explosives in the building were behind the explosion that caused the collapse.[3] 'It could be that inside the building, things that could eventually cause an explosion were being housed, things that we could not blow up in the attack, and maybe remained there,' Brigadier General Eshel said."

   Arutz Sheva[4] bottomlined where these facts led. "Air Force Commander Amir Eshel left open the possibility that Hizbullah terrorists blew up the building or that an unknown cause set off explosives which were stored in the structure."

   Another possibility is that the weakened building remained standing for some 7-8 hours, but eventually collapsed. Judging from the photos, much of the ceiling and walls of the basement where the bodies were found remained intact.

3. Initially, it wasn't even certain that the IDF hit that particular building.

   Reuven Koret who wrote a masterful analysis[5] pointed out that the roof of the building was intact. How do you hit a building from the air and not blast off its roof? Moreover, as Koret notes, "Brent Sadler of CNN reports that the Israeli ordnance landed '20 or 30 meters" from the structure.' As Barry Shaw phrased it in an email,

   "According to CNN's Ben Wederman (not a friend of Israel) who visited the site, a large crater was in the road outside the building. This tallies with the I.D.F. report that they targeted a rocket launcher firing from within a civilian area. Wederman also stated that the building showed no sign of having receiving a direct hit."

   On August 2, IDF issued an initial report. The IDF had struck the building but it was a mistake. The mistake was not that Qana was innocent of launching rockets at Israel -- it continues to launch rockets. The mistake was, as Reuters reported, "the army would not have bombed a building if it had known civilians were inside, but accused Hizbollah of using human shields."

   I find this appalling. These Israeli buggers admit they know the terrorists are in the midst of civilians. And yet they allow Israeli civilians to be endangered, rather than hit Lebanese civilians. This is nothing to be proud of.

4. With specific exceptions, Israel's Air Force only bombs buildings that are empty.

   You read that right. Yes it's stupid; but that's their policy. It gives the politicians a warm feeling. Makes them think they will score with the foreign press -- who don't give a damn. The IDF Air Force only bombs the lower floors of a building KNOWN to be warehousing munitions and rockets. So, if they'd bombed the lower floor, the building wouldn't have been left standing. And to answer your next question -- they have a damn good aim -- they usually hit buildings they target. And, if in defiance of all the laws of physics, the Israelis bombed the lower levels but the building didn't collapse, why exactly did the people continue to take refuge in this house? At best it was unsafe. At worst, it was booby-trapped by Hezbollah-planted explosives.

What appeared certain is that one way or another some 60 people had been killed when the structure collapsed. And who better to blame than the pro-Arab media's only suspect -- Israel.

That's where the story should have, by Allah's justice and CNN's manipulation, become a "fact" - a useful fact, an unquestioned fact, to be used ad lib forever more. But it didn't.
 

Almost immediately, I was inundated with emails raising polite questions about the massacre.

Could it be Hezbollah itself that blasted the building?

Well, they were in the right place at the right time.

There is an IDF video that shows the Israeli cities hit by rockets fired from Qana.[6]

The IDF pointed out the evening of July 30: "Hizbullah has been firing rockets from that area for two and a half weeks," "The building was next to the rocket site. It was a mistake. Israel deeply regrets it. Israel does not target civilians. There will be a full investigation." Gil Hoffman has concluded that Israel's delay in screening Qana footage and immediately responding to Hezbollah's all-out propaganda attack was a PR disaster.[7]

There are, as far as I know, no published pictures showing Hezbollah shooting off rockets from Qana. We have only the awful results: Israeli civilians are deliberately killed and wounded and terrorized by Hezbollah's rockets. But there are photos showing Hezbollah using a residential area, Wadi Chahrour, east of Beirut -- some 50 miles away, but part of the same war zone. They were publicized by Chris Tinkler[8], who wrote

The images, obtained exclusively by the Sunday Herald Sun, show Hezbollah using high-density residential areas as launch pads for rockets and heavy-calibre weapons.

"Dressed in civilian clothing so they can quickly disappear, the militants carrying automatic assault rifles and ride in on trucks mounted with cannon.

"Hezbollah came in to launch their rockets, then within minutes the area was blasted by Israeli jets," he [a foreign eye witness] said.

"Until the Hezbollah fighters arrived, it had not been touched by the Israelis. Then it was totally devastated... After the attacks they [Hezbollah] didn't even allow the ambulances or the Lebanese Army to come in until they had cleaned the area, removing their rockets and hiding other evidence."

"A United Nations humanitarian chief Jan Egeland blasted Hezbollah as "cowards" for operating among Lebanese civilians.

"I heard they were making statements that they were proud of losing fewer armed men than civilians... It's hard to see how they could be proud of such a situation."

Would the Hezbollah hide among women and children?

These pious men that stick their asses up in the air and pray five times a day!

Yup.

Hiding among women and children is classic. Yasser Arafat cross-dressed and hid among the women when he needed to escape an "uncomfortable" situation. Shooting while hiding among women and children is a manoeuvre the Arabs perfected at least 50 years ago and have used repeatedly since.

They have never minded killing off some of their own people to score off on Israel. They will deliberately shoot from among women and children. If Israel doesn't shoot back because it worries about the Arab civilians that the Arab terrorists don't worry about, they have a clear unanswered shot at the Israelis. If the Israelis shoot back, the Arabs have their media shills lament the civilian deaths. As far as the Arab stage managers are concerned, they can't lose either way.

Why were the dead all women and children?

There is no doubt that finding Hezbollah men hiding among civilians would be par for the course. There is equally no doubt that almost all the dead taken from the building were women and children.[9] Like Sherlock Holmes' dog that didn't bark in the night, where were the men?

Richard Engel[10] reported that in the morning he and others went house to house trying to figure where all the men of the village were.

"It seems that some of them were fighters, some of them were Hezbollah members that were out -- this according to Hezbollah people who didn't want to be interviewed but we convinced them to talk to us. Others were in another house that was nearby. I'm not sure if that was the initial target, but there was a separate apartment where young men were living that was not hit yesterday."

There is some evidence that men were staying in the building during the night. 3 of the listed dead are men over the age of 50[9] (make that 4 if Hasna is a male name.) It appears that a few men were staying in the doomed house but the living ones had cleared out by morning. Some readers suspected that the Hezbollah men shot from the building and then left, leaving their women to deal with the aftermath.

Dan Riehl observed [11]

"Statements from survivors document that Qana is home to hard-line Hezbollah members and their families. The town is located at a critical juncture of five roads just north of the southern plains of Southern Lebanon and the elevation represents a prime location for the launching of rockets ever more deeply into Israel. It seems at least possible that the victims were mostly comprised of the families of Hezbollah fighters ..."

One survivor certainly stuck to the party line. Rabab Youssef saved her son and husband from the rubble but wasn't able to save her daughter.[12] Rabab denied that Hezbollah fighters used the village for shelter or fired rockets at Israel from there and said Israeli air strikes on roads had prevented her family from leaving. 'They cut us off from the world.'" The article doesn't tell us when she saved her family.

Exactly how many people were killed and injured?

Apparently, they recovered 28 bodies -- bad enough -- but initially more than twice that number were said to be dead, 26 of them children. The figures came from "Lebanese" sources so of course they were immediately accepted by the media. The International Red Cross later put the number of dead at 28, and 22 survivors. 13 are still missing. Usually, the number of dead grows in time; this time it shrunk.

15 of the dead were children to the age of 12; plus a boy of 17. Arab "massacres" traditionally play up the death of babies -- and among the dead there was only 1 baby, 9-month old, and a 2-year old. The dead women were 20-45 years old. There were some old men.[9] There were no men of fighting age among the dead.

Who are the dead?

Typically, two minutes after an Arab is killed -- one minute if he's a terrorist -- CNN is interviewing his relatives. But these dead were different. Except for their family-clan affiliation, no one seemed to know much about them. And few survivors were interviewed.

Katherine Shrader and Kathy Gannon of AP had filed a story from Jerusalem that day [13] that included this excerpt:

"Two extended families, the Shalhoubs and the Hashems, had gathered in the house for shelter from another night of Israeli bombardment in the border area when the strike brought the building down.

"I was so afraid. There was dirt and rocks and I couldn't see. Everything was black," said 13-year-old Noor Hashem, who survived, although her five siblings did not. She was pulled out of the ruins by her uncle, whose wife and five children also died."

The house was said to be part of a children's shelter for handicapped children, or perhaps the home of a poor tobacco farmer, The basement had the look of a bomb shelter. Much of the ceiling and some of the walls were intact the next day.

Bob Owens of The Confederate Yankee[14] picked up on the missing men and commented,

"It seems increasingly probable that the Shalhoub and Hashem men were likely members of Hezbollah, involved in launching the very rockets at Israel that called in the counter-battery fire that killed their families that were hiding deeper in the building."

No one actually did much for these poor dead people except count them. They seemed to have no personalities, no histories, no relatives grieving on camera while a swarmy CNN anchor, using her "how can Israel do this" voice, plied the pity pishka. In the aggregate, the bodies were much more effective: the N.Y. Times picture of the bodies, plastic-wrapped and lying side by side, is dynamite.

I hate to be cynical, even if the New York Times did peel away the rind of rationality and suspicion and then squeezed out every drop of juice from the story and picture. But where did they get all the pretty red flowers? The florists are still in business?

Was everyone in the basement the whole night?

Dan Riehl[11] pointed out that

"...the building didn't collapse until morning. Yet, one observer claims to have been blown out of the building from the third floor during the night, only to rush right back in and witness the massacre."

There is no indication where the others in the building were during the night after the bomb struck. In the morning, the dead and some survivors were in the basement.

What were the civilians doing in the War Zone?

Especially after the Israelis saturated the area with leaflets warning the civilians to leave because the Israelis were going to attack. Speaking of the warnings by leaflet, other readers bemoaned the fact that the Israelis were losing the element of surprise. And some were furious that Israel's politicians who ordered the magnanimous gesture of alerting the enemy to Israeli intentions are careful to minimize injury to the enemy's children but don't mind putting Israeli children in greater danger. As a Jerusalem Post Op-Ed noted[15]

"Moshe Keynan, the father of a soldier killed in another conflict, expressed the views of many: 'We need to worry about our kids returning to their parents ... not how we look on BBC.'"

A couple querulously asked why no one praised Olmert or Israel for its magnaminity. My own response was "because no one respects an idiot. Or to put it more delicately, why praise a cowardly politician who quails at the thought of bad press, is unconcerned about his own people, yet purports to put morality first?"

Couldn't they get out?

There have been reports that Hezbollah wasn't letting civilians leave the area -- they've set up roadblocks near several villages. But I don't know if that applied to these people. Reuven Koret[5] makes this important point, "[w]hile Hezbollah and its apologists have been claiming that civilians could not freely flee the scene due to Israeli destruction of bridges and roads, the journalists and rescue teams from nearby Tyre had no problem getting there."

Why did they stay in a house that was hit or at least structurally weakened?

The reasons splattered around some pro-Arab websites as to why the people stayed in the house are almost as many as there are dead people. They are mostly variations on these possibilities: they were too poor to leave. They were too blasé. They thought it was the safest house around. They were too helpless. They just slept through it all. They were too tired to hear anything. One place is much like another. Hezbollah forced them to stay. This is how they show their loyalty to Hezbollah. (It is certainly true that Nasrallah's picture hangs on the wall in a good many of the houses here.) But all the reasons given for staying don't tie in with one other fact: the residents of the building had fled -- in fact most of the residents, some 12,000 people, had left for Tyre. So why, if this was a temporary shelter, why didn't they just pick up and go elsewhere when the building was bombed?

If the bombing took place at night around 1a.m, why was no alarm raised until the next morning?

A "usually very left wing friend" of Irit Hyman asked in an email:

"The bombing of the building in Kafer Qana was carried out at 1:00 AM. Only at 8:00 AM, seven hours later, the press reported on the bombing and the first casualty was brought to the local hospital. Is it possible that from the time of the bombing until 8:00 AM no ambulance was sent to the building, no witnesses to this tragedy came forward, and no report was submitted to the world press?"

From the Arab press, I have read that yes, it is possible that the war-weary people just rolled over after the midnight bombing and went back to sleep. But that raises another question: The press didn't arrive until after the building collapsed; but apparently they were alerted several hours before the collapse, at dawn. And the rescue operation waited to begin until the press gathered. Odd that they were willing to delay the search for survivors. As Reuven Koret wrote the day after,[5] "Evidence mounts that Qana collapse and deaths were staged."

Is even the Hezbollah capable of destroying their own people to aid their cause?

No one had any problem believing that the Hezbollah -- for that matter, any of the terrorist groups -- could kill off their own people. What is unthinkable to most of us is not only thinkable to the terrorist groups, but practiced. These are the people who do, after all, rejoice when a family member intentionally or not becomes a shahid.

The Symbolism Of The "Atrocity" Being In Qana

From the beginning, it was felt that it was significant that Qana was the site both of an earlier massacre in 1996 -- the result of a wayward Israeli rocket -- and this atrocity. Few columnists, particularly those on the left, resisted discussing the significance and implying, more or less subtly, that Israel has a thing for bombing Qana. Right wingers and many in the center saw it as another sign of Arab disgusting use of human shields. Others saw it as another example of how long an Arab can sustain a desire for revenge. John Lawrence [16] wrote,

"Roughly 10 years ago, Israel's armed forces bombed Qana, destroying a U.N. building and killing over 100 innocent people as it struggled to contain the attacks against the state of Israel. Perhaps that is why Hezbollah has been so intent on launching missiles from behind the buildings in which the residents of Qana live. What better use of the Lebanese people is there other than shields and pawns?"

Ten years ago, missiles had a large margin of error. These days they don't. Why would Israel, so sensitive to world opinion, blast a civilian building? Anshel Pfeffer put it bluntly [17] "How is it possible that Qana was the site in 1996 and now in 2006 that such a thing could happen? I am willing to bet that Israel was set up." He may be onto something.
 

AND THEN THE BLOGGER NETWORKS KICKED IN

What has happened in the last few years has been the banding together of individuals by way of the Internet. By swapping facts and hunches and suppositions and scientific knowledge, a group of ordinary people can challenge the media giants. A group of bloggers is to the New York Times as the members of a factory union were to the seemingly invincible power of the owner of the factory. They reduce the difference in power by their numbers. And by repetition, repetition, repetition, they eventually out the truth. Remember how Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs[18] exposed Dan Rather's forging a fraudulent document purporting to show that President Bush shirked his army duty. So the bloggers don't have the research facilities of the biggies? True, but they broadcast their knowledge and others add other bits, and incrementally, the knowledge heap grows. Actually, there is no evidence people like Jim Lehrer and Charlie Rose -- the supposed "hintellectuals" of Public Broadcasting -- use their research departments. They certainly don't seem to know there is no such thing as a Palestinian people. They don't act as if they know that there is not now, nor has there ever been, a country or state called Palestine.

The blogs have the remarkable gift of seeing the obvious. This is not a putdown. This is high praise. Thanks to cocooning spinmasters and leftist ideologues, newspapers like the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times will never never see the obvious and the actual in anything that triggers their prejudices. And they hate Israel with a cold, cold passion. With CCN and BBC  you don't even have to invoke the psychologics. Saudi money spreads as thick as oil and pays for the swarm of the swarmy at CNN.

Little Green Footballs had the story about the suspicious Qana disaster as well as pictures and text of the Hezbollah firing from among civilians in Wadi Chahrour within hours. Readers' comments on the "massacre" were surprisingly suspicious. From the start, many focused on why were there so many kids in the area -- this was while the number of dead children was said to be in the 30s.[19]

One wrote "That seems like a fairly large number of kids to me... I suspect they were intentially put there by the hezbos knowing that Israel intended to target the area (they certainly gave ample warning)." Another asked, "The IDF also said that they had not seen civilian movement in the area for the entire three days that they bombed. How is it possible that no one left the building for three days -- if they weren't forced to stay?" Another commented on the eye witness accounts, "On ABC this morning (This Week) in a report about the Qana deaths, an old man was crying, wailing and moaning for the ABC video camera positioned to his right. As the camera panned away, the old man's eyes darted over to the camera, and when he thought he was out of the frame, the crying, wailing, and moaning stopped faster than you could shut off a light switch."
 

ALL THE WORLD'S A STAGE AND SETTING THE STAGE MAKES FOR GOOD PROPAGANDA

The bloggers[20] were beginning to focus on the setting. The poor dead children were horribly and prematurely dead. But there was little information about them. So people examined the scene of the crime. Very soon, the main topic was: was this staged?

Two approaches were taken almost immediately in the bloggersphere.

1. Examining the actual photographs

Thanks to sites like the StrataSphere, we were getting an education on how to spot a fake -- or at least a staged -- picture.

As an early example, the A.J Strata website explored the general concept of staged photographs,[21] using pictures taken in Qana as examples.

When are we as a nation going to take the media to task for publishing staged propaganda as if it was news. Check out this AP photo at Yahoo of a picture of a young girl laying "in the rubble" of a mosque. Clearly there is no dirt or dust on the photo which was just as clearly laid on the debris to make a propaganda image.
AP: July 31, 2006, 2:28p.m. "A photograph of a Lebanese girl is seen in the rubble of a mosque that was hit in an Israeli missile strike in the village of Qana, southern Lebanon, Monday, July 31, 2006. At least 56 residents of the village were killed when Israeli warplanes attacked the village early Sunday morning." (AP Photo/Kevin Frayer)		Or how about this amazingly well parked tricycle in an AFP Photo which apparently was barely disturbed by the blast in the wall behind it. "AFP July 31, 2006, 3:11p.m. Toys lie among the ruins of a kitchen inside a damaged house in the Lebanese southern village of Qana, one day after Israel air strikes killed at least 52 Lebanese civilians, including 30 children. Israel rejected mounting calls for a truce in its war on Hezbollah despite global outrage over an attack that killed at least 52 civilians, but a lull in raids allowed thousands of southern Lebanese to flee to safer havens." (AF/Nicolas)

Frankly, I didn't get too excited over these. OK. So they are not so authentic. Maybe the bike was in a sheltered corner -- and these guys have to make a buck. And they make a buck by making a point. But it did, I admit, immediately make me think again of the New York Times picture of the plastic-wrapped bodies (see above). I was now more certain it too had had some "artistic" touchup. [Added August 20, 2006: To see another faked New York Times picture complete with red flowers, click here.

Back to A.J. Strata. Now the exhibits become more ominous.

"I don't know about you, but these are the cleanest rescue workers I have ever seen. "Sun Jul 30, 2006, 7:57 PM ET Qana aftermath : A rescue worker carries a dead body through the rubble after Israeli air strikes on the southern Lebanese village of Qana." (AFP/Nicolas Asfouri) Even when wearing dark clothes, as in this AFP Photo, these folks never get any dust or dirt on carrying the stretcher in this AP Photo. "Sun Jul 30, 10:29 AM ET Lebanese rescuers carry the body of a boy recovered from under the rubble of a demolished building that was struck by Israeli warplane missiles at the village of Qana, near the southern city of Tyre, Lebanon, Sunday, July 30, 2006. An Israeli strike that devastated a building in Qana killed at least 56 people, including at least 34 children, putting the total Lebanese death toll from the Israeli campaign at more than 500, the Lebanese Red Cross said." (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)

Staged photos should be flagged and the offending media organization taken to task.

2. Laying out a general theory of how the "massacre" was created.

By Monday, July 31, The Confederate Yankee website was one of several that laid out a possible sequence of events in building a propaganda story. What is surprising is that the bloggers were willing to stick their necks out and didn't obscure their thoughts, so that they would be able to backtrack easily. The idea was (a) to sketch out some possible scenarios and ask whether they fit the available data and (b) where should we be looking for other clues?
 

Bob Owens of Confederate Yankee wrote on July 31[22]

Lebanese rescue teams did not start evacuating the building until the morning and only after the camera crews came. The absence of a real rescue effort was explained by saying that equipment was lacking. There were no scenes of live or injured people being extracted. ... Israelis steeled to scenes of carnage from Palestinian suicide bombings and Hezbollah rocket attack could not help but notice that these victims did not look like our victims. Their faces were ashen gray. Their limbs appeared to have stiffened, from rigor mortis. Neither were effects that would have resulted from an Israeli attack hours before. These were bodies that looked like they had been dead for days. Viewers can judge for themselves. But the accumulating evidence suggests another explanation for what happened at Kana. The scenario would be a setup in which the time between the initial Israeli bombing near the building and morning reports of its collapse would have been used to "plant" bodies killed in previous fighting -- reports in previous days indicated that nearby Tyre was used as a temporary morgue -- place them in the basement, and then engineer a "controlled demolition" to fake another Israeli attack.

 

THE ATROCITY PICTURES

EU Referendum -- run by Richard North and Helen Szamuely -- was the most comprehensive site for examining the pictures. They also did a superb job of presenting them in a coherent and sequential fashion, whenever possible. They and their readers pointed out significant details. They encouraged readers to examine the pictures in context of other pictures taken at the site. I urge you all to read the series of articles on the Qana Massacre, starting with the one on July 31 called "Milking It?" You can go there by clicking here. And each article will take you to the next in the series.

In some of the photos shown below[23], the time stamps range from 2:21pm, presumably the time the baby was pulled out from the ruins, to 4:30pm. Other pictures are time marked starting at 12:45p.m and running through 1:01pm, which is before the rescue.

Putting it another way, several photographers -- from AP and Reuters -- took shots of the same toddler over an extended time period, when the baby's rescuer should have been busy checking for still living bodies. North's article rightly notes the time discrepancies between the shots. These are presumably professional photographers. If there's a logical explanation why the same dead toddler appeared to be posed at various times over hours, the answer isn't forthcoming. (As an aside, take a look at End Note [24], which has additional information about the third picture in this series.)

I was more horrified by the collusion of the "rescuers" and the photographers -- using the toddler as a prop, as EU Referendum notes, "to maximize the shock value."

Two points stand out. First the baby is unusually dirty --- unusual because the children brought out were suspiciously clean, with little bruising, no crushing, no wounds, almost no dried blood and no concrete dust. Their clothes have no rips. Many showed signs of rigor mortis, which is surprising, considering that they were brought out soon after the building collapsed -- which is rather early for rigor mortis to have set in. Normally, it takes some 3 hours to begin and is not fully set for 12 hours or more. But this child did look as if it had been buried under rubble -- except, of course, for the brand-new baby-blue conspicuous binky. What is not clear is whether this child was buried under the rubble of this building. The other children brought out are relatively clean, which is more in keeping with the condition of the basement walls and ceiling -- from what we can see, many areas seem relatively untouched. This baby is from a different litter.

Second, as EU Referendum notes, "the 'rescuer's' glasses, 'designer stubble', blue tee-shirt and jeans make him quite a distinctive figure." He varies his clothing props. Later, he sheds his pocket radio and adds gloves. His helmet stays on when he is in "public". In most pictures, he proudly parades the baby; in one he looks almost overcome with grief -- clearly he's an actor with a range of emotions. He is not identified by name. If the time stamps mean anything, he carried around the dead child as a photo opportunity for hours! And he picked it up out of the rubble and later "reenacted" pulling out the baby. One reader commented that the baby doesn't seem to be lying near anyone else. But that may be because the picture is of the second recovery.

This "rescue" is unseemly.

It did not take long for the news agencies to respond, focussing on the time stamp.[25] Although the news agencies used the subjunctive and suggested general reasons for having time discrepancies, none said straight out that the times stamped on these poses are wrong.

The agencies interviewed by David Bauder[26] said the time might be stamped when the picture was taken or, alternatively, when it was posted -- but none volunteered to provide the information usually recorded when a picture is taken. I didn't read any that suggested the cameras were set for different time zones. It wouldn't fly anyways. Hussein Malla is based in Beirut and Nasser Nasser, Lefteris Pitarakis and Mohammed Zaatari are locals.

AP David Bauder wrote, "The AP said information from its photo editors showed the events were not staged...[no details supplied] ... An AFP executive said he was stunned to be questioned about it. Reuters, in a statement, said it categorically rejects any such suggestion."

I found the tone of the retorts a lot more interesting than the reasons the agencies gave for doubting those that believed that the photos were staged.

Kathleen Carroll, AP's senior vice president and executive editor, said in addition to personally speaking with photo editors, "I also know from 30 years of experience in this business that you can't get competitive journalists to participate in the kind of (staging) experience that is being described." (I guess she's never seen photographers lined up. A bus stops. Palestinian kids get off the bus. They pelt the Israeli soldiers with stones and rocks they brought with them while cameras click away. They stop. They get back on the bus. The bus leaves. And in the case of Mohammed Al-Durah, there is every reason to believe the Arab photographer was very much involved in the hoax.)

Patrick Baz, Mideast photo director for AFP said

"Do you really think these people would risk their lives under Israeli shelling to set up a digging ceremony for dead Lebanese kids?" "I'm totally stunned by first the question, and I can't imagine that somebody would think something like that would have happened."

Interesting, he would say this. There was no shelling at the time the pictures were taken. Admittedly, the photos do convey a sense of urgency and danger -- rescuers run carrying bodies; they look grim; they appear to be screaming for help; they seem to be in the midst of a bombing. And that's how the media play it up. In reality, they run nowhere, except to cater to still another photographer, to help him get a great shot.

Two dead children figure prominently in the media pictures. This second child that served as the dog in the "rescuer's" dog and pony show doesn't look quite as appalling or pitiful -- she looks clean, healthy, normal, nicely dressed. She could be asleep. She gets no more respect from her rescuers than does the first child. This sequence is also from [23].

In one of the time-lapse curiosities, we have this sequence involving a bareheaded Mr Green Helmet: EU Referendum writes: "... the first shot of which, timed at 7.21 am shows a dead girl in an ambulance.[27] Taken by AP, the caption reads: "Among others, the body of a child recovered under the rubble of a demolished building that was struck by Israeli war plane missiles at the village of Qana near the southern Lebanon city of Tyre, is placed in an ambulance Sunday July 30."

The text reads: "In the next frame, we have the same girl, this time apparently being placed in the ambulance. Intriguingly, though, the dateline given is 10.25 am, three hours after she has already been photographed in the ambulance. Also taken by AP, this time by Mohammed Zaatari the caption here reads: "A Lebanese rescuer carries the body of a young girl recovered from under the rubble of a demolished building that was struck by Israeli warplane missiles at the village of Qana, near the southern city of Tyre, Lebanon, Sunday, July 30, 2006. Dozens of civilians, including many children, were killed Sunday in an Israeli airstrike that flattened houses in this southern Lebanon village - the deadliest attack in 19 days of fighting.

The text [23] reads: "Also from AP's Nasser Nasser, we see the same worker, showing obvious distress, carrying the same girl. But now he is wearing his fluorescent jacket and helmet and has acquired latex gloves. He has also got his radio back. The photograph is timed at 10.44 am and the caption reads: A civil defense worker carries the body of Lebanese child recovered from the rubble of a demolished building that was struck by an Israeli airstrike at the village of Qana near the southern Lebanon city of Tyre, Sunday, July 30, 2006. Israeli missiles struck this southern Lebanese village early Sunday, flattening houses on top of sleeping residents. The Lebanese Red Cross said the airstrike, in which at least 34 children were killed, pushed the overall Lebanese death toll to more than 500." In another article in the series, the authors observe that this is the iconic picture. The text from [28] reads, "This is ... the one that has been reproduced in newspapers thoughout the world. This one, we can see, is near the wreckage of the building but was it posed? We do not know but, in viewing hours of video footage, we have not yet seen the scenario filmed. That in itself is possibly noteworthy, given the number of TV cameras that were around. Virtually everything on the scene was being filmed -- yet no-one seems to have filmed this."

A few more photo accomodations and then the child is about to be laid down to rest. The text reads: "But now, for the benefit of AFP, the photgraph taken by Nicolas Asfouri, we have the same unfortunate child being handled by another worker, the original worker showing in the background, having passed the casualty on." The timing of the photograph is 7.16 pm (now apparently corrected to 6:46 am) and the caption reads: "A rescue worker puts the body of a dead girl on a gurney after Israeli air strikes on the southern Lebanese village of Qana. Israel agreed to temporarily halt air strikes in south Lebanon a day after 52 people were killed, many of them sleeping children, when Israeli warplanes bombarded the Lebanese village of Qana, triggering global outrage and warnings of retribution for alleged 'war crimes'..

Actually, the child's work is not yet done. She is used some more in different locations and finally dumped again on the guerney, sharing it with another human prop. The text in [29] reads, "The starring duo [Green Beret and White T-shirt], having got what they wanted from the corpses, putting on their display of raw emotion and all the rest -- to the delight of the assembled media -- have completely lost interest in their props. The man in black is left to struggle unaided with the burden, heading over rough, wreckage-strewn ground to the ambulance."

All in all, this was a remarkable performance. These guys aren't amateurs. There's a few slips, that sharp-eyed readers spot. One reader, "Galloping Granny", sees a foot sticking out of some rubble.[30] Which is curious, because the roof of the cellar is still in one piece. "Neither the roof nor the walls have collapsed on this little body. So WHY," she asks,"is it buried in the dirt? Actually, when the photo appeared, it was cropped. But they didn't crop enough." Note that Mr. T-Shirt is an important figure on the site. He goes everywhere on the site freely -- something the reporters are not allowed to do. But, as EU Referendum notes,[29] "although we see a lot of him, there is not a single picture of him digging or moving rubble. More often, he is standing around watching, like he is doing here. But for what?" One thing is for sure. You aren't going to identify a Hezbollah official by his uniform -- they dress civilian 24/7.

Here's another from [30] The text reads: "This photo in the NY Times shows the 'collapsed' building with an intact ceiling, that had apparently NOT caved in on the bodies that were supposedly crushed by rubble. Oops - someone forgot to do some creative cropping!"

I found this photo the most disturbing. Like I didn't know they were callous and willing to sacrifice anything for their religious ideology. But somehow, it's hard to remember to apply this kind of knowledge all the time. One wants so much to believe all humans have the same concerns. But this picture of Mr White T-Shirt (man on right) looking annoyed that he has to hold the dead girl up -- as if she could hold herself up and was just being recalcitrant -- got to me. That dead babies were hauled around the site for hours certainly contradicts the sense of urgency many of the pictures convey. These vile "rescuers" weren't concerned with rescuing possible survivors. They were intent on partnering with the media to show off the dead and the damaged with maximum gruesomeness.

As EU Referendum concludes[23] Whatever else, the event in Qana was a human tragedy. But the photographs do not show it honestly. Rather, they have been staged for effect, exploiting the victims in an unwholesome manner. In so doing, they are no longer news photographs - they are propaganda. And, whoever said the camera cannot lie forgot that photographers can and do. Those lies have spread throughout the world by now and will be in this morning's newspapers, accepted as real by the millions who view them. The profession of photo-journalism thereby is sadly diminished by them, and the trust in those who took them and in those who carried them is misplaced. Truly, we are dealing with loathesome creatures."

 

WHO IS MISTER "GREEN HELMET"?

Next, EU Referendum concentrated on the "rescuer," who became known as "Green Helmet" for obvious reasons.

The text reads[31]: "If he had been a genuine rescue worker, he would deserve a medal. Mr "Green Helmet" is everywhere at Qana, rushing around pulling children out of the rubble, carting them to ambulances and even, on the front page of the Guardian, escorting "White T-shirt", who also performs his own cameo role, carting round the body of another unfortunate girl, emoting freely while he does so." That photograph is credited to Nicolas Asfouri of AFP/Getty Images and the caption reads, "A man screams for help as he carries the body of a young girl after Israeli air strikes on the southern Lebanese village of Qana".

Mr. Green Helmet isn't just at Qana. He's been identified in several other locations. "EU Referendum writes,[31] "This time, according to Reuter's Zohra Bensemra, "Green Helmet" is a Lebanese rescue worker, watching "while a bulldozers clears away the rubble of a building demolished by an Israeli air strike in Sreefa, 18 miles (30km) south east of the port-city of Tyre(Soure)". The dateline is 31 July, 2006, at 10:37 am.

"Here he is in Tyre.[32] While it is claimed Israel cut off escape routes for the people Qana, journalists and had no trouble moving freely." People gather at the rubble of a destroyed building minutes after an Israeli airstrike on the centre of the coastal city of Tyre, Lebanon, on Wednesday. (AP/Lefteris Pitarakis) The text reads, "[Moving freely] certainly seems to have applied to our mystery man, 'Green Helmet', as the Yahoo site has him in Tyre on the Wednesday (pictured above), acting as part of a fire crew. "Doesn't Hezbollah have anyone else the media can photograph?"

 

A TENTATIVE HYPOTHESIS

Hezbollah chose Qana as the right place to have a massacre. It had been useful before -- bad press has stopped Israel's advance into Lebanon in 1996. Now, in 2006, Israel had no choice but to try to stop the rockets launched from Qana. Hezbollah waited until it triggered a useable action. Their goal was to show that Israel is a monster because it inflicts damage on innocent Lebanese. The aim was to show this in the most dramatic ways possible -- relying on the skills of the main actors and their ability to improvise. The location was chosen. The show was ready to start. It had a director. It had the actors, many of them dead. It had the props. It had a friendly media. It needed only a few hours after the usable bombing just after midnight Sunday to take care of last minute matters -- perhaps bringing in some more photogenic dead to fill out what was locally available and checking the basement where the action took place to make sure it looked right. Came Sunday morning, they invited the press to their "Massacre." It was an outstanding success.

These were the components.

The Director Green Helmet is a talented and dedicated actor. He has a eye for details and tremendous energy. He understands what makes for a great picture and he was willing to help cooperative photographers obtain them. He is a man driven by a sense of urgency -- see how he runs (from photographer to photographer). See him run. How brave he looks -- a viewer might be forgiven if he believes Green Helmet is rushing for medical help -- well, actually, the child is dead -- or trying to get his charge to safety amidst the bombing -- but Israel wasn't bombing at that time and place. This man is phenomenal. The fluorescent jacket is a clever prop -- it is reminiscent of the Israeli "take-charge" ZAKA, who tend to the dead and injured at the scene of a terrorist bombing. At Qana he is an actor, but his main role is as director.. He has a talented assistant, Mr White T-Shirt, who coordinates much of the show. The actual Red Cross workers are the extras; they have no authority. There are pictures of him later at home. As EU Referendum says[29] "Even by European or American standards, the house is well-furnished and comfortable." And of course pictures of Sheik Hassan Nasrallah are everywhere. "His presence at Qana on Sunday, and his central, unchallenged role, cannot have been a coincidence. Is he a senior ranking Hezbollah official? If not, who is he?"[31]

He's had previous experience working on a big production. Here he is comfortably handling a headless baby. Behind him the photographers click away. As EU Referendum writes[31] "But the great tragedy for Qana, of which we are constantly reminded by the media, is that this is history apparently repeating itself. On 18 April 1996, the village was also visited by death and destruction. re-visiting the photographs of the time, however, who do we see at the centre of the action? Why, "Green Helmet" of course. This is a younger man, without his glasses, but recognisably the same man, in his now classic pose of handling a victim of an Israeli 'atrocity'.

Do we know anything else about him? The Strata Sphere website[33] suggests "Mr Green Helmet is Abu Shadi Jradi (also spelled Abu Chadi), a mortician from Tyre. Israeli Insider[34] has picked up on some reporting from the area a few days earlier which now says "Qana-Man" is possibly a mortician from Tyre and may have arrived in his refrigerated truck used to carry corpses. Now the question comes full circle. Was his truck loaded on the way to Qana or on the way back?" "The AP wire story begins: 'Abu Shadi Jradi pulled bodies out of wreckage for hours -- two toddler girls wearing tiny gold earrings, a small boy whose pale blue pacifier still hung from his neck [sic]. Somewhere in the middle, Jradi slumped beneath a tree and wept.' Since we have a picture of this man pulling the small boy out, it is quite clear that Mr. Jradi is the 'Man with the Green Helmet."[34]

Props. Did some of the dead come from Tyre? First, there were available bodies in Tyre. Israel has warned people to get out of the war zone. Many have. Others have ignored the warnings. With all the disruptions of normal services, Tyre has resorted to mass burials for people, those who died a natural death and those who died during Israel air strikes. Hezbollah is strong in Tyre. And the Hezbollah has taken advantage of the clusters of caskets for effective propaganda. Joel Mowray observed a doctored picture prominently displayed by the Miami Herald. It was an effective picture taken in Tyre of Muslim women eloquently grieving over a large number of coffins. As Joel Mowbray observed, the scene was gussied up with bits that made it obvious enough for the dumb Americans to understand how awful Israel was. To see it, click here. They have also treated the visiting journalists to disgusting displays of overripe corpses. Cal Perry[35] reported that "Eight days ago, the Lebanese Army buried 87 bodies in a mass grave in the city of Tyre. Today, they are laying another 34 in the ground." He goes on to describe the gruesome details, which included: "Three soldiers begin to struggle with a large body bag. Maggots are pouring from the bag - blood is seeping onto the ground. When they get the body into the coffin, the lid arches as doctors hammer nails into it." Blood seeping out? A LFG reader (#31, a medical scientist) wrote "Blood coagulates very quickly on exposure to oxygen. There is absolutely no way at all that blood would be seeping from a body bag while maggots poured out unless the blood came from a freshly cut open bag or two of donor blood." Maggots? As one LGF reader (#11) commented: It takes 4 days for them to start moving from the body. So, apparently, the bodies were not buried immediately? Another (#15) said "Nope - no way. Fresh blood = no maggots. Are they really this stupid, or do they know it's a setup just for them?" As the morgues fill up, some bodies were kept in refrigerated trucks. Apparently journalists don't need to take math courses -- it is almost impossible to get actual figures or even guesstimates. But it doesn't seem logical that if they can't get sufficient burial space in the ground, refrigerated trucks can take up much of the slack. They can, however, be available to store photogenic props and just plain folk for padding. In terms of value, babies are the gold standard. Children come next. So, if Hezbollah needed some extras -- perhaps too many of the townsmen had left -- Tyre was a good source of supply. Second, using dead children is SOP. As Euphoric Reality points out[30], "The use of dead children for propaganda is nothing new for Islamofascists. Pallywood immortalized one such hoax, known around the world as poor, pathetic Muhommed al-Dura; and the Islamist propaganda machine churns overtime to push the emotional buttons of the Western psyche. By staging dramatic video footage of dead women and children, or better yet, a young pregnant women (a two-fer), they know that with the Western media's help, they can drum up weeks' worth of manufactured outrage and condemnation on behalf of their terrorist cause." "The Palestinians have perfected the art of mugging and posing for the camera, able to conjure up ululations of sorrow and grimaces of agony on a moments' notice. Hollywood's Oscar winners should be so emotionally versatile. Iraqis, well-trained by the Hussein regime to manipulate the Western media, are masters at it. "This barbaric PR machine is constantly churning out propaganda against Israel and against our own soldiers - as we've seen by the plethora of false accusations barraging our troops now. The Islamists go to such lengths to get their photo op - nothing is too gruesome for them. Westerners, shocked by the images themselves, rarely put all the details together to know when they are being scammed." It is speculation that bodies were brought in by refrigerated truck. But it has some substantive support. According to the Ugly American website [36]"They may or may not have trucked in bodies. I have no idea. The fact that the same refrigerated trucks containing 32 bodies from Tyre the day before arrived in Qana the morning after the attack is widely reported." They arrived before the reporters. Given that most of the residents had left town, what was the point of them being there? [August 9, 2006 Update: after the massacre was over, the bodies were buried in a mass grave. Implication: the refrigerated trucks were not brought in empty to cart away the bodies of the "massacred."] Third, using refrigerated trucks to store up usable bodies sounds bizarre -- almost risible -- to a Westerner, but it has seen use before in the Arab world. Saddam Hussein would collect dead babies ([37] cited in [30]) -- forcing all the hospitals in Bagdad to refrigerate babies that died of natural causes or were premmies for up to 4 weeks -- until he had enough for a parade of taxis with coffins of dead babies strapped to their roofs. Some 25-30 babies were collected a month; their deaths were said to have happened in a single day and were the result of the UN sanctions against Iraq. As an aside, it is interesting in reading to realize how many people were in on Saddam's fakery -- they kept the secret out of fear, or because they'd been paid off or ideology. We usually think that any secret known to three is known to all -- but maybe that's only in Hollywood. In Jenin, the Arabs made wild statements about the Israelis digging mass graves and eventually it was shown that there were no mass graves. When Sha'ath addressed the United Nations later in April, he made a curious statement: "Why did they [the Israelis] take bodies away in refrigerated trucks?" A clear case of projection.

The Props of Rage One has to plan ahead for rallies and riots and fancy banners, for when the dastardly deed is done. As more evidence that they were waiting for the Israelis to provide the "occasion for a manufactured massacre' to be held in Qana: after a reader wrote about the banner that went up at a rally right after the killings, showing Sec-State Rice, blood dripping from her lips, Carl in Jerusalem (http://israelmatzav.blogspot.com/) pointed out Since I do banners like this for a living, I can tell you it take more than a few hours depending on the equipment... In short if it was related to Qana and went up within two hours-four hours, it was done prior to the bomb hitting. No other way. Just putting an image together that large on a computer with Type would take a few hours... The cost would be in the thousands. ...Then you would have to transport it.

To me, the most compelling reason for spotting this sham as a hoax is that it fits a pattern that has become familiar to us. Once they have a tactic down, Arab terror groups polish it and improve it and use it over and over again. Palestinian suicide bombings are known to follow a monotonous pattern. If they successfully create havoc in one spot, it is likely there will be a second bombing in the same place -- the hard work of planning the operation is already done. All they need is another dupe.

The Qana massacre suggests the use of a tried-and-proven scenario: dead children are dragged out and around. That always hits a 10 on people's emotional Richter scale. This is combined with the manipulation of the press. Actually, I hesitate calling it manipulation, in that so much of the media is so eagerly cooperative. And if a reporter isn't cooperative, there is always the threat that he will be locked out of the action.

The stage managers create a sense of urgency and anguish so the reporters won't ask too many questions. They keep tight control over the scene, so a wandering reporter won't wander into an unfinished setting. Even the details are reused. The use of a refrigerated truck to keep the props fresh is not unusual. But while the reporters are kept off balance, the Arab PR operators make sure the photographers get what they need: the subjects are held in the proper light, small props are added for visual emphasis, and a dead child that is there to make the world weep is treated with disrespect.

My own guess is -- judging from the published register of the dead[9] -- there weren't enough small children to make an impact. So they imported a few. Countering this, there weren't many small children on display. Maybe they didn't have enough handlers. Playing an emotional rescuer is not a role for a second-rate actor.

The Little Why?

Why go through so much trouble to show a few grotesque dead bodies?

Maybe because of what happened in Jenin in April 2002. Jenin is the site of an earlier massacre, a massacre that proved to be a hoax. Using the authority of U.N. officials, the voices of those master illusionists -- Nabil Sha'ath, Saeb Erekat and Hassan Abdel Rahman -- and the gullibility of Wolf Blitzer inter alia at CNN, it was asserted that the Jews had massacred some 500 innocent Jenin civilians, half of them women and children.[38] Where were the bodies? Well, it was announced, they were buried in a mass grave. The world was encouraged to believe that the Israelis had guiltily and hastily done the deed. The Palestinian arabs were encouraged to raise the number of dead in Jenin and Nablus into the thousands.

It turned out that some 50 had been killed, and most of these, judging from their equipment, were terrorists. Sheikh Jamal Abu Al-Hija, a Hamas commander in Jenin, told Qatari television channel Al-Jazeera, "[We placed] explosive devices on the roads and in the houses; surprises [await] the occupation forces... The truth is that the fighting is being conducted from neighborhood to neighborhood, like guerilla warfare. The Mujahideen are using automatic rifles, explosive devices, and hand grenades."

Jenin, I think, is important because it taught the Arabs you can't have a massacre without bodies. And this time, they made sure they had bodies -- photogenic bodies of dead children.

Qana has the stigmata of an Arab hoax. The use of human shields. The discrepancies in timing. The lack of respect toward civilians. And they don't mind later exposure as hoaxers, because thanks to a forgiving media, their credibility is not shattered.

The Big WHY?

As Robert Spencer writes,[39]

"The Christian Lebanese website LIBANOSCOPIE has charged that Hizballah staged the entire incident in order to stimulate calls for a ceasefire, thereby staving off its destruction by Israel and Lebanese plans to rid themselves of this terrorist plague: 'We have it from a credible source that Hizbullah, alarmed by Siniora's plan, has concocted an incident that would help thwart the negotiations. Knowing full well that Israel will not hesitate to bombard civilian targets, Hizbullah gunmen placed a rocket launcher on the roof in Qana and brought disabled children inside, in a bid to provoke a response by the Israeli Air Force. In this way, they were planning to take advantage of the death of innocents and curtail the negotiation initiative.'"

The site's editors also claimed that not only did Hizbullah stage the event, but that it also chose Qana for a specific reason: "They used Qana because the village had already turned into a symbol for massacring innocent civilians, and so they set up 'Qana 2'." Notably, the incident has indeed been dubbed "The second Qana massacre" by the Arab media.

Robert Spencer concludes, "Americans and Westerners are not used to dealing with carefully orchestrated and large-scale deception of this kind. It is time that it be recognized as a weapon of warfare, and an extremely potent one at that."
 

CONCLUSION

At a minimum: The Israeli's shelled the building, thinking it empty or knowing that it was the source of attacks on Israelis. They hit some civilians, who were staying in the basement. Hezbollah took this raw material and turned it into a massacre by embellishing some details and striving for the dramatic. Remember, merely killing civilians does not a massacre make. No one has accused Hezbollah of massacring Israelis, no matter how many they kill. It only becomes a massacre when the public's emotions are engaged and they are horrified and revolted.

Or we might be dealing with a Sheherazade Spectacular: Hezbollah carefully planned the massacre, including using Qana specifically as the site. They dressed the scene, stage-managed the production with selected photogenic dead from several places, and adding dramatic details to squeeze out the maximum in sympathy using a cooperative press. They patiently waited. When Israeli was suckered into responding to their rocket attacks, it was curtain time.

In either case, it is clear there was no serious attempt at a rescue operation. The dead were the stars, the younger the better, the more photogenic the better. The living were ignored.

Qana is the site where Jesus is said to have turned water into wine. Nowadays Qana is the site where, aided by the swarmy voices from CNN, Arab propagandists turn dead bodies into a propaganda coup.

The only massacre was the massacre of the truth by the usual suspects.
 

END NOTES:

1. Additional reading: "The Birth of an Icon. Al Durah: What happened?"
http://www.seconddraft.org

2. Bernice Lipkin, "An American Dies in Gaza," March 20, 2003, http://www.think-israel.corrie.html

3. From YNet, July 30, 2006,
www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3283816,00.html

4. Arutz-Sheva,
www.IsraelNN.com

5. Reuven Koret, "Was the "Qana Massacre" staged by Hezbollah?", Israel Insider, July 31, 2006,
http://web.israelinsider.com/Articles/Diplomacy/8997.htm

6. IDF video, "Incident in Kafr Qana", July 30, 2006,
www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Government/Communiques/2006/ Incident+in+Qana+-+IDF+Spokesman+30-Jul-2006.htm)

7. Gil Hoffman, "Delay in screening Kana footage causes PR disaster," Jul 31, 2006,
www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1153292037499&pagename= JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

8. Chris Tinkler, "These are the pictures that damn Hezbolah" July 29, 2006, Sunday Herald Sun, Australia,
www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,19960056-5006301,00.html

9. The contradictory evidence is the register published by Human Rights News, "Qana Death Toll at 28," http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2006/08/02/lebano13899.htm. It lists some older men; and a woman said she'd saved her husband from the rubble.

The Red Cross confirmed that 26 dead were recovered; HRW has the names of the 28 dead:

Ages of 28 Confirmed Dead
0-2 -- 2 (9 mos, 2)
3-7 -- 7
8-12 -- 6
17 -- 1
25-30 -- 3
31-45 -- 4
55-75 -- 4 (either 3 or 4 are men)
1 -- age unknown

Ahmad Mahmud Shalhub, 55
Ibrahim Hashim, 65
Hasna' Hashim, 75
`Ali Ahmad Hashim, 3
`Abbas Ahmad Hashim, 9 months
Hura’ Muhammad Qassim Shalhub, 12
Mahdi Mahmud Hashim, 68
Zahra Muhammad Qassim Shalhub, 2
Ibrahim Ahmad Hashim, 7
Ja`far Mahmud Hashim, 10
Lina Muhammad Mahmud Shalhub, 30
Nabila `Ali Amin Shalhub, 40
`Ula Ahmad Mahmud Shalhub, 25
Khadija `Ali Yusif, 31
Taysir `Ali Shalhub, 39
Zaynab Muhammad `Ali Amin Shalhub, 6
Fatima Muhammad Hashim, 4
`Ali Ahmad Mahmud Shalhub, 17
Maryam Hassan Muhsin, 30
`Afaf al-Zabad, 45
Yahya Muhammad Qassim Shalhub, 9
`Ali Muhammad Kassim Shalhub, 10
Yusif Ahmad Mahmud Shalhub, 6
Qassim Samih Shalhub, 9
Hussain Ahmad Hashim, 12
Qassim Muhammad Shalhub, 7
Raqiyya Mahmud Shalhub, 7
Raqiyya Muhammad Hashim, unknown

10. Richard Engle NBC Media News, July 30, 2006.

11. Dan Riehl, "A Tyre for Qana?" July 31, 2006,

www.riehlworldview.com/carnivorous_conservative/ 2006/07/a_tyre_for_qana.html

12. NSNBC News Services, "Buried in rubble, mother saved lives in Qana" August 3, 2006,
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14167395/

13. Katherine Shrader and Kathy Ganno, "Israel Halts Air Attacks in South Lebanon,"
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=2255224&page=1

14. Bob Owens, "Qana Media Coverup?" Confederate Yankee, July 31, 2006
http://confederateyankee.mu.nu/archives/188515.php

15. Jerusalem Post Op Ed, July 30, 2006,
(www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename= JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull&cid=1153292028910,

16. John Lawrence, "Qana Should Not Be The End," The Conservative Voice Network,
www.theconservativevoice.com/article/16553.html.

17. Anshel Pfeffer, "The exorcism of the ghosts of Qana", Jerusalem Post, July 30, 2006.

18. Charles Johnson, Little Green Footballs. e.g.,
www.littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/ ?entry=12551_One_More_CBS_Document_Example

19. The first thought was that Hezbollah had used the kids as shields, deliberately drawing Israeli fire on civilians. Actually, when the number of dead was reexamined by the Red Cross, it turned out there weren't that many dead kids. Ironically, that fact became one of the reasons people began to suspect a hoax. It was soon suspected that, given that Arabs consider babies prime meat in the PR battle and given that the number of babies in the area was small, some might have been imported to the site.

20. Obviously I'm talking about the bloggers who looked into this. Many are naturally pro-Israel, but some were interested just because they smelled a rat. The Daniel360 blogsite -- http://daniel360.com/archives/186" -- has live links to many of the blogs that discuss Hezbollah's war crimes: "The hezbollah shields of qana and their msm deniers". They include:

EU Referendum. Plancks constant, Euphoria Reality, Hyscience, Jihadwatch, Augean Stables, Confederate Yankee, Riehl World View, Jawa Report, Michelle Malkin, Melanie Phillips, Israpundit, Webloggin, Debbie Schlussel, Tel-Chai Nation, Felix Quigly Jawa Report, Jihad Watch, Harry's Place, Podhoretz, Solomonia, Gates of Vienna, LGF, TigerHawk, American Thinker, David Warren and WizBang.

21. Strata Sphere, "More staged Photos from AP-Reuters-Qana", July 31, 2006, href="http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/2201

22. Bob Owens, "Were the Qana Bodies Staged?" Confederate Yankee, July 31, 2006,
http://confederateyankee.mu.nu/archives/188571.php

23. Richard North and Helen Szamuely, "Milking it?" EU Referendum, July 31, 2006,
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2006/07/milking-it.html

24. Incidently, this picture was taken by Adnan Hajj for Reuters. A week later Reuters pulled another one of Hajj's pictures for being "doctored." Or should that read: for being too obviously doctored? Michelle Malkin wrote a column on it called "Where there's smoke, there's Photoshop?" (Aug 6, 2006 michellemalkin.com).

25. Richard North and Helen Szamuely, "Game, set and match", EU Referendum august 2, 2006,
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2006/08/game-set-and-match.html

26. David Bauder, "News Agencies Stand by Lebanon Photos" in Forbes, Aug 1, 2006
http://www.forbes.com/home/feeds/ap/2006/08/01/ap2920008.html

27. There is a possibility entertained by other bloggers that this is a refrigerated truck from Tyre that was seen in the neighborhood at the time. (See also 33. and 34. below.)

28. Richard North and Helen Szamuely, "We Need to Know the Truth," EU Referendum, August 1, 2006,
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2006/08/we-need-to-know-truth.html. p29. Richard North and Helen Szamuely, "Qana - the director's cut," EU Referendum August 5, 2006,
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2006/08/qana-directors-cut.html

30. "The parade of Dead Children", Euphoric Reality, July 31, 2006,
http://euphoricreality.com/2006/07/31/the-parade-of-dead-children

31. Richard North and Helen Szamuely, "Who is this man?" July 31, EU Referendum 2006,
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2006/07/who-is-this-man.html

32. Richard North and Helen Szamuely, "Green Helmet Mystery Continues," EU Referendum, August 01, 2006,
eureferendum.blogspot.com/2006/08/green-helmet-mystery-continues.html

33 "Mortician from Tyre," Strata Sphere, August 3, 2006,
http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/2235

34. Reuven Koret, Hezbollywood Horror: "Civil Defense Worker" doubles as Traveling Mortician, August 3, 2006,
http://web.israelinsider.com/Articles/Diplomacy/9036.htm

35. Cal Perry, "Eyewitness: Mass burial in Lebanon," CNN, July 30, 2006,
www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/07/29/btsc.perry/archives/oldindex.html"

36. The Ugly American, August 3, 2006 http://therealuglyamerican.com/2006/08/03/ who-is-the-better-journalist-morley-or-the-bloggers/

37."Saddam's parades of dead babies are exposed as a cynical charade", Telegraph UK, 25 may 03,
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml= %2Fnews%2F2003%2F05%2F25%2Fwirq25.xml

38. CAMERA, "Backgrounder: A Study in Palestinian Duplicity and Media Indifference," August 1, 2002,
www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=7&x_issue=14&x_article=217]

39. The quote from LIBANSCOPIE,
(www.libanoscopie.com/fulldoc.asp?doccode=994&cat=2) is cited by Robert Spencer, "Stage-Managed Massacre" Front Page Magazine, August 2006,
www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=23655

 

 

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