Guardian vs. the IDF response to the Goldstone report the Guardian’s Monty Python moment

Imagine a stop motion animation where a big heavy hammer hits a wooden surface, but instead of a loud bang and a crash a faint chirp like sound is heard and the stricken wood has a small crack on its surface, nothing more. This type of absurdity is usually associated with the cartoons from the famous 'Monty Python’s Flying Circus' and not with respectable media services, such as the Guardian.

However, according to this distinguished British newspaper an 500 kg airplane dropped Israeli bomb produced the following damage to the El Bader flour mill, Gaza's only flour producing factory, seen in the pictures below taken from the IDF reply to the Goldstone report and a BBC report from June 2009.

Does that look like the kind of damage caused by a 500 kg bomb?

According to the Guardian, a UN demining team found the front half of a Mk82 airplane dropped bomb in the second floor of the Al Bader flour mill on January 25, 15 days after the place was supposedly bombed by the Israeli air force and destroyed the Gaza Strip only flour producing mill, as claimed by the Goldstone report and its defenders, who built a charge of war crimes against Israel saying we prevented food from the population of the Hamas controlled Gaza Strip, even though food keeps coming in daily from Israel.

According to the site of the Federation of American Scientists, the Mk82 is a 500 kg airplane dropped bomb, it is an unguided bomb, a dumb weapon, intended to create maximum blast and destruction, a fact that is not evident from the pictures above. The blast is so powerful that its casing is designed to slow down its fall so the bomber will have enough time to escape the blast. Now let's back up and look at those pictures again…if a jet fighter like the F-16A-D needs time to get the hell out of that thing how come the structure is intact, the roof is still there, and the machines look damaged but nothing like what we would expect from a 500 kg explosion? And judging from the quoted UN demining team in the Guardian who found the fragment in the second floor of the mill, the second floor is still there. In other words:

And another thing: How did the supposed incriminating fragment get there? Where is its the point of entry? This is not a simple question, because according to ORDTECH MILITARY INDUSTRIES, a Greek defense company established in the mid-1980s, this 500kg bomb isn’t meant to penetrate, but to take out "fragment sensitive targets" in the outdoors such as, troops, oil facilities and radar. A building on the other hand is a good protection against fragments, therefore a bad target for this type of a bomb.

All this adds up to the following absurdity. The IDF has a detailed account of its activities at the time of the alleged bombing. It describes a complex ground battle that took place in the area of the Al Bader mill, involving troops, tanks and Apache helicopter gunships on the Israeli side, and booby trapped houses on the Hamas side, some of them adjoining the flourmill.

From the IDF response to Goldstone, p. 41 – 44:

163. With respect to the allegation of deliberate targeting of the el-Bader flour mill, the IDF conducted a command investigation, which gathered evidence from numerous sources, including relevant commanders and officers and ground and aerial forces. In addition, the investigator received information from the Israeli CLA, which was in direct contact with the owner of el-Bader flour mill, Mr. Rashad Hamada. The command investigation included several findings, which are delineated below.

164. From the outset of the Gaza Operation, the immediate area in which the flour mill was located was used by enemy armed forces as a defensive zone, due to its proximity to Hamas’s stronghold in the Shati refugee camp. Hamas had fortified this area with tunnels and booby-trapped houses, and deployed its forces to attack IDF troops operating there. For example, 200 meters south of the flour mill an IDF squad was ambushed by five Hamas operatives in a booby-trapped house; 500 meters east of the flour mill another squad engaged enemy forces in a house that was also used for weapons storage; and adjacent to the flour mill, two booby-trapped houses exploded.

165. The IDF ground operation in this area began on 9 January 2009, during night time. Before the ground operation, the IDF issued early warnings to the residents of the area, included recorded telephone calls, urging them to evacuate. Such telephone calls were made to the flour mill as well.

166. While preparing for the operation, the commanders identified the flour mill as a “strategic high point” in the area, due to its height and clear line of sight. Nevertheless, in the planning stage, it was decided not to pre-emptively attack the flour mill, in order to prevent damage to civilian infrastructure as much as possible.

167. In the course of the operation, IDF troops came under intense fire from different Hamas positions in the vicinity of the flour mill. The IDF forces fired back towards the sources of fire and threatening locations. As the IDF returned fire, the upper floor of the flour mill was hit by tank shells. A phone call warning was not made to the flour mill immediately before the strike, as the mill was not a pre-planned target.

168. Several hours after the incident, and following a report about fire in the flour mill, the IDF coordinated the arrival of several fire engines to fight the fire.

169. The Military Advocate General reviewed the findings and the records of the command investigation and other materials. In addition, the Military Advocate General reviewed the information included in the Human Rights Council Fact-Finding Report, as well as the transcript of the public testimony of Mr. Hamada to the Fact-Finding Mission.

170. Taking into account all available information, the Military Advocate General determined that the flour mill was struck by tank shells during combat. The Military Advocate General did not find any evidence to support the assertion that the mill was attacked from the air using precise munitions, as alleged in the Human Rights Council Fact-Finding Report. The Military Advocate General determined that the allegation was not supported in the Report itself, nor in the testimony to the Fact-Finding Mission by Rashad Hamada, who had left the area prior to the incident in response to the IDF’s early warnings. Photographs of the mill following the incident do not show structural damage consistent with an air attack.

171. The Military Advocate General found that, in the specific circumstances of combat, and given its location, the flour mill was a legitimate military target in accordance with the Law of Armed Conflict. The purpose of the attack was to neutralize immediate threats to IDF forces.

172. The Military Advocate General did not accept the allegation in the Human Rights Council Fact-Finding Report that the purpose of the strike was to deprive the civilian population of Gaza of food. In this regard, he noted the fact that shortly after the incident, the IDF allowed Palestinian fire trucks to reach the area and extinguish the flames, as well as the extensive amount of food and flour that entered Gaza through Israel during the Gaza Operation.

173. Although the Military Advocate General could not conclusively determine that the flour mill was in fact used by Hamas’s military operatives, there was some evidence of such use. The Military Advocate General noted that Mr. Hamada testified before the Fact-Finding Mission that after the operation he found empty bullets on the roof of the flour mill. This could not have been the result of IDF fire, since – as was evident from the findings of the command investigation – the IDF forces which occupied the mill’s compound three days after the incident did not occupy the roof of the mill, where they would have been exposed to enemy fire.

174. Accordingly, the Military Advocate General found no reason to order a criminal investigation regarding the case.

English spelling mistakes are at the source

The Guardian wishes to discredit all that by a single item, full of holes:

1) A bomb fragment, from a bomb that produces an explosion far more powerful then the one evident in the pictures above.

 2) An unknown point of entry. The UN demining team says they have two, as yet unavailable pictures, which may or may not show a point of entry.

3) An unknown point in time for this particular fragment to reach the mill, since it was found 15 days after the alleged bombing. Enough time for it to get there because of a separate set of circumstances, and to cool off if it was due to an explosion.

4) Other scenarios were not examined and discredited. It is important to note that there are other scenarios possible, more consistent with the evidence. It could have exploded elsewhere and the blast threw the fragment into the mill, it could have broken apart in mid air, or may be the actual content of the bomb was many times below 500 kg.

I, on my part, know that my sense of humor and creative absurdities are many times below those of Terry Gilliam, but apparently that is not the case when it comes to the Guardian’s accusations against Israel, at least the creative absurdities part of it. The problem is they weren’t trying to make a joke. And although first reaction is a giggle or two, it is really, really, not funny at all.

Hat tip: IsraelMatzav

Related link: When ludicrousness stops being funny, the Guardian Gaza report.

Demonstrating my argument, Jonathan Steele at the Guardian

Honestreporting points to this pro murder article by Jonathan Steele the Guardian senior foreign affairs correspondent. An article that proves exactly what I was worried about, in my previous entry. In it Jonathan Steele’s sympathies to the Palestinians crosses the line into pro murder advocacy when he says that all Arab must support Palestinian resistance, a “resistance” that is overwhelmingly the deliberate systematic mass murder of unarmed civilians. Even more so when, through someone else’s quote, says there is no moral ground for boycotting Hamas, according to such an argument it is moral for Hamas to murder women and children and to break the international agreements their Fatah rivals signed on; and to all those he added a twisted perception of the Israel US relationship.
But what is his starting argument? Lieberman’s statement of no to a Palestinian state. Now, it is true that Jonathan Steele and others like will say what they say, and argue what argue no matter who is Israel’s PM, but why should we make it easy for them?

When ludicrousness stops being funny, the Guardian Gaza report.

I thought there is little more to add on the Guardian videos accusing the IDF of war crimes during the Gaza operation, given what has already been written in ZioNation in the Jerusalem Post, by the indispensable Melanie Philips, and more, and more. And more as these lines are been written, but apparently, there is more to add.

In the first video I was struck by the Guardian decision to go to the Israeli website ‘Shavuz’ for technical information about the capabilities of Israel's unmanned drones. Shavuz is Hebrew slang for ‘worn-out’ or overworked. The site serves primarily as a service for soldiers before enlisting and before rejoining civilian life. It gives advice on jobs, and academic courses along with social interactions in forums, exchange of war stories, and other army life experiences. IT IS NOT a supplier of professional information on Israel’s technological capabilities; there are plenty of other sites and publications for that, many of them in English. Using ‘Shavuz’ for information on technology is the equivalent of using the ‘London Employment Help Center’ for information on the electronics of the London Tube. It is simply ludicrous; unfortunately there is nothing here to laugh at.
This (Hebrew) link from ‘Shavuz’ would have given the Guardian part of the answer to their repeated question as to why so many civilians were hurt. In it Israeli pilots recall how Hamas operatives were dressed as women so the Israeli forces won’t fire on them.
This is either bad journalism or selective journalism on behalf of the Guardian.
What the Guardian does give us, unselectively, is an all out pseudo legal assault on our UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles).
The UAVs are one of the more successful Qassam hunters we’ve got, but contrary to what the Guardian implies, they are not foolproof; no technology is. And the more it is used the more likely it is to go wrong. Missiles can veer off, equipment can wear-down from overuse, and mistaken identification is likely to occur when conditions are not ideal: from the weather or from various structures that are blocking the view. An expert on those technologies can undoubtedly add a few more faults.
Problems exist also in the documented cases of death attributed to the drones. In the first one, members of a large family that was drinking tea in a confined space, closed by walls, were able to see the drone that attacked them as it did so. With their yard wall surrounding much of their view, how could they know for sure it was not a rocket or another projectile fired at the same time the drone was there?
In the other incident, where two young women were supposedly killed by a missile fired from a drone, the eyewitness had shown the reporter a small hole in the ground, supposedly from the missile but with no signs of fire around it. Is that what a missile attack looks like? What has the reporter done in order to find out from professional independent sources what such a missile attack looks like in the first place? Isn’t it puzzling that a killer missile will leave no signs of fire?
The problem in those two accounts is not the credibility of the witnesses but the quality of the Guardian’s research. Indeed the major hole in the Guardian credibility is their opening statement that in 3 weeks they had investigated numerous incidents. Just how much time they gave a single case, a day, an hour, or did they came to Gaza with an army of investigators? That claim is obviously preposterous, but it is a part of a very, vary serious matter.
An ominous question now arises regarding the Guardian's motives in going after a weapon that was able to help keep down the kill rate of the Qassam rockets, thus keeping civilian casualties low.

The second video dealt with the human-shields accusations. Some of the holes in its credibility were picked quickly by previous critiques. The idea that an intact copy of an Israeli journal from 2 years ago recording an earlier arrest of one of the family members testifying in the video, was supposedly forgotten there by Israeli soldiers, is indeed peculiar. A more likely explanation is that the family kept the old copy as a record of their son's ‘resistance’. And another peculiarity, according to the three brothers, the heroes of the second video, the Israeli army first used civilians as human shields, and then sent them into Israel for interrogation. Now, does that make sense? Why put the lives of the detainees at risk if they are needed later for interrogation? And could it be that that line of tanks was just a place to gather the detainees before deciding who will be released and who will be send to Israel for further inquiry? Remember, Gaza is mostly dense urban environment, ideal for guerrillas, where tanks have difficulties in maneuvering, especially as groups. Therefore if this was a line of tanks it had to have been located away from the main fighting. If that was the case, which is most likely given the conditions of fighting in Gaza, then the detainees were where human shields are less needed. Plus, tanks have their own shields.

The video also shows recorded cases of what is supposedly the use of ‘human shields’ by the IDF. This allegation is something, which the Israeli authorities failed to properly address. Most of the pictures failed to show where the threat to the soldiers comes from, and how the civilians in the pictures can become effective shields given the type of threats that can come in those mostly urban environments, and the civilian’s distances from the soldiers.
Most of those pictures come from the time of ‘Operation Defensive Shield’ when the Israeli army began cleaning the West Bank from cells of mass murder organizations. They refer to what was known as ‘neighbor procedure’. This procedure was labeled human shield by various groups, but when studied thoroughly, from Betselem's own accounts, it turns out that these civilians acted as negotiators between the IDF and Palestinian gunmen barricading inside homes. Those were negotiators by force, at gun point, and do carry their own set of moral problems, but at the same time they helped defuse many of those situations, cutting down the number of casualties on both sides. As problematic as the ‘forced negotiators’ cases are, they are not human shields.
One of the accusing pictures continues the Guardian line of preposterousness.



In the picture, which is a part of a bigger scene, a Palestinian detainee is pressed against a cement pillar by a sturdy Israeli soldier.


Now: a common sense question, if a grenade or a Molotov cocktail, were to explode over there, or large number of bullets fired at that direction, who is more likely to get hurt, the detainee, covered by cement on one side and a large soldier on the other? - Or the soldiers in his vicinity?
Another picture carries its own dubious history. It is a part of the Mohammed Badwan Myth using a name that had apparently recurred under similar circumstances in various times and places across the WB, since this picture was taken.



Three things do come clear from that picture:
1- That it is UNCLEAR where is the threat to the boy.
2- That it is UNCLEAR whether the boy is angry or crying.
3- That it is CLEAR that the jeep engine isn’t hot, or else the boy would have been in pain, since jeans are not known to be heat isolators. Which means the jeep hasn’t moved and isn’t planning to move.


As for the reporter's claim that no proof has been found of Hamas using human shields, perhaps he should check this BBC story with pictures, that records the use of human shields by Hamas.

The third video accuses Israel of deliberately firing on medical personnel. Here three unmentioned issues meet. One, the claim the IDF gave no explanation as to why medical personnel were fired at is as false as it could possibly get. Throughout the recent Intifada, including ‘Operation Cast Lead’ Israeli officials complained about Palestinian gunmen using medical transport and their personnel to hide weapons and fighters, and that includes during combat situations, about Hamas officials hiding in hospitals and pretending to be doctors, and countless other similar accusations. Second – this is another subject that sheds light on the key differences between a society that gives human lives high priority, Israel, and the one that doesn’t, Hamas. In Israel, bitter experience had thought to keep medical and fire and rescue personnel out of a battle zone until the area is secure. This is why no paramedics or firemen are allowed into burning buses, until the bomb disposal unit makes sure there are no more bombs in the bus. And that is why Palestinian and international medical personnel were kept from attending the wounded of the battle of Jenin, until the Israeli army dismantled all or most boobby-traps there. Third, a means for Palestinian medics to coordinate with the IDF the evacuation of wounded Palestinians had existed during the last Intifada. These were the liaison offices between the Israeli authorities and the PA, but they were cancelled by Hamas. So why did the Israeli army fire on medical personnel? Because it had no means of verifying their identity during on going battles and skirmishes, and they had no means of communicating their problems to us.
All these leave the Guardian report with shaky credibility and the aura of questionable motives.