Wednesday, August 30, 2006
MISSILE STORY SHIFTING
The Australian’s Martin Chulov, who covered the Red Cross ambulance story, rejects claims that it was a hoax:
I was in Tyre on the night of the attack and investigated the incident closely the next day. On July 24, with photographer Stewart Innes, we spoke to Qassem Shalin, who was recovering from a minor wound to his chin that nurses had bandaged to stop it from turning septic. We also visited Ahmed Mohammed Fawaz, whose lower left leg had been amputated and whose severe burns ironically had saved his life by sealing blood vessels and arteries. His son writhed in pain nearby, his stomach riddled with shrapnel and the rear of his scalp opened up.
We inspected both ambulances, whose mangled roofs were not rusting at the time. By the time the photos [shown at zombietime.com] were taken, rust had appeared. But this is entirely normal in Lebanon’s sultry summer climate, where humidity on the coast does not drop below 70per cent.
[Foreign minister Alexander] Downer’s spokesman, Tony Parkinson, said on Tuesday: “Those (website) pictures do not show an ambulance that has been struck by a missile nor do they sustain the argument the ambulance was struck by a missile."
He is wrong. The damage done was consistent with ruined cars and vans that I saw elsewhere in Lebanon and earlier in Gaza, which had been hit by a missile fired from a drone. The Israeli-made drones have many types of missiles, but the most regularly used has a small warhead designed for use in urban areas. It aims not to kill anyone outside a small zone and rarely leaves a calling card outside its target.
Downer and Parkinson should know this. The Australian Government last year signed a deal to buy drones from Israel. They would surely have come with a buyer’s guide.
The small warhead partly explains the driver’s lack of serious wounds. But more telling is the fact that Shalin was lifting the rear ramp of the ambulance when the missile hit. His colleague was stepping into the side door. The concussion wave from the missile easily dispersed through the open spaces. Shalin was protected as he fell under the ramp. The other driver was blown out the side door.
Working in the Lebanese Red Cross operations room in Beirut the night the ambulances were hit was field manager George Kettaneh. “Every ambulance that moved in Lebanon I had to know about,” he said. “I received phone calls from the ambulance drivers and it took us one hour to negotiate a ceasefire through the ICRC.” ...
I returned to Tyre on Saturday to speak again to Qassem Shalin and inspect the damaged ambulances. “Everything I said happened that night did happen,” he said. “There was not a sound in the sky before the explosions. And after that there was a battle for the next hour. We hid in a building nearby convinced we were going to die. It was only when George (Kettaneh) called me that we could leave safely."
The events of July 23 and the reporting that followed was newsworthy and important. The ICRC has documented two other occasions when Lebanese ambulances were hit during the war and to report the incidents does not reflect anti-Israeli bias. The blog site’s attempts to create a smokescreen around a shameful truth fail on tests of scrutiny that Downer was happy to overlook.
Beyond serious dispute? Only if you want to believe it, Minister.
Chulov fails to address a point central to the hoax allegations. Here’s his original report:
The latest attack occurred on Sunday night near the small village of Quna, where two ambulances travelling in convoy were fired on by an Israeli Apache helicopter as they sped to the besieged port city of Tyre.
One of the Israeli rockets pierced the centre of the large red cross marked on the roof of one of the ambulances, as if it was used as a target.
In Chulov’s latest piece, the ambulance is simply “hit”. Where, precisely?