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August 01, 2006
Predictably, Qana Questions Arise
Ynetnews.com carries two stories today which raises questions about the possible staging of yet another prominently covered killing of Arab civilians.
First, Roee Nahmias reports on an anti-Syrian Christian Lebanese Web site which states that Hezbollah brought handicapped children to the doomed Qana building knowing that their deaths would bring propaganda points:
"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 stated.
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.
Second, the news article entitled "Blogs: Hizbullah 'milked' Qana attack" raises the possibility that a Hizbollah member posed as a rescue worker, shuttling the same child corpse throughout the day:
The website posts a series of photographs of the same man holding the child, each picture being separated by a significant time gap, before finally showing an AP photograph of the child's body in an ambulance taken at 7:21 in the morning – around nine hours before an AP photo was taken of the same child being held by the man in the green helmet.
A photograph is shown of "the same girl, this time apparently being placed in the ambulance. Also taken by AP… Intriguingly, though, the dateline given is 10.25 am, three hours after she has already been photographed in the ambulance."
Posted by TS at August 1, 2006 07:51 AM
Comments
In addition to the article you quoted from the Lebanese site, france-echos.com, a French anti-Islamic site, quotes an anonymous nurse who noticed that all of the published photographs of the dead children showed signs of physical handicaps. She commented (my translation):
"The probability that the families in the building had several multiply-handicapped children, that all of these children had been killed, and that all of the publicized photographs would show precisely these children, is the probability of winning the lottery. On the other hand, the probability that members of Hezbollah scored a two-for-one by relieving themselves of their burdens while playing the innocent victims seems much more credible to me."
An anonymous nurse on an anti-Islamic website is not going to be persuasive to the media, but the deformities should be equally visible to other professionals. If no wheelchairs or other equipment used in caring for the handicapped were found in the wreckage, it would be damning.
It is bad enough to put a rocket launcher on the roof of an occupied building. You pointed to evidence that the number of casualties was deliberately exaggerated. But if Hizbullah brought in helpless handicapped children to be killed -- or actually killed them first -- before provoking the IAF to strike the building (or blowing it up themselves), this represents a new depth of depravity. If it is true, too many would know about it to keep it secret for long. God willing, this satanic propaganda production will blow up in their faces.
Posted by: Kevin at August 1, 2006 11:39 PM
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