« Ynet Covers CAMERA's Phillips Event | Main | Temple Mount Tunnel Tales »
January 22, 2007
Al Dura II?
The investigations that exonerated Israel for the killing seven years ago of 12-year-old Mohammed Al-Dura did little to soothe the raging Muslim world. Once again, Israel has been blamed for the killing of a 10-year-old Palestinian child, and the death is expected to fuel Arab hatred of Israel. As the AP reported on Friday:
Meanwhile, the 10-year-old daughter of a Palestinian peace activist died Friday after being struck int he head days earlier by a rubber bullet fired by Israeli security forces in the West Bank. Abir Aramin's death was expected to further fan Arab anger against Israel.
Likewise, Greg Myre of the New York Times duly noted Saturday:
A 10-year-old Palestinian girl, Abir Aramin, died Friday from wounds sustained when she was hit by fire from the Israeli border police on Tuesday in the West Bank town of Anata, near Jerusalem, Palestinian witnesses and relatives said. Abir and her classmates were on recess from school when the Israeli forces fired on stone-throwing Palestinians with rubber bullets and stun grenades, according to the Palestinians.
Today, however, Ha'aretz reports that an autopsy ruled out rubber bullets as the cause of the fatal injury:
Ten-year-old Abir Aramin was apparently killed by a blunt object, and not by a rubber bullet, as some eyewitnesses claimed, according to the autopsy findings. . .
Police sources said on Sunday that autopsy findings indicated Aramin could have been killed by concussion from a shock grenade or by a thrown rock. However, they said, the findings were inconsistent with her having been killed by a rubber bullet: No bullet wounds were found on her body, and the skull injury that caused her death was a large one, whereas rubber bullets, even if they do not penetrate, usually make small wounds.
The autopsy was performed last Friday at the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Abu Kabir, with a pathologist hired by Aramin's family in attendance. ("Girl allegedly killed by Border Police may have been hit by rock")
Thus, it appears that stone-throwing Palestinians, as opposed to Israeli border police firing rubber bullets (as initially reported), may very well have been responsible for the death of Aramin. The question remains how quickly and effectively media outlets can undo the damage.
CAMERA has contacted the AP and New York Times to request an update on this development. Stay tuned.
Posted by TS at January 22, 2007 06:43 AM
Comments
I've been following this story for a couple of days now, and am convinced that it's a cynical propaganda ploy perpetrated by one of the goon factions running the Palestinian Territories.
#1: There are no pictures on the newswires of the protest at which this girl was supposedly injured (and believe me, NO "anti-wall" protest happens without being photographed!)
#2: No pictures of her in the hospital, and only one story mentioning her at *all* before her death was reported by "Palestinian sources."
#3: Immediately following her death, a large propaganda poster has been printed up, and was bandied about by her "funeral procession," which just happened to proceed out from the Dome of the Rock, which coincidentally happened to be immediately after the Friday evening prayers!
#4: As of now, these propaganda posters are ALL over the Territories.
There's no way that these events happened the way that "Palestinian sources" describe, and I'm confident that the IDF's internal investigation will exonerate everyone involved, ASSUMING IDF WAS EVEN PRESENT. This is absolutely another fabrication of the Palestinian jihadists.
Check out my notes for a more thorough rundown of these events, illustrated with every photograph on the wires so far.
Warmest Regards,
Brian from Snapped Shot
Posted by: Brian L. at January 22, 2007 10:28 AM
Or she could have still been killed by the IDF but with a different method.
"could have been killed by concussion from a shock grenade"
Posted by: Kevin at January 22, 2007 12:06 PM
Kevin,
You're absolutely correct. Let's let the investigation proceed in all due course, and see what insights it gives us when it has completed, of course.
Regards,
Brian L.
Posted by: Brian L. at January 22, 2007 02:04 PM
Question.....
Why was a Palestinian peace activist at a rock throwing party??
Okay, that was rhetorical, kinda like "Palestinian Peace activist" is an oxymoron...
Posted by: Old Tanker at January 22, 2007 02:47 PM
Notice how all of the stories focus on the eeeevil Jooooos shooting at "peace activists" and not on the fact that these moronic thugs intentionally involved Pali children in a conflict with armed Israeli troops. That of all the places in "Palestine" to choose to throw rocks at the Jews from, they choose a spot directly in front of 10-year-old schoolchildren. What a frickin' co-inky-dink.
Posted by: Professor PyroSkank ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://blog.camera.org/nav-commenters.gif)
at January 22, 2007 04:48 PM
I have thrown my share of Shock Grenades at protesters and I promise you that unless you put one in your mounth and swallow, it will not kill you. Th other thing is: the shock grenade is what it says, a grenade, that needs to be thrown by a human. If you are in grenade throwing distance from a policeman that needs to throw a grenade, either you are involved or you are stupid.
Posted by: DZ at January 22, 2007 08:34 PM
I feel almost evil writing this, but I've become so cynical about stories like this that it wouldn't surprise me to find out that the little girl had been killed in some completely unrelated accident, and that her parents had been paid to go along with a fraud concocted by Hamas. It would, after all, explain the absence of any photos of the actual incident. It would be useful to know if the timing of her death can be correlated with an incident recorded by the Israelis. Otherwise I'm not convinced anything happened at all--that's how radical my disbelief is.
Posted by: clazy at January 22, 2007 09:54 PM
You need not feel cynical, must less evil, for suspecting foul play. There is truly nothing that is beyond the Palestinians and anyone who closely follows event there knows this. There was a story around the beginning of the latest terror war against Israel launched in the fall of 2000 where Jewish residents of the West Bank were accused of brutally killing a Palestinian man. An autopsy performed by independent doctors concluded the man was killed in a car accident and was not murdered. This is just one of many stories like this.
Posted by: EW at January 23, 2007 12:06 AM
Definetly not the first time this has happened.
Posted by: janic at January 24, 2007 12:26 AM
Guidelines for posting
This is a moderated blog. We will not post comments that include racism, bigotry, threats, or factually inaccurate material.